Sailing: Britain take offshore profits

As The teams of promise struggle to assert themselves after three races of the Champagne Mumm Admiral's Cup, the British trio of Corum Indulgence, Easy Oars and Bradamante will be heartened to be lying second overall of seven international teams after three races and the first offshore test of the nine-race series.

Britain's big boat Corum Indulgence, skippered by Chris Law, finished the 180-mile Channel Race fourth in class in the early hours of yesterday. Her ILC 40 team-mate Easy Oars, skippered by Andy Beadsworth, excelled expectations by finishing third. The Mumm 36 Bradamante of the Olympic silver medallists John Merricks and Ian Walker also took third in her class. For Merricks and Walker that third is significant as the duo, whose background is in dinghy and dayboat classes, were worried about their lack of offshore experience.

The Channel Race tested skill and stamina as the 21-boat CMAC fleet joined Corinthian offshore racing enthusiasts on a "flexi-course" that began from Cowes on Friday morning. By the time the first CMAC boats were returning at breakfast time yesterday, they had rounded almost 20 marks. "I'm pretty well worn out," Chris Law said. "We reckoned we were leading the race after 100 miles but two drag-race legs where the bigger boats just kill us and a shut-down in the breeze going into the finish at Poole finished us off." Law was nevertheless happy that he and his Corel 45 crew seem able to compete with the more formidable hardware in the hands of the Americans, New Zealanders and Italians.

The race started ordinarily enough with a south-westerly breeze keeping the formbook pretty much intact. However the last 40 miles were marked by tidal gates and light and patchy winds. Under the circumstances the British team did well while the New Zealand ILC 40 Mean Machine tumbled from first to sixth and Easy Oars hung on to third. In the Mumm 36 class, New Zealand's Georgia Express, which left the Solent in last position after wasting 14 minutes after a misjudged start, recovered to win the class.

The American team of Flash Gordon, MK Cafe and Jameson lead Britain, Germany, New Zealand and Italy with a third of the races sailed. The only real surprise is the poor form of the Kiwis. With America's Cup winner Russell Coutts skippering the big boat Numbers and a host of stars packing the other two boats, they had been expected to dominate. The fleet will race a further five inshore races, and this regatta will not be settled for more than 10 days: the 600-mile Fastnet Race awaits the fleet at the end of next week, and the Kiwis know that many an Admiral's Cup has been turned inside out by the Fastnet results.

Meanwhile, on the first day of Skandia Life Cowes Week, the crews of 912 boats were denied sailing, with all racing abandoned because of a lack of wind. The Cowes Week fleet will be joined by some of the Channel Race fleet from today onwards and by some of the entries for the forthcoming Whitbread Race over the coming week as the Whitbread 60 fleet begins to assemble in the Solent area for the start of the Whitbread on 21 September.