Fascinating facts about this famous regatta.
With Cowes Week starting this weekend, here are some fascinating facts you may not know about this iconic sailing regatta.
- Visitors. Around 142,000 people live on the Isle of Wight, but during Cowes Week tens of thousands of additional visitors arrive, with more than 100,000 people attending the event over the course of the week.
- Oldest Regatta. Cowes Week is the world’s oldest and largest annual regatta in. The first regatta took place in 1826. Just seven yachts took part from the Royal Yacht Club (later to become the Royal Yacht Squadron). The entry fee was £2, and the prize was a gold cup worth £100. The weekly wage of a labourer in 1826 would have been around 10 shillings. With 20 shillings to a pound, the entry fee of £2 was a month’s wage. The gold cup would have been equivalent to 2 years’ salary! Cowes Week has been running every year except for the First and Second World War years and 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
- One of the world’s largest sailing regattas. Today Cowes Week attracts around 500 boats and 5,000 competitors, while over 100,000 visitors enjoy the racing and shoreside entertainment.
- Location. The racing takes place in the Solent, an area between the north of the Isle of Wight and the UK mainland. The Solent is the busiest shipping area in Europe with 1 million commercial and naval movements and 10 million leisure movements per year. Two major ports, that of Southampton and Portsmouth, open into the Solent so there is a constant stream of bulk, container and car carriers, cruise ships, ferries, naval vessels and privately owned watercraft navigating around each other and Bramble Bank. Just to add to the excitement, Southampton has a double high water so this makes for interesting sailing.
- Starting Cannons. Walk along The Parade in Cowes and in front of Cowes Castle you will not fail to miss the starting cannons lined up, looking out to sea. The cannons were given to the Royal Yacht Squadron from a scaled-down miniature frigate which King George IV had built in the 1820s. The guns are expected to fire approximately 800 times during the week at the start and finish of each race. The charges are designed to make as much noise and smoke as possible but with the least amount of ‘blast’.
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