If anyone in the Royal Ocean Racing Club's suite of race offices was bothered by the thought that the 2021 change of course in the club's core event, the biennial Fastnet Race, was going to have a detrimental effect on entries, they didn't show it. And there was no need to worry, for within an hour of the list's electronic opening, it was already banging up against the 400-boat ceiling.

For of course as the club has rightly discerned, the USP about the whole business is the epic quality in the experience of rounding the Fastnet Rock itself. Certainly, the start in the Solent is quite something as a crowd control exercise. But it seems the one-boat-at-a-time nature of the finish means that participants are easily swayed by the appeal of more extensive shore facilities offered at the new finish at Cherbourg, rather than the traditional but limited waterfront at Plymouth.

Be that as it may, as the starting sequence gets going – pandemic permitting - on the morning of Sunday, August 8th, there'll be at least 400 boats shaping up with varying degrees of nervousness for their place in the choreography as the ebb begins to run west, and among them will be at least ten Irish boats.

At least they'll know what it looks like…..Rockabill's crew at the Fastnet Rock on their way to winning the 2017 Dun Laoghaire-Dingle Race, Paul O'Higgins o right

Admittedly this is only one in every forty, or 2.5% if you prefer, but it reflects the number of our active offshore racers relative to the northwest Europe fleet which is the main cohort in the race, with a notably strong French element.

To put it in perspective, it seems that if all the entries in the Rolex Fastnet Race 2021 were laid end to end, then they'd stretch for five kilometres. We are irresistibly reminded of the comment by Dorothy Parker of The New Yorker, to the effect that if all the girls who attend the Harvard May Ball were laid end to end, then it wouldn't surprise her for a minute. But then that's the sort of coarse thought which occasionally emerges in association with offshore racing, for it's not a sport for those of a delicate disposition…….

So if we're going for tough-mindedness, it's no harm to note that it's the mythology around a very Irish rock which is at the heart of all this. The RORC have admitted it themselves with this photo they recently released, which we post right here with caption exactly as sent out by the RORC.

The legendary Fastnet Rock is the lure of the Rolex Fastnet Race for all competitors Co Kurt Ariggo/ROLEX

"Legendary" indeed……."lure" forsooth…..In other words, if the Fastnet Rock didn't exist, then we'd have to invent, design and build it. But fools that we are in Ireland, were letting them use it for free, and we think it's just grand, even at a time when our magnificent West Coast is being monetised through its marketing as the Wild Atlantic Way.

But of course, they know they have us on a hook, for the Irish participation in the first Fastnet Race in 1925 was with Harry Donegan of Cork with his cutter Gull, and by any metric Harry Donegan was one of the greatest sportsmen – in the traditional sense of the term – that Ireland has ever produced. And if anyone had even hinted to him that a modest fee should be levied for the use of the Fastnet Rock as a globally significant offshore racing mark, he'd have given them very short shrift.

The Fastnet fleet of 2019 heads west out of the Solent. If all the entries for 2021's race were laid end-to-end, they'd stretch for five kilometres. Photo Kurt Arrigo/ROLEX

Instead, he would have been much more interested in our lineup for 2021, 96 years after he was so very much involved in starting it all.

Rolex Fastnet Race Irish Entries 2021

Both of the top boats from 2020's truncated season – the Murphy family's Grand Soleil 40 Nieulargo from Cork and Paul O'Higgins' JPK 10.80 Rockabill VI from Dun Laoghaire – are in, the Rockabill entry being of particular interest. Until now, Paul O'Higgins and his team have found so much good racing in their three-and-a-half seasons within Irish waters that they've resisted the temptation of the Fastnet. But after the hobbled racing of 2020, the mood of the moment is to get as much sailing sport as possible when it becomes available again, and the JPK 10.80 continues as an excellent user-friendly Fastnet proposition.

Ronan O Siochru of Irish Offshore Sailing in Dun Laoghaire has been a golden boy of Fastnet racing since winning the Roger Justice Trophy for sailing schools in 2015's race, and his training operation offers such an attractive proposition that he has two boats entered, the Sun Fast 37s Desert Star and Sherkin 2.

Ronan O Siochru of Irish Offshore Sailing receiving the Roger Justice Trophy and some much-needed refreshment from RORC Commodore Michael Boyd of Dun Laoghaire at the 2015 Fastnet Race prize-giving in Plymouth

Kenneth Rumball of the Irish National Sailing School in Dun Laoghaire won the Roger Justice with the J/109 Jedi in 2017, but this time round he's down to do the two-handed division with a new Sunfast, while another Sunfast, Cian McCarthy's 3300 from Kinsale, is likewise two-handed with the owner and Sam Hunt making up the partnership. 

The Sun Fast 3300 Cinnamon Girl of Kinsale finishing the 2020 Fastnet 450 in the entrance to Cork Harbour. She'll be raced two-handed in the Fastnet Race 2021 by owner Cian McCarthy of KYC and clubmate Sam Hunt.

Conor Dillon from Foynes is going yet again two-handed with the Dehler 34 The Big Deal but where his father Derek and he sailed together many times in the past, the signs are that a generational shift is under way, while 2017s "Sailor of the Year" Conor Fogerty of Howth has entered his Figaro 3 Raw as being fully-crewed.

Virtually all of these Irish entries will have varying degrees of Fastnet Race pre-experience on board, which is something that won't go amiss, as many boats now simply get themselves to the Solent, and after a day or two go straight into the potential mayhem of the Fastnet start. In times past, the traditional RORC Channel Race a week beforehand, with Cowes Week in between, played a significant induction role in many Irish Fastnet campaigns. But now it's a case of straight in at the deep end, and good luck to them all.