Rolex Fastnet Race's most complete pantheon of offshore race boats

The most impressive collection of offshore racing hardware from across the globe is set to gather off Cowes for the start of the Rolex Fastnet Race on 3 August.

 

Following the 340 available places in the IRC fleet selling out in just four minutes and 37 seconds when entry opened on 7th January, the Royal Ocean Racing Club, organisers of this, the world’s largest offshore yacht race, has provided a sneak preview of the 2019 line-up.

 

While the bulk of the fleet remains the IRC entries, competing for both their class titles as well as the overall Fastnet Challenge Cup, 2019 will see an unprecedented entry of ‘non-IRC’ boats, the majority from France. Entered at present are 25 Class40s (plus two more in the IRC fleet). There are also set to be a handful of Ultimes. At 100ft long, these maxi trimarans are the world’s largest and fastest offshore race boats. The present race record for the Rolex Fastnet Race was set in 2011 by the 130ft trimaran Banque Populaire V, skippered by Loïck Peyron, in a time of 32 hours 48 minutes at an average speed of 18.5 knots. While shorter, any of the new generation Ultimes is capable of bettering this time.

 

Most staggering are the number of IMOCA 60s entered – 27 of them, making this one of the largest gatherings of these thoroughbred ocean racers outside of the race for which they are principally built – the Vendée Globe singlehanded non-stop round the world race. IMOCA 60s have been in the news in recent months as they are one of the classes set to be used for the next running of The Ocean Race (ex-Volvo Ocean Race) over 2021-22. The Rolex Fastnet Race line-up includes an unusually large number of British female skippers taking part, among them Initiatives Coeur’s Sam Davies and former Mini and Class40 sailor Pip Hare.

 

The international fleet is highly diverse, with boats ranging in size from 9m to 32m and a start sequence taking place over a 1hr 40min period off Cowes from the Royal Yacht Squadron line © Rolex/Kurt Arrigo

The international fleet is highly diverse, with boats ranging in size from 9m to 32m and a start sequence taking place over a 1hr 40min period off Cowes from the Royal Yacht Squadron line © Rolex/Kurt Arrigo

 

In sheer numbers the IRC fleet should once again be huge. At present the maximum entries has been comfortably exceeded although the exact number making it to the start will fluctuate due to circumstances, not least the requirement to comply with the RORC’s race qualification requirements.

 

In the fight for monohull line honours, leading the charge should be the Hong Kong entry, Scallywag 100, skippered by David Witt (from the team that competed in the last Volvo Ocean Race). But she will face stiff competition from the highly refined Rambler 88 of American George David, the Fastnet Race’s 2017 monohull line honours winner, and Ludde Ingvall’s CQS.

 

Among the fleet are many past winners. This includes the reigning Rolex Fastnet Race champion, Didier Gaudoux, who returns with his faithful JND 39 Lann Ael 2. Conversely, returning with yet another new boat is 2015 winner and race veteran Géry Trentesaux, back this time on the bigger version of his victorious Courrier Du Leon, the JPK 11.80 Courrier Recommande. Given that French boats have won the last three editions of the Rolex Fastnet Race outright, it is no surprise that after the UK, French boats are second largest entry this year – with 58 in the IRC fleet, plus an additional 35 or so in the non-IRC classes.

 

At present class splits are a long way off being decided, but it is these classes themselves, and not the overall prize, that provide the most serious competition within the Rolex Fastnet Race. However already identifiable are groups of similar boats, due to have exceptional competition on the biennial 605 mile race from Cowes to Plymouth via the Fastnet Ro

The symbol of the race is the Fastnet Rock, located off the southern coast of Ireland. Also known as the Teardrop of Ireland, the Rock marks an evocative turning point in the challenging race © Rolex/Kurt Arrigo

 

Before France’s domination of the race, the race was twice won (in 2009 and 2011) by Niklas Zennström’s Rán II. Mini Maxis and Maxi 72s are well represented again this year with Rán II back as Peter Harrison’s Sorcha. She will be up against Bryon Ehrhart's Lucky (formerly the Rolex Maxi 72 World Champion Bella Mente) and Sir Peter Ogden's elongated former Maxi 72 Jethou.

 

Ex-Volvo Ocean Race boats are well represented in six VO70s, including David and Peter Askew's Wizard, winner of this year's RORC Caribbean 600 and Johannes Schwarz' Green Dragon and E1, while there are two VO65s including Team Brunel. Former Brunel Synergy skipper from the 1996-97 round the world race, Hans Bouscholte, is sailing Boudragon, previously Lawrie Smith's Silk Cut – one of five VO60s taking part.

 

Perhaps the most intense battle in the IRC fleet will be between the seven Cookson 50s, including the fastest – American Ron O’Hanley’s Privateer. One example, Ger O'Rourke’s Chieftain, claimed the Rolex Fastnet Race outright in 2007. Also to be watched in this size range are the TP52s – Outsider, Tala and Rockall V plus Frenchman Eric de Turckheim's Nivelt-Muratet 54 Teasing Machine, winner of the 2017 RORC Transatlantic Race. The previous Teasing Machine, de Turckheim’s Commodores’ Cup-winning A13, is also competing now as Mark Emerson’s Phosphorus II.

 

In the 40ft range there are five FAST40+ type boats – the Ker 40s, Keronimo and Ed Broadway's Hooligan, plus James Neville's HH42 Ino XXX, Ed Fishwick’s GP42 Redshift and Stewart Whitehead's more contemporary Carkeek 40 Mk2, Rebellion.

 

Once sailors reach the Fastnet Rock, they are well over halfway to the finish in Plymouth © Rolex/Carlo Borlenghi

 

The late Paul Heys would be proud of the giant J/Boats entry. These range from the J/133s, Yves Grosjean’s Jivaro and Gilles Fournier and Corinne Migraine’s Pintia, down to the four J/105s and the fifteen J/109s, spanning the RAF Sailing Association’s Red Arrow (with an IRC TCC of 1.025), to Peter Rowe’s Ju Kyu (on 1.003), via J/112s, J/120s and a large gaggle of J/122s.

 

Beneteau is also well represented with thirteen First 40s set to be on the start line and an additional eight First 40.7s. However all eyes will be on the latest hardware from St Gilles Croix de Vie – the Figaro 3s, complete with their IMOCA 60-style foil packages. Three examples are entered including the Will Harris-skippered Hive Energy and from Ireland, Conor Fogerty’s Raw.

 

Similarly, following their victories in the 2013 and 2015 races, there will be a strong JPK turn-out, including nine 10.10s (similar to the Pascal and Alexis Loisin’s 2013 victor Night & Day) and five 10.80s (like Trentesaux’s Courrier Du Leon).

 

The smallest boat race in this year’s event will be between the trio of Contessa 32s, including Assent, campaigned by Simon Rogers of the Lymington-based Rogers clan that spawned the classic range.

 

A more complete pantheon of offshore race boats, you would be hard pressed to find anywhere, ever.

 

David – http://markethive.com/david-ogden

Work to Be Done Excerpt From 1979 Fastnet

 

The anamometer was recording 60 in the gusts, and the seas were up. One moved about the deck in a crouch, hanging on with care while moving the clip of the safety harness from one point to another. There was work to be done. A change to the No. 5 jib (the smallest) had been called for. We raised a small staysail to keep the boat in balance between jibs and took the No. 4 down with difficulty. An hour later we would have had to cut it loose.
 

As it was, the spray coming off the bow struck us like whips, and only our safety lines clipped to the weather side kept us from sliding into the sea. Raising the No. 5 was out of the question. The wind was increasing. We would sail with the small staysail and the main reefed to maximum.
 

With the storm full on us, we took positions on the high side of the deck and held on. The three best helmsmen took turns facing painfully into blowing scud that stung like sand, looking for the optimum path through seas that lifted us up and up and rolled under us or struck us broadside, full force.

 

Driving was exhausting. The helms man would yell a warning the moment he knew he had been beaten by one of the monsters. We would double our grip and tuck our heads in as hundreds of gallons of solid water tried to batter us off the deck. Recoiling from one such wave, two crewmen fell against the yacht's owner, Jim Kilroy, crushing him against a winch. He went below in pain for the remainder of the race with two broken ribs.

 

Unlike the claustrophobic, ominous feel of most storms, this night presented the striking contrast of clear skies alight with a full compliment of stars. Occasional clusters of low, fastmoving fleecy clouds would pass through. The moon was high, threequarters full and brilliant, illuminating the steep seas with cold, eerie light. When clouds masked it, its beams peeked through to turn small patches of ocean to pure pounded silver. Astern, the big dipper was full to brimming.

 

Kialoa was reaching at 10 knots under minimal sail. Her fine racing bow sliced into the seas, carving off hunks of ocean that were splattered to either side as foam and heaved high into the air and blown into the sails. The water was thick with globs of phosphorescence that would stick on the mainsail and glow for a moment, or speed off to leeward on the wind like sparks from spent fireworks. From her mad dash through the storm, Kialoa left a swath of pure white foam astern fully 200 yards long that shimmered like a snowfield in the moonlight. I yearned to see us from a nearby vantage point. We must have been a sight.
 

 

Let us hope we are spared a similar storm

David – http://markethive.com/david-ogden

I have been watching the post for the past few days, as I awaited a vital piece of equipment reuired for the Fastnet race, namely my AIS personal beacon which if I fall overboard during the race will help rescuers find me in the vaste of expance of the sea.  IT can be very difficult to spot a person head in the sea even with small waves and almost impossible at night with beaking waves.

I finanally gave up waiting and called the store I had ordered from, to be told they had run out of stock and it was on back order. you can imaginge I was not amused and I canncelled the order.

I then started looking around for another supplier and remebered a chandler at a nearby boatyard to where Troubadour is berthed. I quick telephone call and the problem was resolved. The chandlery in question had a policy of ensuring they had stock in order to meet the requirements of people competing in the Fastnet Race, some 30,000 persons. I paid over the phone and will pick up mine on Thursday on the way to Troubadour.

 

David Ogden

Fastnet Crewmember  – Troubadour

David – http://markethive.com/david-ogden

The interesting thing about the Rolex Fastnet Race is that for an offshore race there are a lot of inshore tactics to consider. Coupled with the start of the race being very intense due to its location and sheer number of boats, this makes it a great spectacle to watch from the shore.

To get the most out of your race, as with all offshore races, there is a significant amount of pre-race navigation and tactical work you can do that will identify the key decision points and help make decision making easier on the course. The four main areas to work on before the race are:

 

• Tide

• Land influences

• Weather information

• Decision points

 

Tide versus wind

The Fastnet course covers an area where tidal currents are very significant at different points and often the question is when does the tidal advantage take priority over a shift or pressure gain? There is often not one answer to that question, but good preparation for those moments can be vital in helping you choose how to make your decision.
 

One of the first things to do is to examine the tidal situation on its own, without considering any wind effects, and identify the potential key tidal points, particularly where you’d like to be on your ideal course to maximise tidal gain or minimise the loss of an adverse tide. From this you’ll establish points on the course where you know you do not want to be under any circumstances, regardless of the wind conditions. As a minimum I’d go through this process for the following locations:
 

• The Solent: everyone should have a high-resolution tidal atlas of this area. Yes, the Fastnet race starts with favourable tide but the Solent has significant tidal differences across it that are key to your positioning, and can give you some great early gains – as well as a psychological advantage by busting out of the Solent in front of your rivals.

 

• St Alban’s Head: the overfalls here create a tough sea state but also significant tidal gains/losses to be aware of.

Portland Bill: the decision whether to go inside or outside needs to be made significantly before you get there, so understanding your timing windows is key. You need to be able to mentally walk back through the race course to make the decision early enough.

 

• Start Point: again, overfalls can create a difficult sea state as well as setting up tidal gains/losses to be made.

 

• Lizard Point: this point often proves critical, and even more so on the final approach to Plymouth. It’s renowned for developing quite a change of sea state, which can influence what manoeuvres and sail changes you choose.

 

• Land’s End: there is often a split created by the Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS), depending on the timing of tide.

 

• Isles of Scilly: especially on the return leg you need to do some tidal prep to help decide how you might weave around the TSS, and especially how to pick your laylines.

 

• Fastnet Rock: the key thing here is to identify whether you will turn the corner sharply, coming inside the smaller rock to the north, and if so to understand your track. There is a 0.1-mile gap that has enough depth at all points of tide at 11.6m.

 

If you are running navigational routing software a very visual way to see this is to run a route with a fixed wind direction and speed – I would use a course average of a south-westerly breeze of 240° SW at 14 knots.

Running this from several different start times to cover the tidal period will very quickly show you the key tidal gates, influences and the time-critical aspect of them. If you have time on your hands it would be worthwhile to also run the routing for a series of different wind directions as well, even if typically the race is referred to as upwind to the rock and downwind home!

Iconic Fastnet headlands that can make or break your race – and how to round them

There are three major headlands on the Rolex Fastnet Race route that are key to the success or otherwise of your…

 

Land influences

Due to the significant gains or loss that can be made from utilising the tide in the race you’ll often find yourself very close to land. Inshore tactics dominate the first one to four hours of this race as you leave the Solent. Being able to step up the intensity and make slick manoeuvres on the approaches to the key Fastnet headlands will give you an opportunity to make significant gains.

 

The majority of the tidal gates are also headlands so there is always an additional opportunity to make gains by using wind bends and wind shadows as you approach.

 

The bigger boats often arrive at Portland Bill in ebb tide with a back eddy forming in West Bay, so it pays to be just outside Shambles Bank

 

Again, I would take some time to assess the following headlands and think about how the wind will bend around them, where the land effects will cause acceleration and where there may well be wind shadows: Durlston Head; St Alban’s Head; Portland Bill; Start Point; Lizard Point; Land’s End.

Wind will generally prefer to go around, rather than over, land. Especially where the land is steep and high, you can get very pronounced wind bends that can create some good opportunities to make a gain by being inside the shift.

The goal is to approach just below the point where the land is at its widest relative to the wind direction, as that is where the most significant wind bend will occur. It will also be a bigger shift closer to the land, so you always have to dig in – and often do more than one manoeuvre as you sail into it.

 

 

Two hours later the tidal gate has closed so it pays to get offshore. Up to three miles offshore there will be 3-5 knots of tide against you

 

Weather information

Identify where you can get good real-time information from, and remember to always keep one eye on reality and check it against the forecast.

Take time to read the forecast service providers’ websites to learn more about your weather data, particularly the temporal and spatial resolution. Many software programs will happily interpolate between data points in both time and space, falsely leading you to believe there is more detailed information available than there actually is.

Set up a schedule of when you are able to get new weather data, and at what times the data you will be using is updated. Also, it’s easy to forget to download before leaving a shoreline if you are using a mobile data connection – the obvious spots where you are going to lose connectivity is going across Lyme Bay, leaving Land’s End and leaving the Fastnet Rock.

As soon as you start pressing offshore, antennae-dependant mobile signal will be quick to fade. Network coverage is less extensive generally as you head further south-west along the coast.

 

Start Point

Key decision points

From the preparation work you have done you should be able to identify where the key decisions you will need to be make are, and will have information available to make those decisions. These will be periods of increased intensity for all the crew, so you need to be confident in how you are going to take those decisions and when you need to start actioning them – which could be a couple of hours before.
 

Using a checklist can help keep you on track:

• What is the decision? For example, on the approach to Portland Bill where should we be positioned relative to the tidal situation?

• What is our action? What manoeuvres do we need to make – what sail changes, what are our timings, is the crew ready?

• Have we got all the information? What is wind strength at Portland, for example, what is the tidal window in which we need to be making our approach, where is the rest of our fleet, and what can the boats in front tell us (from the tracker)?

• How confident are we? If we are slower or faster by an hour what would be the potential outcome? If the wind direction changes what would it need to be to change our positional decision?

• When is the next key decision and when do we need to think about it?

 

David – http://markethive.com/david-ogden