#rorcrfr – First arrivals in the Rolex Fastnet Race are due into Plymouth in the early hours of Wednesday morning. But for sure the only records likely to be broken in this 90th anniversary edition of the Royal Ocean Racing Club's flagship 603 mile offshore race will be for slowness.
The opportunity to better the multihull record, set by Spindrift 2 in 2011 in her original incarnation as Banque Populaire V, came and went on Monday night at a time when Dona Bertarelli and Yann Guichard's 40m trimaran was just past the Fastnet Rock.
Similarly the chance to break Ian Walker and the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing VO70's monohull race record, also set in 2011, came and went at around 0700 BST this morning, at which time Jim Clark and Kristy Hinze Clark's on the water leader, the 100ft Comanche, was parked just beyond the Fastnet Rock Traffic Separation Scheme.
As Comanche skipper Ken Read reported: "We sat there for exactly four hours not moving - I know that because it was almost to a minute the duration of my watch! We had a little westerly-going current early on and some easterly current for the last hour and a half and we zigzagged back and forth with the current waiting for the breeze to fill in."
Read said that he was not surprised that Dieter Schon's Maxi 72 Momo had managed to make severe inroads into them early this morning - it was all part of the normal offshore racing 'yoyo'. "If we run into a parking lot then everyone can catch us up. Fortunately at other times we get to stretch our legs - like we are doing right now." Saying that, Read observed that George David's Rambler 88, although a slower boat, was coming in from behind with increasing pressure. "The further ahead you are, right now, the lighter it is."