Fastnet Race Day 2 2000 - While offshore racers may learn to take things as they come, in the Fastnet Race it’s rather less than a barrel of laughs to slug to windward from Land’s End out to the Rock, and then find that off the coast of West Cork, the wind is backing and you’ll have it forward of the beam - maybe well forward of the beam - once again as you make your way back towards the Isle of Scilly. Yet this is one of the more likely meteorological scenarios facing the medium and smaller boats as they head into the second night, knowing that somewhere way up ahead, the biggies such as the 140ft Skorpios, the mighty Rambler 88, sundry superannuated Volvo 70s and an entire slew of Imoca 60s, have had themselves a relatively straightforward long-and-short beat out to The Rock, and are looking at the prospect of fair wind sailing back into the English Channel, where an entirely new and probably favourable weather prospect presents itself for the intriguing 2021-style finish leg from the Isles of Scilly to Cherbourg.
The bulk of the fleet are still between Start Point and Land’s End, plodding westward as best they can into unreliable headwinds, knowing that beyond Land's End the World’s Most Irritating Traffic Separation Scheme presents itself to provide the quandary of whether to throw away hard-gained weathering in order to gain freedom, or else continue slugging on until you can leave this enormous imaginary island to starboard. It may be imaginary, but it looms so large that some demented navigators have taken to visualising it as a vast Dutch polder, complete with cow-filled farms and windmills, comely rosy-cheeked maidens, laughing children and much honest rural toil…….
Yet while this is what it’s like for the ordinary sailors, the surrealistic reality is that in the western approaches to Cherbourg, the giant multi-hull Maxi Edmund de Rothschild is sweeping in towards the finish at 20 knots, and will probably have crossed the line by the time this is posted.
So with so many known unknowns and unknown unknowns, we can only throw ourselves back on the figures. The former Volvo 70 I Love Poland is closing in on the West Cork coast in impressive style, and leads all of IRC. This will cause dancing in the streets of Cascais in Portugal, where the old war horse is usually based so that Polish offshore wannabes can avail of decidedly rigorous training all year round, and it is certainly paying off. ILP also leads IRC Zero. Meanwhile, in the foothills of Snowdonia they can allow themselves a pirouette or two in Pwllheli, as Andrew Hall’s newly-acquired Lombard 45 Pata Negra - having had her fingers burnt by going too far into Lyme Bay yesterday - had sailed a blinder since to get herself back into the IRC1 lead, and is currently rounding the north end of the TSS island and making 7 knots in a local wind mutation to have herself on course for the Rock.
IRC3 is our next main area of interest, and here the hyper-talented Alexis Loison continues to lead with Leon just to the west of the Lizard, but Cork’s own Nieulargo is still very much on touch and is currently 5th in this largest class of all. However, in IRC 4 the Sunfast Desert Star from Dun Laoghaire had been finding the going tough against more modern boats, but after slipping in the class rankings the Irish Offshore Sailing crew have clawed themselves back up to fourth, which is some going for a now-mature boat which has been round the block more than a few times.
In the Figaro 3 two-handed division, it has resolved itself as a two boat race, and at the time of writing its the turn of RL Sailing (Kenneth Rumball & Pamela Lee) to lead, while in general fleet terms they’ve got themselves close ahead of Leon just west of the Lizard, which is impressive company to be keeping. But both boats still have to cope with the Land’s End TSS quandary, while away to the northwest, the brilliantly-sailed Imoca 60 Apivia (Charlie Dalin) has been the second mono-hull after Skorpios to get round The Rock, Rambler 88 will soon be doing the same very welcome turn, while away to the southeast somewhere towards Lundy, the Imoca 60 Hugo Boss is demonstrating yet again in the Fastnet Race that whatever philosophy motivates the HB design team, windward ability is not an important part of it.
Tracker below