Tuesday 7 am – Jolt 6 and Callisto are racing close together with 140 miles to Cherbourg. Can they close the gap downwind against clubhouse leaders?
As everyone knows, these last hours of what has become a windward-leeward 51st Fastnet Race are making it more difficult than ever to predict who will win the overall IRC trophy. And there are plenty of predictions flying around.
The larger boats are already across the finish line in Cherbourg and have set a corrected time of 4 days and 9 hours to beat, with Tshuss currently holding the lead.
The Carkeek Jolt 6 of Monaco Photo: James Tomlinson
The tracker displays the placings, but these are provisional and not entirely accurate, as it uses the average speed of each boat since the race began and assumes that this will be maintained until the finish. That is unlikely, as all the top boats are currently downwind from the rock and are sailing much faster than their average speed.
The boats that look promising are the top-class 2 Admirals Cup boats, the Pierre Casiraghi skippered Carkeek 42, Jolt 6 of Monaco and James Murray's GP42 Callisto of New Zealand (with the presence of ace international navigator Ian Moore of Carrickfergus on board), which are separated by only a mile, with approximately 140 miles remaining. They are currently doing 14 knots, and it appears the wind will hold for them all the way to Cherbourg. If it does, they will be corrected to 4 days and 1 hour and will take the lead by 8 hours on corrected time. Even if they slow down a little, they will still have a comfortable margin. These Admirals Cup class 2 boats have caught right up to the Admirals Cup class 1 boats and are riding the wind well. Smaller boats behind them are unlikely to catch up.
Other boats performing well are Long Courier and Leon, both French, but would need to average around 12 knots for about 24 hours to surpass Jolt and Callisto, which seems unlikely as they will probably face lighter airs in the English Channel before reaching Cherbourg.
