RORC De Guingand Bowl Race 2025 Preview

(Cowes, Isle of Wight, England)- The Royal Ocean Racing Club’s De Guingand Bowl Race marks the fifth race in the 2025 RORC Season’s Points Championship— the world’s largest offshore racing series. It also serves as Round One of the IRC Two-Handed National Championship and the second race in the exciting new RORC Cowes Offshore Racing Series. Over seventy-five boats are expected to be racing in the approximate 110.0 nm race.

The De Guingand Bowl Race starts and finishes in the Solent off the co-host’s famous Royal Yacht Squadron starting line in front of the Cowes waterfront. As a result, this gives the RORC race team full flexibility to design a course that is both tactically challenging and strategically demanding for the given weather forecast for the weekend. With no fixed route, the course is set the day before the start, allowing it to respond directly to the forecast and deliver the most dynamic racing possible.

IRC 2 Division
Featured in this eight-boat fleet is Frans van Cappelle’s J/122E MOANA from the Netherlands.

IRC 3 Division
Sailing in this diverse, huge 28-boat fleet will be Simon Harris & Charles Linard’s J/112E J’OUVERT and Alain Waha’s J/99 FURTHER WEST.

IRC 4 Division
This 23-boat fleet features seven J/Teams. Two J/99s are participating- Mark Kendall’s JIRO and Tim Tolcher’s RAGING BULL. Four J/109s are racing- Fred Neville-Jones’s JAMIRA, Jim Fitchett’s JUMUNU, Rob Cotterill’s MOJO RISIN, and Gillian Burgess’s RED ARROW from the Royal Air Force Sailing Association. A lone J/105 JAVELIN, sailed by Richard & Thomas Newsom, will be joining them.

IRC Doublehanded Division
Twenty-one boats are also participating as doublehanders. The two J/teams that are double-counting (double & full crew divisions) are Simon Harris & Charles Linard’s J/112E J’OUVERT and Tim Tolcher’s J/99 RAGING BULL.

For more RORC De Guingand Bowl Race sailing information
https://www.rorc.org/2024-race-programme