Round Ireland Day Two 2030 hrs - At 06:30 this morning, came sweeping past the Fastnet Rock, and hardened sheets for the long and rugged slug to windward up the coasts of West Cork and Kerry, fired up to maintain her on-water lead in the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race. The day’s sailing was inevitably going to take her through what we anticipated in our Breakfast Bulletin as “crew-testing, boat-breaking” conditions, but this - at several stages - is inevitably what racing round Ireland is all about.

Twelve hours later, at 18:30 hrs this (Sunday) evening, the gallant old war horse Kuka3 was still battling along, now on port tack and punching her way at 9 knots over and through confused seas, but still in the lead and comfortably due north of Smerwick Harbour, with the Blasket Islands and the Dingle Peninsula and all southwest Ireland put well astern.

The Swiss Cookson 50 Kuka3 crew skippered by Franco Niggeler Photo: Bob Bateman

It had been an impressive day’s sailing, put into even sharper perspective with the news that three boats had been forced to retire in face of the conditions, most notably Kuka3’s most direct rival, the HH42 InoXXX, which found conditions beyond the Skelligs so tough that her hull started to de-laminate.

Pre-race favourite the HH42 InoXXX is out of the Round Ireland race due to hull delamination Photo: Afloat

Yet now Kuka 3 is closing in toward Loop Head on the north side of the Shannon Estuary. She is out of the strongest area of the northerly wind which has been dominating the race. And by tomorrow the signs are that she and the rest of the fleet still racing will be dealing with much lighter winds, conditions in which InoXXX would have been in her element.

But that scenario is not to be. This is not a sport or a race course for the faint-hearted. There’s something all-or-nothing about the Round Ireland Race. So we have to put aside thoughts of what-might-have-been, and instead look in a coldly analytical way at those boats which are now coming up the rankings through the effects of the changing weather conditions and the permutations of the handicap system.

It’s all there in the data with the Race Tracker. And at the moment, the little Sunfast 3300 Cinnamon Girl, just two-handed with Cian McCarthy and Sam Hunt from Kinsale, continues to hang onto the overall lead which she grabbed early today.

Sunfast 3300 Cinnamon Girl leads and is just two-handed with Cian McCarthy and Sam Hunt from Kinsale Photo: Bob Bateman

But to keep it, she and her crew have to overcome the extra pressure of being two-handed, and the knowledge that there are some very tough boats, fully-manned and with tough crews, racing hard with all the remorseless logic of expectation on their side. It has been quite a tough race already. Yet there’s still a long way to go, and the winds and weather remain perversely volatile. The conditions may change, but the challenge is as great as ever

The Oyster 37 Blue Oyster(Noel Coleman) off the Stags on the West Cork coast Photo: Gavin Minihane

Race Tracker is below