TP52 Red is yet to shine on the racecourse at Cowes Week but Cockburn's keep the smiles on faces 8/8/07

On day five of Skandia Cowes Week Class Zero are joining the Open 60s on their 50-mile dash round the Isle of Wight this morning.

The current wind situation is looking promising but the forecast is for the wind to drop at midday before a light seabreeze sets in. This could make for a tricky day on the water. Charles Dunstone, owner helmsman of the TP52 Cockburn’s Red wasn’t overjoyed with the forecast but was hoping to improve on his results over the last few days. Team Cockburn’s Red is currently lying seventh overall.

Just before he headed out to the racecourse this morning Dunstone told yachtingworld.com: “The wind isn’t looking particularly favourable so I’m just praying they don’t send us round the island too because it could be a dull procession.”

Thankfully Dunstone’s wishes were granted and Class 1, racing for the Britannia Cup, were sent round the cans on the Solent.

Dunstone, CEO of The Carphone Warehouse Group, who’s TP52 was launched in May 06 says they haven’t been notching up particularly favourable results this week but there’s still time to shine particularly if the wind pipes up. “It’s interesting,” commented Dunstone, “the boat is actually an 05 boat but we’re already finding it hard to compete against the 06-designed and built boats such as Flashglove that feel much quicker now. The whole TP52 fleet just keeps evolving and it seem as though if you don’t have this year’s boat you’re out of the game.”

On the positive side Dunstone added: “?it’s great however, we have a good fleet of TP52s here this week and I think there are more coming so I think it will develop into a thing on the Solent.”

When the boat was launched last year she was namedRedin an effort to promote a new red mobile phone Dunstone had been working on for U2’s Bono in association with Bono’s charityThe Global Fund. Dunstone continued: “we didn’t really have a sponsor at the time so we used it to promoteRed, but then this year we were contacted by Cockburn’s who were keen to get into the yachting world, so we take a couple of guests each day and we have to drink port each day after racing; it’s great.”

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