Fire Breathing Dragons

As the crow flies, I am some 3,150 miles away from Cowes on the northern tip of Cape Cod enjoying some fine humpback whale spotting and dining in a whaling tavern that dates back to 1840. However, the superb Dragon Class PR Team are doing their level best to make me feel almost at home with absolutely stellar multi-media reporting of the Edinburgh Cup that the Squadron kicked-off today with some 49 boats from 12 nations coming to try and win one of our sport’s hardest and most coveted trophies.

The Solent being the Solent, it’s every season in one day and some murderous bruised skies look to have finally broken the relentless heatwave that’s seen no rain for a good eight weeks, and with it came the shifts. What looked to my eyes like a south south westerly, meaning the wind is coming over the Island and making its own decision as it hits the fleet, is one of the trickiest to sail in, but I can’t help but raise a wry smile at the leaderboard this evening and see both Graham Bailey topping the standings and Gavia Wilkinson-Cox taking a race win.

Ladies first, I’ll start with Gavia, who is a great friend and who always stops by for a chat. She is quite simply the pinnacle lady racer in British sailing and has been Dragon sailing for longer than I’ve been in long trousers. Devastating on the racecourse, Gavia knows how to make a Dragon tick and has been doing it for years. I also have to give much credit to her crew - Mark Hart is close to a genius on the Solent and is almost impossible to beat in the Flying Fifteen class, whilst Millie Irish comes from one of the great Draycote Water lineages - I raced her father in 420’s back in the day - and Jake Hardman more than knows his Solent onions. I expect more race wins and only a disastrous second beat in the first race having been third all the way around has kept Gavia out of the chocolates. I have my fingers crossed for them.

As for Graham & Julia Bailey, well, I completely run out of superlatives. Graham sees sailing the way no-other does, but crucially he feels it better than anyone. I can remember racing him in Etchells and downwind he would largely be looking behind. He has total trust in his crew, but it’s this innate feel of a boat that sets him apart. Sailing the ex-royal Bluebottle, you would think that he has no right to be in the hunt, yet there he is, regatta after regatta proving that age is just a number and the simple fact that David Heritage is a master boatbuilder without exception.

Throw in Shirley Robertson’s son Killian Boag, who is weapons grade and coming through the elite ranks at a pace, and Will Bedford whose father is, in my eyes, the greatest keelboat talent that the UK has ever produced (David Bedford) - and you have a team that has ‘no excuse to lose.’ But there are plenty trying and go down the list of entries and it’s simply frightening the talent out there.

Bluebottle tops the standings overnight by a couple of points from some very big guns like Andy Beadsworth and Grant Gordon who have yet to get their regattas off and running, and crews down the fleet of the calibre of Gerry Mitchell, Richard Sydenham, and Jaimie Lea - it’s the big guns and they’re all firing.

Gavia sits in fifth overall and you have the likes of Dominik Heeschen who was literally unwrapping his brand new Dragon on the dockside before the regatta. There’s always serious money going into the Dragon fleet and it’s the sort of ‘Bentley of the Seas’ class that everyone wants to win in. I can remember sailing one at Cowes Week when I was 15 years old with Bill Citron and I’ve never been wetter. I’ve had drier showers, but it was fun and to look at them now, thundering downwind, they do look graceful - and upwind from behind they just look right.

Great fleet. Great boats. Great sailors. Dragons in Cowes look very right. I almost wish I was there…

Magnus Wheatley