The World’s Greatest Powerboat Race And The Maniacs Who Love It

There is something deranged, masochistic and undeniably beautiful about the small group of international offshore racers who flock to the 210-mile Cowes-Torquay-Cowes endurance race off the Isle of Wight in the United Kingdom each year in late August, as they have for the past 63 years. They know they are almost surely in for the open-ocean beat-down of their lives, the kind that left owner/throttleman Rob Lockyer of the Class 120 Good Boy Vodka team unable to sit down and driver Alex Pratt unable to stand up last Saturday after the Cowes-Torquay leg, which they won.

The Laa Laa team bested a strong field to claim first placed in the 63rd annual Cowes-Torquay-Cowes offshore endurance race. All action photos courtesy/copyright Nigel M. Cole. Click here to view the photographer’s complete Flickr  gallery from the event.

Asked how offshore endurance racing off the Isle of Wight compares to being paid to fall off horses as an equestrian stuntman—once Lockyer’s primary means of putting food on the table—he laughed. Clearly, he didn’t expect the question.

“Oh, someone told you about that,” he said with a big grin, then paused to consider his answer.

Though the Good Boy Vodka team finished first in the Cowes-Torquay leg, it couldn’t complete the return trip.

“It all hurts just as much,” he said, then laughed again.

Coming from a man still recovering from a long round of chemotherapy, that means something.

“For me, competing in Cowes-Torquay-Cowes is a dream come true,” Lockyer continued. “I used to come here a kid. We used to come across in a skiff when we were 15 or 16 years old. I never dreamed back then I’d be able to do it.”

Likewise, without the endless grit and good cheer and occasional pain-med that has made him a seven-time Cowes-Torquay-Cowes champion, Miles Jennings of the Silverline team wouldn’t have made it back with a manic grin on his face, a glass of champagne in his hand and a second-place result in the books.

By the time Silverline team reached Torquay, Miles Jennings was nursing a back injury that would send him to the hospital that evening.

“It’s all about the camaraderie,” he said.

For the record, no one is getting rich from the British Offshore Powerboat Racing Club-produced event rebranded Cowes Powerboat Week presented by Experience Kissimmee this year. The trophies are very fancy, but even the nicest of them costs a lot less than one CNC propeller.

A “flock” also is a long stretch when it comes to describing participation in the event. A whopping 20 teams, which Miles’ Silverline teammate Drew Langdon dubbed an “average turnout” then quickly added “but about half of them will never come back” showed up to compete in open-ocean conditions that ranged from awful to miserable.

Silverline’s Drew Langdon and Miles Jennings finished second overall. Participant/spectator photos by Matt Trulio.

“It’s the best race in the world,” Langdon, a five-time Cowes-Torquay-Cowes champion explained. “It’s like a drug.”

During the traditional black-tie dinner at the 209-year-old Royal Yacht Squadron yacht club the night before the race, Pratt, the founder of Good Boy Vodka, nudged a reporter sitting next to him. Pratt swiveled his head as if to say, “Can you believe all this?”

The reporter looked around the room of mostly dedicated gin drinkers, leaned in and whispered, “You’re not in this for the marketing, are you?”

“No,” he whispered back. “I just want to win the thing.”

So who won the thing?

(From left) A seven-time Cowes-Torquay-Cowes winner, Miles Jennings welcomed Alex Pratt, Rob Lockyer, Christian Mccauley and Shane Franks of the Good Boy Vodka team in fine style.

First, it’s worth understanding that the entire weekend consists of three races. On Saturday, there is the 210-miles Cowes-Torquay-Cowes headliner for the larger Class 120, 100, 80 and 60 raceboats and the shorter 105-mile Cowes-Poole-Cowes race for the smaller Class 75, 65 and boats. Those contests run concurrently.

Sunday’s 64-mile Round The Island event is for gluttons for additional punishment in all classes. Just in case they didn’t get their fill in one of the Saturday races, they can take a fresh beating the following morning.

Another essential note? There is a mandatory one-hour stop between the Cowes-Torquay and Torquay-Cowes segment of the main event. It is ostensibly a “fuel stop,” but it is at least as much a human-body recovery and light repair stop. You could call it a mercy stop and you wouldn’t be wrong.

Team Pippa—the faces of exhaustion with the return leg to go.

Because all teams needed a break this time around. Seas were in the 1- to-3-meter range. (Multiply by three, my fellow American readers, just in case it’s been a minute since you’ve dabbled in the metric system.) Sustained winds were in the 15-knot range. Gusts topped 20 knots.

So while the Good Boy Vodka team of Lockyer and Pratt and crewmembers Tim Linden and Shane Franks won the Cowes-Torquay leg of the contest, a broken driveshaft knocked the team out of the return leg shortly after it started. They ended up finishing fifth overall.

Enjoy more images from the 2024 Cowes-Torquay-Cowes endurance race.

As in all offshore racing, initial results are provisional. But when the mist finally settled with the apparent first-place finisher disqualified for a rules violation, the Class 120 Laa Laa team of Dean Stoneman, Harry Thomas and Myles Thompson took top honors in the 42-foot, 1,600-hp Fountain Powerboats V-bottom with an average speed of 72.07 mph on the 210-mile course. The Class 120 Silverline team of Langdon and Miles captured second place in their 43-foot Outerlimits. (Miles spent much of Saturday night in the hospital getting X-rays on his back.)

Running a Buzzi rigid inflatable boat, the Class 100 Pippa team of Daniel Smith and Jack Weller finished third overall. Not only was their 56.93-mph average enough to put to them on the podium, it earned them the distinction of first-place overall in their class.

(From left) Emma Lockyer, Ben Daffin and Christine Lockyer savored success in the Cowes-Poole-Cowes event.

Likewise, Emma Lockyer—the oldest daughter of Rob and Christine Lockyer—and Ben Daffin of Team 25 Patriot Marine finished third overall in Cowes-Poole-Cowes but were the first Class 55 oufit across the finish line of that contest.

For the record, the Class 75 Uno Embassy team of Gordon McMath, Phil Morris, Nigel Hopcroft and Chris Wright finished first and the Class 65 Thunderstreak team of Cowes legend Hugo Peel—in what he announced would be his final contest—Richard Jessel and Adrian DeFerranti finished second in Peel’s 1963 model-year Bertram V-bottom.

With Hugo Peel retiring from competition, his vintage Bertram raceboat reportedly is for sale.

But results—and you can read all of them including those from Sunday’s Round The Island contest all by clicking here—are simply the metrics of success. What makes Cowes-Torquay-Cowes the world’s greatest offshore race goes beyond its storied history. It’s more than the canons of the opulent Royal Yacht Squadron, which fired as they have now for 63 years to start the race.

It’s more than rooming for the weekend in a 200-year-old, three-story crew-house with Stu and Jackie Jones of the Florida Powerboat Club, Simon Williams and his wife, Dee, or Cortez Cove Marina, Good Boy Vodka team member Tim Linden and a Croatian helicopter pilot named Andreas.

And it’s more than the narrow, pub-and-restaurant-filled streets of Cowes itself, an archetypal British seaside town that is impossible not to love.

As Dee McCance who is married to entrepreneur/powerboat dealer Simon Williams learned firsthand, Cowes comes alive in all sorts of ways during endurance race weekend.

The essence of Cowes-Torquay-Cowes is the collective soul of dreamers who want nothing more than to point their boats to the horizon, hammer the throttles and never look back. It is about the likes of assistant event director Christian Toll.

A multi-time participant in the event, Toll restored a famous 1971 Cigarette Racing Team V-bottom dubbed Kiekhaefer Aeromarine III. He worked alongside his crew to the 31-footer ready until the moment they hauled it to the race. They finished both legs of the contest, but not within the allotted time period.

Even without earning an official result, Toll was delighted with his vintage prize and the restoration work that went into it.

But from the expression on Toll’s face after the Saturday awards ceremony, you’d have thought he’d won. He beamed.

“It was amazing, even though we didn’t quite make it in time,” he said. “We pushed to get the boat finished in time for the race and it mostly met our expectations.

“Absolutely, we’ll be back,” he added. “Absolutely.”

The Cowes Powerboat Festival has a unique way of putting all things marine in their proper perspective.

Editor’s note: The author thanks the entire British Powerboat Racing Club, particularly Martin Raby and Sarah Donohue, and “editorial intern” Sarah Lockyer for their assistance during the Cowes Powerboat Festival.

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