Sailing Magazine
by Richard Crockett
His Majesty came to Cowes earlier to enjoy a few extra days’ racing, a sport very near to his heart, and this stormy opening of the Royal Albert Regatta in July, 1932, was to be his first race of the season. Although the King had still to exercise great care with his health, taking no unnecessary risks, the fact that he decided to race on such a day produced the most hard-fought and thrilling yacht race in Solent waters for the past half-century.
Boom! The starting gun. Boom! Another gun? ‘Shamrock V’ is a second too soon over the line, and has been recalled. Hard luck; yet the penalty of the over-anxious.
‘Britannia’ and ‘Astra’ are clean away, the latter on the weather of the King’s yacht. ‘White Heather II’ and ‘Candida’ follow a few seconds afterwards. A truly magnificent start, considering that it is blowing half a gale from the south-west.
Within another minute ‘Westward’ races across the line travelling faster than the others and shaping her helm to run through the lee of the fleet. The buoy lies almost dead to windward, and in normal sailing weather the cutters would have shown the schooner a clean pair of heels. To-day it is different, however.
“All hands on the mainsheet!” The order could be heard above the whistle and howl of the wind.
The above extract is a taste of what is to come in this lengthy report reproduced in the August 1986 issue of SAILING Mag in 1986. It’s a very vivid and well told account of a race which ended … . If I told you the result it would spoil the story.
READ THE FULL ACCOUNT OF THIS RACE HERE: Pages from 1986 08 – SAILING Magazine – OCR
