Round Britain underway

James Boyd reports from the glorious start of the Calais Round Britain Race

Click here to see our photo gallery of the start or here to see our preview to the race.

The Calais Round Britain Race got off to a glorious start today in 10-15 knots north northeasterly winds and brilliant sunshine.

To avoid the shipping negotiating the entrance to Calais harbour, Royale, the organisers of the race started the race some seven miles to the west of Calais off Cape Blanc Nez.
With a downwind start, the nine Open 60s taking part milled around and in the last few moments prior to the gun headed for the line under mainsails alone. The start was clean, helped by around two knots of foul tide and all the crew chose not to hoist until after they'd crossed the line.

Around Alone winner Bernard Stamm on Bobst Group-Armor Lux got off to the best start, crossing the line around three seconds after the gun, narrowly ahead of Mike Golding on Ecover. There was a small amount of argie-bargie on the start line when Vincent Riou's all orange PRB who had hoisted their kite first squeezed into the small gap between Stamm's 60 and Mike Golding's Ecover. PRB's kite touched the starboard deck spreader on Ecover resulting in a protest from the British boat.

While almost all the boats started on starboard gybe, race favourite Sill was the only boat to cross the start line and gybe on to port immediately heading in towards the shore. This move was presumably to keep them out of the tide, but around 30 minutes into the race Bobst Group-Armor Lux still managed to cross ahead of them. Meanwhile continuing out to sea on starboard gybe PRB was leading Ecover and Team 888. All the boats seemed to be making around 10 knots.

The boats had to round two marks off the French coast, the second off Boulogne before they were free to make their way down the Channel to the next turning mark of the course at Bishop's Rock off the Scilly Isles some 320 miles from Boulogne.

Over the course of this evening the wind looks set to veer to the east and increase slightly. As the boats head towards the Scillies they will encount a trough and how quickly they can get through this may well have considerable bearing on the outcome of this race.

Passage around the Boulogne buoy

1. PRB 15h 43 09
2. Bobst Group-Armor Lux 15h 45 44
3. VMI 15h 46 05
4. Team 888 15h 48 38
5. Sill 15h 49 13
6. Arcelor Dunkerque 15h 51 17
7 Ecover 15h 52 24
8 Objectif 3 15h 56 50
9 Garnier 15h 58 18