A Round Ireland record is something to be sailed at speed – and incredible speeds they are too these days – then recorded with precision, but in due course savoured and analysed at leisure writes W M Nixon.
At 0347hrs this morning off Wicklow, Sidney Gavignet’s MOD 70 Musadndam-Oman came to the finish line off Wicklow with sister-ships Phaedo 3 (Lloyd Thornburg) and Concise 10 (New Collier Wakefield) in close pursuit. The result for all three is a new round Ireland record which simply blows away all previous times.
But for Damian Foxall aboard Musandam, now the actual record holder, it was the sweetest moment. For it was he who persuaded Gavignet some years ago of the challenge of the round Ireland record, and he took part in no less than three attempts with the Frenchman on the Omani-backed boat. But all of them failed.
Then early in May 2015, Foxall was unavailable owing to other sailing commitments when Gavignet took on the 22 year-old record, and knocked nearly four hours off it. “Mixed feelings” barely begins to describe the Kerryman’s reactions on hearing of this.
Thus the Volvo Round Ireland Race 2016 with three MOD 70s taking part was definitely on Foxall’s “Must Do” list, but he was the first to admit that toppling the record of 2015 was decidedly ambitious, so simply finishing first was enough to be aiming at.
Certainly the early stages of the race were unpromising for any records, with the entire fleet - leading giant trimarans and ordinary offshore racers alike – having to turn to windward virtually the whole way from the Wicklow start at 1300hrs on Saturday June 18th to the most southerly turn at the Fastnet Rock.
When the trio of big trimarans finally got past the Fastnet at 0430hrs on Sunday, it was reckoned only an average sort of time, though good for the conditions with which they’d been contending. But for Musandan Oman, it was less than satusfactory, as they’d been persistently in third while up in front Ned Collier Wakefield with Concise 10 managed to say ahead of Lloyd Thornburg’s Phaedo, which had narrowly beaten the Concise team in the RORC Caribbean 600 in February.
Damian Foxall and Jean-Luc Nélias on the moment they took the lead Congratulations @OmanSail #vri2016 pic.twitter.com/kjur3Ji4KQ
— Round Ireland Race (@RoundIreland) June 20, 2016
These placings held good all the way round Ireland until Sunday evening, when they were crossing Belfast Lough after incredibly fast passages all the way up Ireland’s western seaboard, then all the way along the north coast and through the northern section of the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland.
For sure there were times when holes briefly appeared in the strong sou’west winds, and very occasionally speeds dropped down to 12 knots. But mostly they were in the 20-plus range, and on top of that the south-going flood tide right through the North Channel was giving them a significant boost.
The pressure was at bursting point, for now it was within the realms of possibility that they would be within shouting distance of the 2015 record when they get to Wicklow, even if they were gong to have to beat the 90 miles from the South Rock Light off the County down coast to the finish at Wicklow.
The first change in the order of things came before they’d passed Mew Island marking the southeast corner of Belfast Lough, when Phaedo finally started to show ahead of Concise 10. And once they’d started slugging directly into the wind beyond the South Rock, Phaedo’s relative position improved, but Musandam still stayed in third.
The Irish Sea can be surprisingly fickle in its wind patterns, so the tension as they tacked this way and that to maximize VMG was stratospheric. But around midnight things had settled down with them coming in on close quarters to each other towards the latitude of Rockabill, and the wind now veered slightly to give a small but helpful slant off the land. It was as Howth came abeam that Musandam showed clearly that she was relying on a more westerly option to find an advantage, and it came good south of Dublin Bay, as winds off Bray and Greystones were for a while all the place for the other two, but Musandam, having got herself right into the frame again, ploughed outside them into the lead with a private breeze.
It was a lead she held to the finish, a fairytale affair with all the boats across within minutes, and records tumbling left right and centre. As we write, Musandam-Oman is in the winner’s enclosure in Wicklow Harbour. Damian Foxall is only just grasping that it all happened exactly according to dreams, and way beyond plans and expectatons. And for the Volvo Round Ireland race organisers in Wicklow Sailing Club, only the first chapter in the great story has been completed.
A fantastic chapter it is too, but it’s only the first chapter. In an hour or so we’ll be looking at the next part of this incredible saga, analysing the chances of George David’s Rambler 88 breaking other records, as she currently has only 60 miles to go to the finish.
See Round Ireland tracker here and keep to up to date with the fleet's progress with Afloat's regular Round Ireland 2016 updates here
