News - 29/10/19

Cowes Harbour Services (CHS) are specialists in the design, supply, and positioning of mooring systems and navigational or racing marks. The CHS team started initial planning for the Cowes SailGP regatta back in November 2018, and this continued right up to August 2019 when actual delivery of the contracted operations commenced. CHS provided design and technical support for two launching moorings and 12 presentation moorings split between Southampton and Cowes. This project included working to exacting and specific design criteria to safely accommodate SailGP’s high tech F50 wingsailed catamarans. 

CHS procured a considerable amount of the equipment required for the bespoke moorings through working closely with other suppliers such as Walcon Marine, to ensure all the requirements were met. CHS holds a large stock of mooring equipment at its Kingston Wharf base in East Cowes, however, due to the scale of this project additional equipment was needed from external suppliers.

Cowes SailGP – © Lloyd Images

All three mooring sites needed to be ready by a scheduled time so that Cowes SailGP operations could commence without delay. Each site required a specific layout of moorings with no two sites being the same and had a different set of environmental conditions that needed to be taken into account to ensure the design criteria was met.

Following the European debut of SailGP at Cowes on 10th-11th August 2019, de-mobilising the moorings was just as important as laying them because all the SailGP equipment had to be shipped to France for the next event. This task was completed despite the weather doing its best to halt operations! On 25th August 2019, CHS successfully concluded what had been an eight-month project of which seven months had been spent planning and one month in the delivery of operations for SailGP.

• SailGP website

Top photo: Cowes SailGP © Lloyd Images