The fleet are racing for three separate honours: handicap honours, line honours and the chance to set a new elapsed time record and all of these are still very much to play for over the next four days or so.
The big boat leads but the small boat is winning might be one way of describing the riddle of the handicap saga that is being played out on the West coast this morning after a third night at sea for the estimated 500 sailors in this year’s race.
At 8pm last night only 14 boats had called in at the Inistearacht check in point leaving 23 still beating in light northerly winds (and some anchored) from the Fastnet rock with two double handed class retirals.
Now that the entire fleet has passed the Fastnet it gives a clearer picture of the overall standings after the 160–miles sailed by midnight on Monday. Even so making a stab at an interim leader board is more a game of snakes and ladders than a straight results computation.
Teng tools called in at Fastnet rock at 320am yesterday morning but Valentia coastguard had no record of her calling in at Inistearacht by 8pm last night. Nor does Wicklow's GPS tracking shed any light on her location as the last bleep from her tracking unit was made at noon yesterday off Dingle bay.
Teng tools is being sailed by more or less the same crew of dinghy sailors that lifted the trophy in 2004 only this time they are so well placed to do it again that there is already mutterings that the National Yacht Club helmsman could mirror the achievement of the late Denis Doyle.
The doyene of Irish offshore sailing took a double victory in 1982 and 1984 in Moonduster, a 55 footer, the only man to hold the Round Ireland trophy twice.
Conditions on the way to Slyne head have been described by Anthony Richards on Minnie the Moocher as "brutal although not as bad as 2004".
At tea time yesterday (Tuesday) Minnie was on the edge of Galway Bay about 30 miles north of Inistearacht lighthouse in a northerly 25 knot breeze.
"We are beating into a very lumpy sea causing lots of crashes off waves and water over the deck".
"The bunks are wet now as are sleeping bags and the guys have to sleep in their oilskins to stay dry" he added.
Minnie is part of a leading bunch of medium sized boats that includes Niall Dowling's Jeronimo, Aodhan Fitzgerald's Ireland's West, Oliver Sheehy's White Tiger and Mike Henning's Farr 45 Alice II.
There have been two retirals, both from the doublehanded class reducing its entry by a third Southbound (Y.Lemonnier and M.Greely) broke an outhaul and have retired into their home port of Dingle and the Isle of Man entry Nunatak (M. Jacques) citing time constraints.
ENDS
