WITH a perfect scoreline of eight first places in the Daring class, co-owners Giles Peckham, Milo Carver and Richard Romer-Lee have not only won the class but also White Group, and Aberdeen Asset Management Overall Winner Trophy.
This team who were sporting a brand-new boat this season in the class’ 50th anniversary year, enjoyed a fantastic week’s sailing and have really earned their impressive result at this year’s Aberdeen Asset Management Cowes Week.
Joining co-owners and playing an important role in the overall win this week, was Jane Peckham, whose job it was to trim the spinnaker and navigate. They’ve also had a couple of Gurnard Sailing Club members onboard.
Giles said: "Winning the class is exciting enough but to win White Group and overall Cowes Week is beyond our wildest dreams. We are delighted."
Although Peckham and team are no strangers to standing on the podium at Cowes Week, this one will go down as the most special.
"We’ve had an amazing week’s sailing in fabulous conditions. The Week is usually characterised by at least one windy day and one flat calm day but this week is unusual in that we’ve had no calms at all."
Chatting about what makes a winning formula, Peckham added: "I think having a race-tuned boat, a good crew, and not making too many mistakes were key for us. We have, however, had our work cut out with Defender, in particular. Aptly named Defender was defending her class win from last year, so not surprisingly we’ve had a real week-long battle with her."
Peckham and team’s new boat replaces their 50 year old previous Daring which had a wood deck. According to Peckham, the old boat was beyond the state of repair so the new one was built using some parts of the original boat: "We have a new hull and deck, transferred the keel rudder and full rig and essentially built a new Daring. It’s great, and we’ll certainly be back next year."