The MOD 70 Trimaran Concise 10, skippered by Ned Collier-Wakefield and a veteran of last year’s Volvo Round Ireland race, was first of the record Rolex Fastnet Race 2017 fleet to exit the west end of the Solent today as the huge armada went into the process of getting clear through Hurst Narrows and past the Shingles Bank without hitting each other and the many underwater hazards on either side writes W M Nixon.
A staggered starting process which began to 1100 hrs puts some manners on the fleet, but with a sluicing ebb tide, the challenge of getting into open water with the moderate southwest breeze on the nose was an increasingly exciting business as numbers built up at the Hurst bottleneck.
In the mono-hulls, the starting order means the IMOCA Open 60s are setting the pace, and the French SMA, skippered by Meihat Paul, currently leads, while Hugo Boss (Alex Thompson & Nin O’Leary) is a couple of mies astern in fourth in class, neck-and-neck with Jean-Pierre Dick’s StMichel-Virbec
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