Cowes is a small holiday town on the Isle of Wight, an island in the English Channel off the south of England. People go for the water and the boats. Every summer it holds Cowes Week, a famous string of yacht races; rich and fashionable visitors have been turning up for it for a long time, so the name carries a hint of money, white sails, and society pages as well as a seaside town. There is Cowes and, across the river, East Cowes; the famous regatta belongs to this place, not to the animal “cows.” You say it like “cows,” which is unhelpful, and you write it with a capital C because it is a place. It is not a common noun and it does not mean a group of cattle.