Tom Kneen’s JPK 11.80 Sunrise has been crowned overall winner of the Rolex Fastnet Race. After being confirmed as the runaway winner of the IRC Two division yesterday, no other boat still racing on the 695 nautical mile course can catch the British boat for overall honours in this, the 49th edition of the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s offshore classic. Kneen is the first British winner of the race since Charles Dunstone and his maxi Nokia Enigma in 2003.

Reunited this morning with his two-year-old son Sam, Kneen couldn’t hide the emotion of winning a race that has come to mean so much to him: “I’ve had 24 hours to reflect on the race after we finished yesterday, and it really is all about the people, the amazing team that sailed with me, and my incredible partner Francesca who has done so much to make this happen.”

For someone who only took up offshore racing just seven years ago, Kneen has come a long way in a short time. When he started he admits “I didn't know what IRC was. I'd never really heard of the RORC, but what I had heard of was the Rolex Fastnet Race. I was brought up in the southwest, and as a boy I used to sail dinghies at the Royal Western Yacht Club.”

By his own admission, Kneen’s first Rolex Fastnet Race in 2015 was a comedy of errors aboard his secondhand Elan 350 cruiser/racer called Sunrise. But he has proven to be a fast learner who has quickly worked out what it takes to put together a race-winning campaign.

“It doesn't really matter what level in the fleet you're at. As long as you have a good crew, and the right support, then you can win your class. And if you can win the class you can win overall, although that depends on things like tidal gates, wind conditions, things that are much more in the hands of the gods, I think.”

In the Sunrise crew was Kneen, professional Dave Swete, plus Thomas Cheney, Angus Gray-stephens, George Kennedy, Suzy Peters and Tor Tomlinson. Photo: Paul Wyeth

The fickleness of fate was brought home to him on seeing sistership Dawn Treader knocked out of the race not long after the start. Battling through the severe conditions of the Solent, the J/133 Pintia collided with the JPK 11.80 Dawn Treader, resulting in the latter dismasting and both boats retiring.

Two identical boats - one that barely made it past the start line, the other going on to win the race. The poignancy was not lost on Kneen: “We had a sad moment for an hour or so after that happened. We’ve been racing Dawn Treader hard all season. They’ve had the boat for a lot less time than us, but really got it together. We were looking forward to match racing them all around the Fastnet course and we reckoned that if we could beat them we’d be in with a good chance of winning our division.”

Sunrise struggled in the early stages of the race, always out of phase with the tide as they beat towards Land’s End. But a counterintuitive and brave decision to sail around the eastern side of the traffic separation scheme at Land’s End was the team’s first big break. From then on, one good decision compounded on the next.

This put them in a unique position to stay just in front of an area of high pressure that swallowed up the chasing pack just a few miles behind Sunrise. “I was looking at the tracker last night and it’s quite amazing to look back at that stage of the race. It was a critical moment where we really pushed hard and it was probably the difference between finishing at 10 o'clock in the morning on Thursday or finishing the same time the following day.”

By staying ahead of the high pressure system, Sunrise had done a horizon job on the rest of IRC Two. It was a breakaway move that ultimately proved sufficient to overhaul RORC Commodore James Neville’s HH42 Ino XXX and claim the Fastnet Challenge Cup for the overall winner under IRC corrected time.

Sunrise sets sail on the 49th Rolex Fastnet Race Photo: Kurt Arrtigo/RORC

Loyal Plymothian that he is, Kneen admits to being pleasantly surprised by the warm welcome he received coming into Cherbourg. “It's not lost on me the irony that the first year the race finish moves to a French town it’s won by a Plymouth boat, by someone who voted against moving the finish to Cherbourg.”

Kneen paid tribute to the RORC and everyone in Cowes and Cherbourg who had helped make the Rolex Fastnet Race happen in such challenging circumstances. “I think anyone who has managed to arrange an event in this pandemic deserves a medal. The level of complexity of making anything happen is just at a completely different level now in the pandemic. The fact that the RORC made a brave decision to move the finish, and then managed to deliver another astonishing race - it just demonstrates the amazing people at the RORC have got in it.

“I wasn’t particularly positive about the change of finish because I'm loyal to Plymouth, and we really didn’t know what to expect when we arrived in Cherbourg. But the welcome at the finish was amazing, the village is something else, the whole experience was incredible. If I have one regret it’s that in this special moment, Francesca wasn’t able to be with me on this race because she was back at home looking after our two year old. She is the one who has made it possible for me to do this race.

“When you make crazy plans to do things like this and it becomes a bit of an obsession, and you never really believe you're going to do it. I think all of us in offshore sailing ask ourselves why we commit to this ridiculous sport where you get mostly cold and wet, and 90 per cent of the time you wish you weren’t there.

“But then you get glimmers of complete elation, adrenaline and an experience that is just unmatchable. There's no greater sense of achievement. When you get everything in the right place, with the right people, in the right conditions. We had four, five or six hours of that, between the Scillies and the Lizard, when we had 25 knots of breeze and the boat - our so called ‘caravan’ - was flying along at 20 plus knots. In moments like that, all the rest of it you forget very quickly, when you’re beating in 30 knots of wind and vomiting over the back and wondering why you’re there. It’s the moments of elation that live with you, and it’s what keeps us coming back.”

Volvo Ocean Race veteran Dave Swete was the only pro sailor on the Sunrise crew. Apart from Swete and Kneen in their late 30s, the rest of the crew are all in their 20s, some of whom have come up through the RORC’s Griffin youth racing programme aimed at fostering young offshore talent. Suzy Peters and Tom Cheney were co-navigators on the race. They were joined by Quentin Bes-Green, Angus Gray-Stephens, George Kennedy and Victoria Tomlinson.

Baltimore RNLI was launched last night (Thursday 12 August) to assist a yacht taking part in the Rolex Fastnet Race that was suffering power problems 1 mile east of the Fastnet Rock Lighthouse off the coast of West Cork.

The volunteer lifeboat crew launched their inshore lifeboat at 8.47 pm following a request to assist a 36ft yacht with six crew onboard whose battery power was too low to start their engine to run their charging system. Given the circumstances, the location of the yacht and the weather conditions at the time, Deputy Launching Authority of Baltimore RNLI, recently retired RNLI Coxswain Kieran Cotter spoke to the Irish Coast Guard as well as the crew onboard the yacht and the decision was made to launch Baltimore RNLI’s inshore lifeboat.

Baltimore inshore lifeboat reached the casualty vessel at 9.20 pm and passed over a battery jump pack to the crew so that the yacht could start their engine and charge their own batteries. This was successful and once the crew onboard the yacht were happy that their systems were running properly they passed back the jump pack and continued on their way. The lifeboat returned to Baltimore lifeboat station, arriving at 10.00 pm.

There were three volunteer crew onboard the lifeboat, Helm Micheal Cottrell and crew members Kieran O’Driscoll and Ian Lynch. Assisting at the boathouse were Seamus O’Driscoll, Jerry Smith and Tom Kelly. Conditions at sea during the call were rough with a westerly force 5 wind and 3.5-4m sea swell.

Speaking following the call out, Kate Callanan, Baltimore RNLI Volunteer Lifeboat Press Officer said: ‘Conditions around the Fastnet Rock Lighthouse last night were bad and the early intervention from our lifeboat helped a worse situation from developing. 

Day 6 1100: For the last 36 hours and more, Irish offshore racing enthusiasts have been on the edge of their seats, willing Irish Offshore Sailing’s veteran Sunfast 37 Desert Star from Dun Laoghaire’s Irish Offshore Sailing to hang onto her vulnerable place on the podium in IRC 4 as the Fastnet Race went into its final stages. But IOS Director Ronan O'Siochru and his right-hand man Conor Totterdell (NYC) have done much better than that. For, when Desert Star crossed the finish line at the entrance to Cherbourg’s mighty harbour at 10:39 this morning, she was not only still in second overall in a class of 70 starters - she was in fact only only ten minutes short of being first.

But as the leading four boats were to be placed as having finished within 22 minutes of each other on corrected time, the Irish crew did well to keep their cool - and their place - in their first finish in Cherbourg. Fastnet Race success is nothing new to Desert Star and Ronan O Siochru.

Six years ago, they took the Roger Justice Trophy of the best-placed school boat in the Fastnet Race of 2015. But placing second overall in the open division in the second-largest class in the entire 2021 Fastnet Race fleet is on an entirely new level of achievement.

Tracker below

W M Nixon's overview of the Rolex Fastnet Race 2021 will appear on Afloat.ie this evening.

One of the most intense battles, both on the water and under IRC corrected time, in this year’s Rolex Fastnet Race played out in IRC Three. Here the scratch boat was unquestionably the JPK 1030 Léon, skippered by the defending IRC Three and Two-Handed champion and former overall winner of the Fastnet Race, Alexis Loison, racing yet again doublehanded, but this time with Guillaume Pirouelle.

Interesting was the diversity of crew make-ups: Fully crewed, doublehanded or mixed doublehanded, it seemed to make no difference to the competitiveness of the top boats. While the lead double handers in IRC Four were occasionally in the mix, it was mainly the doublehanded crews in IRC Three that held the top places in the IRC Two-Handed ranking.

After surviving Sunday’s brisk start, the battle for the front of IRC Three, as the boats tackled the stiff beat down the Channel, as usual was down to picking the shifts and playing the tide. Sadly some British Sun Fast 3300s teams had not made it through - Kelvin Rawlings and Stuart Childerley (hoping to repeat their IRC Two-Handed victory from 2015) opted out of the race as James Harayda and Dee Caffari on Gentoo retired with a ripped mainsail. Another, Swell, sailed by double Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson and Volvo Ocean Race sailor Henry Bomby, was also having a hard time having been OCS, although they had managed to recover well from their premature start, overhauling Léon by the Needles.

But then as Bomby recounted, they “got Portland Bill wrong - we were playing for a left shift, so our main rivals got four or five miles ahead of us in the first six hours. So we had to play catch up from there.”

At 0600 on the first morning, the Sun Fast 3600 Fujitsu British Soldier skippered by Henry Foster, had nosed into the lead, hugging the shore at Start Point with Louis-Marie Dussere’s JPK 1080 Raging-bee², Philippe Girardin’s J/120 Hey Jude and Raging-bee² neck and neck for the lead to the south. The British army remained out in front as they sniggled around the Lizard coastline and continued on in the lead – just - as they diving south of the Land's End TYSS and up its west side.

At the Fastnet Rock on the early hours of Wednesday morning, it remained tight on the water, but the lower-rated Léon led over Raging-bee² and Hey Jude by 45 minutes with Fujitsu British Soldier 13 minutes further back. At this stage, Swell was 1 hours 19 minutes behind under corrected time.

Half way into the return journey to Bishop Rock Fujitsu British Soldier and Hey Jude stayed west as Raging-bee² had nosed ahead of Léon to the east. By being further east still, Swell gained by being able to lay the east side of the TSS west of the Scilly Isles, as the boats ahead lost out, having to gybe to avoid it.

But the major hurdle ahead was the ridge that engulfed the fleet late on Wednesday into the early hours of Thursday, that parked the fleet. Here the Fujitsu British Soldier crew made the decision to head west of the TSS. This worked out badly for them and they remained more firmly stuck than the boats to the east. Hey Jude and Swell came out best in this reshuffle along with doublehanders Olivier Burgaud and Sylvain Pontu on their JPK 1080 Aileau just to their south.

JPK 1030 Léon arrives in the early hours of Friday morning at the Cherbourg finish line Photo: Paul Wyeth

The long reach back east down the Channel was when the Brits on Swell finally edged into the lead on the water and then, unimaginably, ahead of Loison under IRC corrected time. Here the frontrunners were all laying the south side of the Casquets TSS until Léon edged south and Swell began to cover her vigorously, however this tactic left Aileau free to sail a path closer to the TSS and the rhumb line and take the lead on the water. Swell did well to stay in front of Léon, but on the approach to Cherbourg the local sailing demi-Gods on their lowered rated JPK 10.30, gybed closer to Cap de la Hague and were able to close enough on Swell to beat them by 36 minutes under corrected time at the line.

“I am very happy to win again and very pleased with our performance,” commented Loison, a professional Figaro sailor. “We pushed very hard on board and that is good for Guillaume and me. We trained well together for all of this year with the Figaro, so to win our class in the Rolex Fastnet Race is a great thing to have happened.”

Throughout the race, Léon found herself in much closer competition than when Loison and JPK boss Jean-Pierre Kelbert were the runaway IRC Three and Two-Handed winners in 2019. “Maybe because the weather was different, and I think because all of the Two-Handed crews have worked a lot to produce a better performance,” muses Loison over why it was closer this year. “We have seen a lot of well prepared boats, especially in IRC Two-Handed, like Shirley and Henry. They were very strong and made a good come back at the end. After the Scillies, Swell sailed very fast and we could not do anything, but have a little cry! However near the end, Swell went further south and had less wind than us and we could come back.

“Another Two-Handed team Aileau took a very good option near the end, so we had to worry about them too. The Rolex Fastnet is always a difficult race, there is a lot of options and a lot of boats, so it is impossible to control all of the boats. We chose our tactics looking at Swell, and didn’t consider Aileau. The Raz Blanchard [Alderney Race] produces a new complexity to the race, but it is a good finish.”

Léon’s 27-year-old co-skipper Guillaume Pirouelle, a past winner of the Tour de France à la Voîle, is being groomed by Loison to take over the Région Normandie Figaro campaign from him in 2022.

“It is a pleasure to race with Alexis and a great opportunity to learn from his knowledge,” said Pirouelle. “We have had a great season in the Figaro, so to finish first in the Rolex Fastnet Race is so good. I am very happy.”

Second place in IRC Two-Handed and IRC Three for double Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson and Volvo Ocean Race sailor Henry Bomby on their Sunfast 3300 Swell Photo: Paul Wyeth

Robertson and Bomby had to make do with second place both in IRC Three and Two-Handed. While strong contenders in this fleet, after their disappointing first six hours, even at the Scillies on their return journey, a podium position, and certainly a second place, seemed impossible. “If you had asked us at the Scillies I would have said it was a long shot,” said an exhausted looking Bomby. “Then as we started making progress I started to believe it was possible.”

Robertson, better known for inshore racing, seemed exhausted to the point of dropping as Swell docked in Cherbourg’s Port Chantereyne.“It was so intense- it feels like we’ve raced around the planet!” admitted the two-time Olympic champion turned TV presenter. “It feels like I’ve been away a lot longer than five days. There were some really hard days and some really amazing days when we’ve grinned from ear to ear. To be right in the thick of it, battling for first place, was amazing.

“Henry is an amazing talent. He always believed that somewhere along the line we would be able to get back into them.”

Among the contenders for IRC Three honours, Léon had some strong rivalry from another successful Cherbourg boat, Raging-bee². Ultimately Louis-Marie Dussère’s JPK 10.80 lost ground in the Channel and finished third on corrected time 44 minutes, behind Swell.

“We were very pleased to be the first to the Fastnet Rock as we knew from the beginning of the race that Alexis Loison would win!” declared Dussère. “But for this race we had a good fight with him, always close and that was new for us and the first time we have crossed the finish line ahead of him. For me the new course is better because on the old course, when you passed the Scillies, the race was almost over. Now when you arrive at the Scillies it is not finished at all! At Alderney, Aileau was one mile behind us. We went south for more tide and Aileau went north and after that that she was five miles ahead. But at the finish Aileau lost the wind and we passed them.”

Day 6 0800: In the final stages of their Fastnet Race through last night and the small hours of this morning, Ireland's Kenneth Rumball and Pamela Lee in RL Sailing found themselves in a three-way battle of the Two-Handers, even if as Figaro 3 racers they were in a different setup to the IR 2H leaders, Shirley Robertson and Henry Bomby in the Sun Fast 3300 Swell, and Alexis Loison and Guillaume Pirouelle in the JPK 10.30 Leon.

It certainly gave a much-needed edge to the conclusion of RL Sailing's race, as they were ahead of the next Figaro 3 by nearly fifty miles. And it was an edge which in itself had the right conclusion, as they finished at Cherbourg this morning at 0341 closely ahead – by six minutes – of the Robertson/Bomby crew, and with a bigger gap – 23 minutes – on Leon.

However, as far as the Two-Handed Class is concerned, it looks as though Loison & Piroulle now have it stitched up, as their lower rating put them 36 minutes ahead of Robertson & Bomby on CT, and it also gives them the current overall lead in IRC 3, from which they are unlikely to be dislodged.

Meanwhile, the determinedly-maintained pace and shrewd tactics aboard Irish Offshore Sailing's Sunfast 37 Desert Star (Ronan O Siochru) has seen her move back up to second in IRC 4, although now shown as an hour behind the leader, the X332 Trading-advices.com, and just 11 minutes clear of the third-place boat, the Dehler 33 Sun Hill, which has displaced the Sigma 38 With Alacrity into fourth place by nearly an hour.

Although the tides to the finish are now favourable, it's going to be a very long thirty miles.

Tracker below

Day 5 1900:  With the JPK 11.80 Sunrise (Tom Kneen GB) named as overall IRC winner and first in IRC2 at the 2021 Fastnet Race finish in Cherbourg - thereby confirming France's Jean-Pierre Kelbert of Lorient as one of this generations's most formidable creators of excellent all-round race-winning boats - the focus now swings to the lower-rated and generally smaller craft still at sea, racing for the honours in IRC 4 on a run up the English Channel.

They may have started with 70 boats – the second-largest class – but attrition of various kinds has taken its toll, and 16 have retired. However, the pace among the leaders of the 54 still racing is mustard-keen for those coveted podium places. The well-used Jeanneau Sunfast 37 Desert Star from Dun Laoghaire's Irish Offshore Sailing – driven on by IOS principal Ronan O Siochru and Conor Totterdell (National YC) and their team – has been hanging on to the advantage she gained during the night and early this morning, when she leapt up from 13th to 2nd thanks to judicious choices in the flukey sailing conditions around the Isles of Scilly and south of Land's End.

Currently at 18:30, she is shown as back in third, as they elected to take a downwind tack on port in towards the English coast in order to minimize contact with the area of lighter wind which has persisted close north of the Channel Islands and in towards the finish at Cherbourg. It was a calculated risk, as the southwest to west wind is forecast to spread eventually across the entire Channel, but experience indicates that despite the very turbulent weather off the west and northwest coasts of Ireland, down at Cherbourg things are much more sedate and significant wind changes – if any – have been taking place more slowly.

The positioning tack to port means that while the X332 Trading-advices.com (Fr.) continues to lead, second place is now held by the Sigma 38 With Alacrity (GB) while Desert Star in third is having to keep an eye on the next in line, the classic Dutch S&S 41 Winsome which has been noted in times past for success with Irish helm Laura Dillon.

But having returned to running on starboard, Desert Star found a useful line of wind which pushed her speed above 7 knots, and the race computations showed her as now harrying With Alacrity for second, while taking off the pressure from Winsome with 115 miles to go to the finish.

The overall winner – Tom Kneen's JPK 11.80 Sunrise

Meanwhile in IRC 3, there's a real battle between the two top Two-Handers, Shirley Robertson in the Sun Fast 3300 Swell and Alexis Loison in the JPK 10.30 Leon, with the latter currently with a narrow lead. But with fifty miles and more to go – albeit with fair tide – it's too close to call any time soon, for if anything has been learned from the new course, it is that the final swoop into Cherbourg can be a very difficult little trick to get right.

As for the three remaining Figaro 3s still being raced, Ireland's RL Sailing (Kenneth Rumball & Pamela Lee) now has a very substantial lead over AD Fichou/Innoveo, in fact RL have just 50 miles to the finish whole AD have precisely twice as much, which I think we can reasonably claim is a significant margin.

And if by any chance you haven't heard why George David's Rambler 88 suddenly retired after she got to the finish in Cherbourg with seemingly second place in line honours close ahead of the brilliantly sailed Imoca 60 Apivia, it's because they went to the greatest possible trouble to leave that benighted TSS south of the Fastnet Rock clear to starboard while tacking downwind after rounding The Rock, the Brains Trust on board being apparently unaware that it's a mark of the course, to be left to port.

It's not a mistake anyone will ever make again - not ever never.

And as for the Sunrise win being good for business with JPK – we just can't be too sure. For with all those major successes now augmented with another Fastnet overall win, if you do have an excellent JPK boat, what on earth would be your excuse for not winning all the time…..?

Race tracker below

Tom Kneen’s JPK 11.80 Sunrise has sewn up IRC Two in this 49th Rolex Fastnet Race. The Devonshire team crossed the Cherbourg finish line at 1004 BST this morning. Sunrise’s corrected time of 4 days, 6 hours, 45 minutes 4 seconds has given Kneen IRC Two victory by a huge margin. As Sunrise finished, her closest rival was just past the Lizard with more than 120 nautical miles still to sail.

After a hideous outbound beat down the Channel, when they never seemed to be in phase with the tide, Sunrise’s first break came after making the last minute call to go up the eastern side of the traffic separation scheme at Land’s End with Il Corvo as the majority of the frontrunners chose to go up the TSS’s west side.

Rounding the Fastnet Rock on Tuesday mid-evening, Sunrise already had pulled out a 1 hour 12 minute lead under corrected time.

But the key moment of her race came as, while she was forging past the Lizard, the wind utterly switched off for those astern as an area of high pressure rolled over them.

“There was a big ridge chasing us at 10 knots, so we just had to go faster than 10 knots the whole way down there,” explained Dave Swete, Sunrise’s sole pro sailor. “It never caught us, but it caught the rest of the guys which I think went down to our fighting hard at the start and when we were fighting current for the first half of the race.”

A jubilant Kneen shared his take on this: “The key moment was at the Scilly Isles when we were trying to hold on to the original wind to get us safely into the Channel. All of our weather routing said we’d be stuck in the light pressure, and we had chosen the sails that we believed we needed to deal with that.”

From there, the crew kept their fingers crossed, while looking over their shoulders. As they arrived in Cherbourg having straight-lined it from the Scilly Isles, their competitors were still on a very different part of the chart.

“We feel very fortunate to have made it here, arriving at a good time for the strong tides just before the finish,” said Kneen. “But there really was no relaxing until we actually crossed the finish line. Nothing is ever certain in this game.”

Sunset cross the finish line in Cherbourg Photo: Paul Wyeth

Tom Kneen is jubilant after winning IRC Two Photo: Paul Wyeth

Scilly Isles park-up

Meanwhile the rest of IRC Two over the course of the early hours this morning compressed into a tight bunch to the west and south of the Scilly Isles as they parked up, unable to break free of the clutches of the ridge. Their restart only occurred at around 0600 this morning. This afternoon they were well on their way to the western side of the Casquets TSS.

A massive 17 hours off the lead is Scarlet Oyster, Ross Applebey’s Lightwave 48, followed by a group that includes the JPK 10.80s Richard Fromentin’s JPK 11.80 Leclerc Hennebont/Cocody and Dutchwoman Astrid de Vin’s Il Corvo, plus Swede Olof Granander’s First 40.7 Embla and Eric Fries’ Fastwave 6 from France. Of this group Fastwave 6 was the only one brave enough to attempt to extract themselves from the ridge by sailing south of the TSS to the south of the Scilly Isles with limited success. Based on current progress, this group is expected to finish on Friday morning.

The Scilly Isles parking lot also had a devastating effect on IRC Three. The lead trio coming into it - Louis-Marie Dussere’s JPK 1080 Raging-bee²; Alexis Loison and Guillaume Pirouelle’s JPK 1030 Léon, followed by Philippe Girardin’s J/120 Hey Jude - rounded the east side of the TSS to the west of the Scilly Isles only to hit the meteological brick wall mid-evening yesterday.

Robertson-Bomby lead in IRC Three

The IRC Three race restart has brought some new players into the mix with the British duo of Volvo Ocean Race sailor Henry Bomby and double Olympic gold medallist, turned doublehanded offshore sailor, Shirley Robertson on the Sun Fast 3300 Swell sauntering into the lead on corrected time. Swell also currently holds an 11 miles advantage over the defending champions Léon. Cheekily sneaking ahead of the previous front three is Aileau, the JPK 10.80 of Olivier Burgaud and Sylvain Pontu. Swell was making 9.4 knots but on a course suggesting they may be looking for relief from the Alderney Race south of Alderney this evening.

On board Léon defending champion Alexis Loison will also be wondering what he can do to reclaim the lead of IRC Two-Handed which Swell has taken off him in the overnight reshuffle.

From the Sun Fast 3300 Fastrak XII he’s racing doublehanded with Matt Smith, Nigel de Quervain Colley reported: “Very frustrating park-up to west of the Scillies last night, allowing some boats to gain a 20 mile advantage. Now playing catch-up. We had a fast ride up to the Rock - flew the Fractional Zero and pulled masses against the fleet – up to second in IRC Two-Handed at one point. But that’s the thing about yacht racing… we will remember the good bits and bury the bad!”

New faces at the front of IRC Four

A restart has also occurred in IRC Four. Ludovic Menahes and David le Goff on the JPK 10.10 Raphael had been emulating Sunrise and Ino XXX in grafting hard to extend away from the chasing pack, both on the water and under IRC corrected time…until they too hit the brick wall at the Scillies. First Raphael’s crew was unable to cover as they rounded the west side of the TSS to the west of the Scillies as the two British boats, Richard Palmer and Jeremy Waitt on the JPK 10.10 Jangada and Tim Goodhew and Kelvin Matthews on the Sun Fast 3200 Cora, sailed down its east side. However, the Brits found themselves first to be nailed by the ridge as Raphael and the majority of the IRC Four fleet that was behind her were faster to extricate themselves.

Racing doublehanded with Calanach Finlayson on the Sun Fast 3600 Diablo in IRC Three, Nick Martin shared his pain from last night: “I need counselling having sat there for several hours. We did pretty well up to the Rock and were in good shape. The leg back down wasn’t ideal - I think we lost the plan a little bit, but generally we did okay. But when we got to the Scillies it just went completely t**s up. We got stuck there with Jangada and Fastrak and Cora and there was nothing we could do about it. All the routing said to go that way, but it didn’t account for this wind loss and the tide was building and it was like a washing machine.”

Martin said they didn’t kedge as it was too deep and they were doublehanded and eventually they tried to get back to the west side of the TSS. “We did that successfully in the end, but it took hours and all the time all we could see on the tracker was the rest of the fleet going by from the bottom of the TSS, like a motorway - all the boats we had left behind hours and days ago were back. That was galling.”

Having fallen so far behind, Martin said that this afternoon they were trying “something different” and have taken a small flier north towards the Lizard in an attempt to reclaim some ground. “The routing saying this is the quickest way to Cherbourg but there are no other boats around. We’ll see if it pays off.”

At midday the IRC Four leaders on the water were fanning out across the Channel due south of the Lizard with Raphael furthest south, with Harry J. Heijst’s S&S 41 Winsome and Vincent and Jacques Rigalleau’s Sun Fast 3200 Enedis immediately to the north, and the Pinteauxs JPK 10.10 Gioia closest to the Lizard. Over the course of this afternoon Raphael has inevitably nosed back into the lead on the water.

However, leading on corrected time seems to be one of the smaller IRC Four boats: Benefitting greatly from the park-up has been Alain Guelennoc’s X-332 Trading-advices.com with Chris Choules’ Sigma 38 With Alacrity and Irish Offshore Sailing’ Sun Fast 37 Desert Star, skippered by Ronan O'Siochru currently second. But you wouldn’t put money on it remaining this way in 24 hours time.

Day 5 0830 The ideal time for the projected IRC overall Fastnet Race IRC leader - James Neville's HH42 INO XXX - to reach the Fastnet Race finish in Cherbourg was by 20:30 hrs BST last night, in order to be still carrying some favourable tide while the breeze lasted. Well, she was there at 20:34. But her crew had little time to enjoy her exalted position, as a locally fresh westerly in the middle of the English Channel was having a very favourable effect on the projected placings of a small group of boats which had broken clear of calm conditions south of Land's End. They were racing towards the finish through the night to such good effect that one of them, ISORA sailor Andrew Hall's Lombard 46 Pata Negra from Pwllheli SC, was projected as becoming the new overall IRC leader.

But PN's moment of glory was relatively short-lived - the strengthening west-going ebb tide slowed her progress, and soon things were looking reasonably good for INO XXX again, such that when Pata Negra crossed the line around 08:00 this morning, the Neville boat was shown as corrected to more than two hours in the lead.

Pata Negra (Andrew Hall, Pwllheli SC) was shown for a while during the night as being the potential overall leaders of the Fastnet Race 2021, but when she finished at Cherbourg at 08:03 this morning she'd slipped back to real second behind INO XXX, and both boats are potentially challenged by the IRC 2 leader Sunrise, which had just ten miles to sail to the finish at 0900 this morning.

JPK 11.80 Sunrise closes on Fastnet finish

However, INO XXX faces a fresh assault on her exalted position, for although the bulk of the remaining fleet were held back by calm conditions in the Land's End/Isles of Scilly area last night, the IRC 2 leading boat Sunrise (Thomas Keen GB) a JPK 11.80, is closing in on the finish with just 20 miles to go at 0800, making 9 knots with a favourable tide with projections giving her the overall lead and the IRC win, while INO XXX retains the IRC Class 1 win.

INO XXX crew celebrate an excellent race Photo: Paul Wyeth

Meanwhile, things haven't been at all happy back in that area of often lumpy sea south of the Isles of Scilly and Land's End. In one part of it, very light airs or even complete calms had Kenneth Rumball and Pamela Lee in the leading Figaro 3 RL Sailing going virtually nowhere for a while, with a similar fate befalling the IRC 3 leader nearby, the JPK 10.30 Leon (Alexis Loison).

French Class 40 yacht Palanad reaches the finish line illustrating the near calm conditions on the Fastnet Race track Photo: Paul Wyeth

They have got going once more, but not before Shirley Robertson & Henry Bomby in the Sun Fast 3300 Swell were shown as having taken both the IRC 3 and the IRC 2-Handed lead, which they are indicated as continuing to hold with just under 150 miles to sail, but there may be a technical fault at HQ in this position indicating.

On-board technical faults may have played a key role in what has been been a hugely frustrating light airs night for the Murphy family's Nieulargo from Cork west and south of the Isle of Scilly. It will be recalled that for 24 hours shortly after the start, they'd to do without wind instruments, but with a strong and steady breeze and a fresh crew they were little hampered.

Nieulargo from Cork has had a frustrating night.

However, the area around the Isles of Scilly make for notoriously difficult sailing, and any crew need all the instrumental support they can get, so Nieulargo's fall from 8th in IRC 3 to 26th (in a class of 73) has been painful.

Meanwhile, in IRC 4, Irish Offshore Sailing's Ronan O'Siochru and Conor Totterdell from Dun Laoghaire racing the Sunfast 37 Desert Star have had a very good night of it, leaping from 13th up to sixth in class, and currently sailing at 5.6 knots on track for the finish 178 miles away.

Update 0930: Desert Star moves up to second in IRC

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In 2019 there was some embarrassment for the rest of the world with France ‘owning’ the Rolex Fastnet Race, winning nine of the 10 classes, albeit with the American Wizard team breaking the French-run of overall wins in the race that had lasted since 2013.

Ironic now with the 2021 race finishing in Cherbourg, French boats may have lost their grip on several key territories within the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s premier event. Yes, there is no chance that British or international teams will make an impression on French grand prix classes with Cammas and Caudrelier aboard Maxi Edmond de Rothschild having sewn up the Ultime/Open Multihull class in a similarly dominant way to Dalin and Meilhat on Apivia this morning in the IMOCA class.

But at present in the IRC fleet there are two British boats and one German looking good for the IRC Zero podium, and two Brits and one Swede for the top three spots in IRC One. IRC Two sees another Brit holding a comfortable lead over a Dutch boat, with a French boat third. Significantly a British boat is looking strong to win the coveted Fastnet Challenge Cup for the overall IRC win, but at this stage, no lead is insurmountable.

The situation changes in the smaller classes. There’s a wholly French podium in IRC three, with two Brits still gunning hard, while, again, in IRC Four French boats hold two of the podium positions separated by a Dutch boat. Despite the burgeoning British doublehanded scene, France holds six of the seven top spots in IRC Two-Handed.

Tala looks strong in IRC Zero

With the absence of Nicolas Groleau’s Bretagne Telecom this year, so David Collins steered his Botin 52 Tala across the finish line this afternoon with a strong grip on IRC Zero and remaining well in contention for a podium spot in IRC overall, finishing at 16:42 BST in 3 days 5 hours 2 minutes and 49 seconds, Tala beat German Jens Kellinghusen's Ker 56 Varuna by just over two hours on corrected time. Quietly confident, Collins & Co are keeping one eye on the likes of Richard Matthews’ brand new CF520 racing machine, Oystercatcher XXXV, which is due in this evening, but looking unlikely to topple Tala.

Collins was pleased with how they’d tackled the race: “The first bit was very tough, but this boat has seen some big weather before. The waves were short and steep, but the crew looked after the boat well. We were double-reefed at times because we were hitting the waves hard. Then the next part of the race was fascinating - tactically very challenging.” This is where Tala’s navigator, Campbell Field, earned his keep: “Campbell made some great calls, working out how to get past this last TSS zone for example, finding some counterintuitive moves that really worked well for us.”

As to Tala’s chances of winning the race overall, Collins was philosophical: “We’ve done what we came to do, which is try to win our class. As for the rest of it, all boats sail on a different bit of the ocean, experiencing different tide and different winds. What we do know is that whoever wins overall will have sailed their boat really well.”

Other potential IRC One challengers include Störtebeker, the Carkeek 47 from Hamburg skippered by Katrina Westphal, and Lady First 3, the Mylius 60 skippered by France’s Jean Pierre Dreau.

VO70 I Love Poland Photo: James Tomlinson

Strong Polish performance in IRC Zero

In the Celtic Sea, Polish entries were strong for IRC Zero victory, but the final hundred miles to the finish saw them slow and plummet down the rankings. Nevertheless the VO70 I Love Poland and VO65 Sailing Poland have put high-performance offshore sailing back on the map in their country. Grzegorz Baranowski’s VO70 is crewed by sailors primarily under 30 years old. For the Rolex Fastnet Race they had the added experience of British Figaro veteran Alan Roberts and former Volvo Ocean Race winner Martin Strömberg.

26-year-old navigator Konrad Lipski explained I Love Poland’s objectives: “Its aim is to bring in young sailors with strong backgrounds in youth, Olympic or other forms of racing, and give them an opportunity to gain experience.” Line honours victory in the 2020 Rolex Middle Sea Race was a great milestone, and now a solid performance in the Rolex Fastnet Race brings more credibility and momentum.

Running a similar youth development focus is the VO65 Sailing Poland, which had Bouwe Bekking as guest skipper. “It was good to see the 16 and 17 year olds coming through this race, sailing well,” said the Volvo Ocean Race veteran. “Maybe the result won’t be as good as it could have been because of the big compression, but that’s ocean racing - there’s nothing you can do about that. Now the boats behind us have the tide against them which will be a bit painful for some, that might gain us a bit of time back.”

A close finish for IMOCA's - 11th Hour Racing and Charal Photo: Paul Wyeth

After the exceptional IMOCA win for Apivia early this morning, there was yet more compression in the fleet astern as the Vendée Globe 60 footers fell foul of the Alderney Race. Nonetheless the defending IMOCA champions, Jérémie Beyou and Christopher Pratt on Charal, maintained second, despite facing a stiff final challenge from Anglo-Swiss duo Simon Fisher and Justine Mettraux on 11th Hour Racing, third by a mere 27 seconds. “To push Charal for second and sneak past Arkea, Paprec was a great result for us in our first doublehanded race,” said Fisher, a fully crewed round the world race veteran, enjoying being skipper for the first time in a major race. “I am really happy with how it went and how Justine and I are working together. It was a belter of a race.”

Allegra favourite to claim prize in MOCRA class

The Nigel Irens 84 catamaran Allegra, sailed by Adrian Keller arrived at 11:28 BST this morning and looks set to collect the MOCRA prize. This follows Allegra’s multihull class victory in the last RORC Caribbean 600. Keller commented: “This is a happy moment. A week before the race, I was not sure if I could even get into England because of the restrictions, so getting to the start line was great and the outcome was fantastic. “I think we have now proved that Allegra is more than a floating apartment and demonstrated this type of boat can race and hold its own against racing designs. This was my first [Rolex Fastnet] race, and it was very exciting. I have a great deal of respect for the course. The start was very windy and coming out from Hurst Castle it got really tough. However, I will remember the Fastnet lighthouse - pitch dark, but you could see that light. That will be is a memory of a lifetime.”

While Oren Nataf’s speedy Pulsar 50 catamaran Rayon Vert regained a lot of ground in the last 24 hours she was almost two hours outside of Allegra’s corrected time.

The Nigel Irens 84 catamaran Allegra, sailed by Adrian Keller looks set to collect the MOCRA prize Photo: Paul Wyeth

Leader change in Class40

In the early hours of this morning Luke Berry’s defending Class40 champion Lamotte - Module Création got rolled while crossing the Celtic Sea en route to Bishop Rock by Antoine Magre’s Palanad 3. Magre’s newer Sam Manuard Mach 40.4 design was then able to extend, passing Bishop Rock at around 0500. Since then Berry has also had to look over his shoulder to defend against Switzerland’s Valentin Gautier on Banque Du Leman (another Mach 40.4). Approaching the west side of the Casquets TSS, Berry managed to recover some ground but will be hoping for a last chance saloon opportunity playing the tides south of Alderney.

RORC Commodore James Neville and his HH42 INO XXX appear to have blitzed IRC One and are due in late this evening, also currently with a good chance of the overall prize this year. Over the course of today Andrew Hall’s Lombard 46 Pata Negra and Mark Emerson’s A13 Phosphorus II (ex-Teasing Machine) have been performing well, along with the 73ft van de Stadt ketch Stormvogel.

In IRC Two, Tom Kneen’s JPK 11.80 Sunrise, sailed by a RORC youth crew, passed Bishop Rock at around 1430 BST and was making good progress on course towards the finish having extended their lead to 40 miles over Dutchwoman Astrid de Vin’s sistership Il Corvo. Today the biggest risers have been Bernard Wilmet and Yannick Grecourt’s Hanse 470e and Ross Applebey’s Lightwave 48. The majority of IRC Two will round Bishop Rock this evening. However a significant meteorological feature will be affecting the boats around the Scillies this evening as a front rolls through bringing strong southwesterlies ahead of it, but weak northwesterlies behind it.

Meanwhile the IRC Three leaders are approaching the TSS due west of the Scilly Isles and look set to leave it to port. The closest of fights among the frontrunners in any of the classes exists here with defending champions, Alexis Loison and Guillaume Pirouelle’s JPK 1030 Léon out in front but with several others in contention. Making best progress today out to the east are the British two-handed duo Volvo Ocean Race sailor Henry Bomby and double Olympic gold medallist Shirley Robertson on the Sun Fast 3300 Swell.

This afternoon the IRC Four frontrunners were two thirds of the way between the Fastnet Rock and Bishop Rock making 7 knots. Here David le Goff's JPK 10.10 Raphael continued to lead both on the water and under corrected time. However the fight is really on for second place with Francois Charles’ Dehler 33 Cruising Sun Hill 3 currently up to second from Harry J. Heijst’s S&S 41 Winsome.

Day 4 1900: In the approaches to Cherbourg, the notorious tidal streams are running favourably for Fastnet Racers approaching from the west this evening until about 22:30 hrs, at which time smaller slower boats may find that a gate has in effect been shut in their faces as the west-going ebb in the English Channel – or more properly La Manche on this French side of the storied waterway – begins to ebb with increasing vigour westward, reaching a two to three hour peak around half tide of sufficient speed to bring some of the little'uns effectively to a halt.

With those smaller slower boats still well down the line as the 300-plus Fastnet fleet continues over its new extended 695-mile course with the finish at Cherbourg rather than Plymouth, it will take time over the next two or three days to get a full picture of what the Cherbourg finish really means.

For now, the fact that the winds off Cherbourg are extremely light means that even the fastest boats are going to find the tidal effect playing a greater-than-normal role, and despite the favourable tide a usually swift machine like Richard Matthews' 52ft Oystercatcher XXXV has been struggling to get over seven knots in the final approaches to the finish.

This makes it a ferocious race against time and tide for a boat 30 miles astern, a boat which used to be in the Matthews stable, but is now James Neville's INO XXX and is currently (18:30 hrs) making better than 8 knots over the ground.

All of this is largely of academic concern for most of the boats of Irish interest, as they're generally still on the long haul from the Fastnet Rock to the Bishop Rock in the Isles of Scilly, or east of the Bishop in the approaches to the English Channel. Thus while INO XXX currently leads IRC1 by an impressive margin, the Lombard 46 Pata Negra of Pwllheli SC (Andrew Hall) is now fourth in IRC1, but with a substantial 112 miles still to sail to Cherbourg.

The current 52ft Oystercatcher, number XXXV, in which Richard Matthews – holder of the Denis Doyle Memorial Trophy – is racing his 23rd Fastnet.

IRC 3 has been a special area of interest, but here the mega-talented Alexis Loison of France continues to lead with the JPK 10.30 Leon, and he also heads the IRC Two-Handed Division (his co-skipper is Guillaume Pirouelle), while the best-placed Irish continues to be the Murphy family's Grand Soleil 40 Nieulargo, in eighth position, with 231 miles to the finish.

In IRC4, Irish Offshore Sailing's Sunfast 37 Desert Star from Dun Laoghaire had almost got herself back into single figures, but during the past hour has slipped back to 13th with 274 miles to sail.

Up ahead, Kenneth Rumball and Pamela Lee continue to lead the now three-boat Figaro 3 two-handed class with RL Sailing, they've opened out a useful lead of better than two hours, and will shortly have less than 200 miles to race to the finish.

By the time they and the other Irish boats have got to this new Cherbourg line, we'll have a clearer picture of just how big a role that tide-riven approach to the finish is going to play. But it looks as though the big southwest winds expected tomorrow (Thursday) off the west coast of Ireland won't be spreading their tentacles sufficiently far to the southeast to significantly affect the Fastnet finish.

That said, apart from the biggest of the biggies, this race is still far from over with regard to the final placings

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