The world of sailing is moving on so rapidly at this time of the year that the myriad of useful experiences from the Centenary Fastnet have been warehoused by most for the time being, and the focus is on their immediate sailing plans to get the best out of what is left of an exceptional season.
Time was, when sailing back to Ireland from Plymouth after the Fastnet in a regular westerly, if in hazy but sunny weather you'd know you were nearing the Tuskar, because the thistledown would be gliding past from their launching pad on the Saltee Islands.
In those days, the Fastnet admittedly was staged nearer the middle of August, when there's a veritable Armada of thistledown on the move. But occasionally it was there to be seen out at sea in late July, yet traditionalists would only admit to seeing it at mid-August, a melancholy yet inevitable signal of the season steadily closing in.
FRENCH WINNERS THEN AND NOW
So maybe it's a way of moving back a week or so by highlighting some other offbeat aspect of the great Centenary Race. For instance, there's the fact that the first Fastnet Race in 1925 was won by a boat that was designed and built in France. And so too was the Centenary Fastnet Race.
Fastnet Race 2025 winner Jolie Brise in her racing prime. After a successful visit to America in the early 1930s, they were setting a powerful masthead jib on their return, and christened it The Yankee. Once they'd learned how to get the desired tension in the luff, it was a race winner.
But apart from the fact that they're French and float and win races, it's very hard to find anything else in common between the 1913-built Le Havre Pilot Cutter Jolie Brise and the 2024-25-built JPK 1050 Leon. For one is the ultimate expression of her type, while the other is part of a continuing design development process.
Designed by sailing Pilot Cutter specialist Alexandre Paris, and built in the renowned Albert Paumelle Yard in Le Havre in 1913, Jolie Brise was fated to be the last and best of her type, as the Great War of 1914-18 accelerated the already rapid development of power-driven pilot vessels.
Traditional sailing power – the lines of Jolie Brise encapsulated all that was best in classic pilot cutters.
A JOY TO BEHOLD
And my word, but the lines of this "last and best" are a joy to behold. It is, for instance, difficult to discard the historical notion that a slight hollowing of the waterlines forward aids sailing ability, particularly to windward in a lumpy sea. Jolie Brise's forward shape reflects this, but it is also to be seen on The Nita, the iron cutter built by Bewley & Webb in Dublin in 1868, and rescued by Hal Sisk from the lakeland shores of Lough Gowna in Longford, her lifelong sailing home.
The Queen of Lough Gowna. The 1868 cutter Nita, designed and built in iron by Bewley & Webb of Dublin, has a shape broadly similar to that given to Jolie Brise in 1913. But although sailing pilots remained very conservative in making any small modifications to the classic hull design of their working craft, yacht design went through many permutations and fads between 1868 and 1913, and the pace accelerated after the first Fastnet. Photo: Iain McAllister
Jolie Brise's rudder is raked in the traditional style, but not to such an excessive amount as some Galway Hookers. That said, nowadays any non-vertical rudder on a new boat would look odd to us. But with the tiller-steered Jolie Brise, when going to windward you know that the sail setup is just right when she is comfortably light on the helm.
SKIMMING DISH
Nevertheless there is a lot of the 56ft Jolie Brise to be pushed through the water, and with a high wetted area quotient too. A hundred years later, the JPK 1050 Leon is something else altogether, a 34.5ft skimming dish that happens to weigh just 3.5 tonnes all up, whereas Jolie Brise is reckoned at 44 tonnes.
The design for the highly-successful Centenary Fastnet Race-winning JPK 1050 is part of a continuous process as the JPK Design Team see how far they can go with the scow bow theme and other concepts
And where Jolie Brise is the admittedly splendid end of the line, the JPK 1050 is both a winner in the here and now, and part of a development process that has seen JPK boats firmly at the front of international offshore fleets for more than twenty years.
CREATION PROCESS
The creation process is brought to reality in the JPK facility in Lorient by founder Jean-Pierre Kelbert, in-house naval architect Jacques Valer, and company development manager and naval architect Jean Baptiste Dejeanty. And the shape of the JPK 1050 shows that at this stage, they're grappling with the problem of how far down the road to go with the scow bow concept without eventually impairing windward performance in a confused seaway.
The bow on a Mini-Transat boat can be a blunt instrument. With most of the Mini-Transat raced downwind, designers and builders can go for a much more basic version. In this boat, Tom Dolan came 6th in the big-fleet Min Transat Race of 2014, and came away from it as the first Mini-Transat skipper to emerge from a total pitch-pole with his rig completely intact.
For those who still go with the hollow lines forward for best windward performance, consider for a moment the International Dragon. Although designed way back in 1929, the Dragon's sections forward are so full that if you rounded off her excessively pointy bow with some severity while retaining the existing waterline and lower sections, you'd end up with something very like a scow bow. Yet although she can bang quite savagely in a steep sea, has anyone ever questioned the Dragon's windward ability?
There really is a scow bow in there at the Dragon Gold Cup in Kinsale, hidden in plain sight. The extremely full sections at the forward end of the waterline would make it an interesting experiment to take an old wooden Dragon and see how much of a scow bow you can provide with only minor surgery. Photo: Robert Bateman.
Be that as it may, Alexis Loison and Jean-Pierre Kelbert sailed a dream race all the way from the Fastnet Rock to Cherbourg, and thoroughly deserved their clear win
TOUGH TIME FOR CHARAL
It was a tough finish for Tom Dolan continuing his involvement in the IMOCA 60s with Jeremie Beyou on Charal. They led the class for much of the race, sometimes by quite significant margins, but the way the ball bounced at the finish meant Charal relinquished the lead by just 8 minutes.
Pipped at the post. Jeremie Beyou's Charal dominated the IMOCA60 leaderboard for much of the race.
Happily, however, there was much consolation for everyone in the way that Johnny Mordaunt and Nin O'Leary and their shipmates on the Open Volvo 70 Tschuss 2 (originally the Greoupama of 2011) pulled it out of the hat on the final night nearing the finish, and took back the Super Zero overall win title from Roy Disney despite the fact that the latter's Volvo 70 Pyewacket had been expensively optimized to be at her best in these downwind condition.
TWENTY-SIX FASTNET RACES
With a total of 444 boats in the Centenary Fastnet, there were bound to be participants with a formidable tally of the great race round The Rock, and the Denis Doyle Trophy (hey there RORC guys, there's just one "n" in Denis in Cork) was waiting for whoever could list the most, and it went to the great Richard Matthews of West Mersea in Essex, who was sailing his 26th Rolex Fastnet Race at the age of 76 in the Carkeek 52 Oystercatcher XXXV.
The state-of-the-art Carkeek 52 Oystercatcher XXXV is a very different proposition from the boat that Richard Matthews did his first Fastnet Race with more than fifty years ago. Photo: Rick Tomlinson
His enthusiasm for sailing of all kinds is boundless, and in Ireland he is best known for his many visits to Cork and Cork Week. The Denis Doyle Trophy could not have found a more appropriate recipient.
The ever-keen Richard Matthews supports local events with the same enthusiasm that he brings to the majors. He is seen here with his crew and the cup after winning the East Coast IRC Championship.
