#rorcrfr – The last boat on the water in the Rolex Fastnet Race 2015, the British Dufour 365 Floating Point (David Anderson), finally got round the Rock at lunchtime today, and is now on course for the Bishop Rock with stronger south to southwest winds forecast for tonight. At the moment, however, Floating Point is making merrily along at 7.3 knots. And her crew are reasonably secure in the knowledge that their comfortable ship is unlikely to slip very far from her current position of 295th overall in IRC. Truly it is taking an awful lot of boats to beat her, but – barring accidents - she may even improve it by a placing or two. W M Nixon gives us a final update on the Fastnet 2015 before his blog on Saturday tries to make sense of it all.

It was Ron O'Hanley, owner-skipper of the American Cookson 50 Privateer, who summed it up: "It was almost two different races, "It was a very challenging start in the light air, which then got progressively worse....... In essence the really big boats got through, and we hoped to be one of those, but 50ft turned out not to be big enough".

Apart from the four big boats – Comanche, Rambler 88, Leopard and Momo – "everybody just parked at the Isles of Scilly and eventually re-started, and I think we did as well as anybody at getting going again. We then went west and made a great approach to the Rock. After that, conditions got better and better, and we could fly. It was our kind of sailing. We were able to use our big kites and still not fall off, so we made excellent VMG on the way back. We were averaging 16 knots"

In this her first Fastnet Race, O'Hanley's Privateer - which has scored well on the other side of the Atlantic including an overall victory in the RRC Caribbean 600 – was pipped by just 14 minutes by Bretagne Telecom for the win in the Canting Keel Class. But her zippy showing in Fastnet Race 2015-Act 2 saw her placing hours ahead of the likes of Rambler 88, Leopard and Comanche, though she had to be content with 71st overall in a race in which French boats have dominated by taking the first five places overall.

A race for all boats and all ages – the veteran yawl Dorade, winner of the Fastnet in 1931 and 1933, shortly after rounding the rock. She has finished second in Class 4. Photo: Rolex

To say that Gery Trentesaux's JPK 10.8 Courrier Du Leon has had a famous victory barely gets to grips with it. For Heaven's sake, folks, we're looking at a corrected time margin of almost two-and-a-half hours. No wonder the queue for new boats to this design is twice round the block and a mile or two up the road.

For Ireland, Antix (Anthony O'Leary) had her moment of glory yesterday evening as she came in past the Lizard in a fading breeze, and was recorded as being temporarily at 6th overall. But up ahead Mike Bartholomew's GP42 Tokoloshe was stitting pretty after finishing before midnight, and though the GP 42 had to concede first in Class 1 to GOA, she held on to second, Teasing Machine hung in close enough astern of Antix to stay in third, but the overnight easing of the breeze saw Antix cascade down the rankings in Class 1 to finally be 14th.

This puts her back in 82nd overall. Therefore the best-placed Irish boat seems to be the renowned "Steady Eddy", the Grand Soleil 43 Quokka 8, which is lying at 44th. Admittedly Quokka 8's skipper Michael Boyd's current role as Commodore of the RORC means that he sails as RORC rather than RIYC. Nevertheless - unless there's an extraordinary upset - the Meath Chronicle can prepare with reasonable confidence the headline: LOBINSTOWN MAN WINS GULL SALVER

Michael Boyd's Quokka 8 looks likely to be the winner of the Gull Salver for best-placed Irish boat