Cougar growls to victory

Steve Curtis ends 30-year wait for success in the Cowes-torquay-cowes race

Legendary powerboat racer Steve Curtis MBE won the 55th Cowes-Torquay-cowes offshore powerboat race crewed by Richard Carr and Paul Sinclair.

Driving a 46ft (15.6m) 30-year-old Cougar monohull powered by a pair of 9.5-litre 1,600hp Mercruiser petrol engines, the trio sped from Cowes to Torquay in under two hours, despite strong south-west winds and testing head seas across Lyme Bay.

Despite winning multiple Class One Offshore powerboat world championships, this is the first time Curtis has won the famous Cowes-Torquay-cowes event.

The event split into two races: the main Cowes to Torquay and back again for the larger marathon classes and a separate race to Poole for the smaller classics, later modified to a multi-lap contest between Cowes and Yarmouth due to bad weather.

Curtis and his crew led the main event from the start, moving further and further ahead as other hopefuls began falling out with a variety of mechanical and other problems.

Early favourite Vector Martini Rosso, driven by last year’s winner Peter Dredge, retired with gearbox problems well before Portland. The German entry of Markus Hendricks on a new 50ft (16.8m) Adam Younger-designed Hendricks 55 was out even earlier with a broken prop, while Silverline, the 45ft (13.3m) Outer Limits of marathon veteran Drew Langdon, nosedived and sank in Lyme Bay, sending its driver to hospital without serious injury but with a hefty salvage bill.

The weather took its toll on the main event. Only two reached Torquay behind the winning Cougar 46. Blastoff, driven by Dorian Griffith and broadcaster Shelley Jory-leigh, came in almost an hour later – the first time this 38ft (12.5m) American Fountain hull had finished a race since being shipped to the UK five years ago. Perhaps the greatest achievement must go to Robin Ward and crew who drove the 50-year-old 31ft (9.8m) Bertram Thunderstreak into Torquay outside the official race time limit.

The two race survivors were left to capture the awards for the return leg, unchallenged apart from the punishing sea conditions. Unfortunately, all at Cowes waited with enthusiasm for the arrival of the crawling Thunderstreak, the boat Tommy Sopwith drove in 1965’s race, only to hear a serious water leak had forced it to retire into Yarmouth.

The shorter race for smaller classes and classics fared better. Solent conditions were more forgiving with 12 of the 20 entries able to collect their finishing trophies. Ray Bulman

Tommy Sopwith’s 1965 boat Thunderstreak was forced to retire by a serious water leak