Irish interest boats range from a round the world VOR 70 bearing Irish colours to a Cork based First 36.7.
Team Sanya will be racing in a refurbished version of the Telefónica Blue boat that finished on the podium in the last race and the new livery shown off after some furious work in Hamble, England displays a multicoloured design representing the phoenix, the mythical bird that has good-luck status in China.
Skipper Mike Sanderson left two spots open in the crew list he named on Saturday, with at least one of those places to go to a Chinese sailor.
Irishman Frankie Leonard had already been announced as Media Crew member. See here for his first blog.
Navigator Aksel Magdahl was among the stand-out names on a sailing team list with a distinct New Zealand flavour.
Joining Sanderson, himself a Kiwi, are fellow New Zealanders Richard Mason, Chris Main, Andy Meikeljohn, Ryan Houston, and Cameron Dunn.
Sanderson will use the Rolex Fastnet Race, which starts on August 14, to give a trial to China's Teng Jiang He, nicknamed Tiger.
"Despite starting this campaign late in the day, I am really excited about the team we have gathered together and that applies to both the sailing and shore team," said Sanderson.
"Without realising it, we have a really young and ambitious sailing team – the average age is 33 and I am the oldest at 40.
"We have managed to bring together a combination of experience in all of the right areas as well a fresh and innovative approach and that feels really right for this team.
"We still have two sailing team members to announce and we have our first Chinese sailing team member, Tiger, on a trial with us now and he will compete in the Fastnet race with us so all is progressing really well."
Sanya will be up against Volvo Ocean Race rivals Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing (with Wexford's Justin Slattery) and Groupama (Kerry's Damian Foxall) in the Fastnet.
One of Dun Laoghaire's leading offshore campaigners Legally Brunette (Cathal Drohan and Paul Egan) is poised to start the Fastnet for the second time. The boat is doing the race with regular crew, save that Frank Allen, one of our regulars, is substituting for Cathal Drohan as skipper, as Cathal has personal commitments that prevent him racing.
Legally Brunette has had a reasonable run of success since getting the boat in 2007. They came second in the 2007 Dun Laoghaire Dingle with regular crew, losing out to Aquelina on adjusted time of roughly 30 minutes in a slow race. Two years later Prof O'Connell was able to improve on this in 2009 by coming first using some of our regulars as well as some of his own favourite crew.
In the 2009 Fastnet Legally Brunette was 106th out of 266 on the first attempt. The ambition, says Egan is to try to improve on that and 'enjoy our sailing while we're at it'.
In the 2009 Fastnet Race Legally Brunette was snookered near the start by Portland Bill. There was a slow start and although the very big boats were able to make the tidal gate there, the smaller ones had no chance of so doing. They made a late decision to tack out and would probably have been better to do so earlier. The crew's recollection of the beat to the Fastnet is not a fond memory – it was wet, cold, misty and miserable – all we saw of the Fastnet rock were the breaking waves on the rocks there, as visibility was down to a few boat lengths. 'Part of our drive to do the race again is to exorcise that memory' says Egan.
Others ready for the start are Adrian Lee's Cookson 50 Lee Overlay and Dutch yacht and current Round Ireland race winner Piet Vroon's Tonnerre de Breskens.
Dun Laoghaire sailing school have entered their yacht Sailing West, Liam Coyne's First 36.7 Lulabelle is in and Barry Hurley's Transatlantic winner Dinah is also entered, as is Paddy Cronin's Psipina and David Gibbons Joker.
