Chilly departure

13 doublehanded Minis set sail from Plymouth on the UK Fastnet 6.50

In stark contrast to last weekend's start of the Artemis Transat, when sunshine and a mini heat wave engulfed Plymouth. This Saturday, for the start of the UK Fastnet 6.50, grey cloud and drizzle was the order of the day, the only similarity was the noticeable absence of wind.

Hosted by The Royal Western Yacht Club and sponsored by Barratt Homes, the third running of UK Fastnet 6.50 is open to all Mini Class boats, both Production and Prototype, the event is a double-handed race from Plymouth around the Fastnet Rock and back.

The light wind though, didn’t deter the 13 competitors who made the start, from putting on a fighting display crossing the line on the western side of Plymouth Sound. Heading into the light six to seven knots of wind, they beat to a windward mark set up a mile to the east, before hoisting genakers and heading for the western approach and open water.
 
Despite the vast majority of the boats being French entries, the first boat to round the light on the end of Plymouth’s breakwater was Britain’s Hugh MacGregor on Autograph. By the time he did so, just 30 minutes after the start, the fleet was already strung out across nearly a mile. 
 
The boats will now be heading for towards the Isles of Scilly 90 miles away, where they must also leave the Bishop Rock Lighthouse to starboard, after which the course runs 160 miles to the Fastnet Rock. The return course is via the exact same route, and the competitors are expected to take four days to complete the 500 miles.
 
Race Director and Commodore of the Royal Western Yacht Club, Chris Arscott, said: “Given the light conditions it was a good start - as regards the event as a whole, all the competitors are over the moon with the organisation here. And, as well as continuing with this race, they are very supportive of us holding one of the Classes flagship races to the Azores in the near future.”
 
Last year the club introduced trackers for all the boats as, not only are the devices extremely useful to manage a race of this type, their up to date and accurate information makes following the competitors progress on the race web site very exciting. This year the models being used are much improved and are in fact the same models used in last years RORC organised Fastnet Race.

Entries:

Hull no	Boat	Crew 1	Crew 2
158	AUTOGRAPH	Hugh McGregor	Neil McGregor
219	GROUPE SETEC	Matthieu Galland	Philippe Prat
348	REGION NORD PAS DE CALAIS	Pierre Brasseur	Timothy Serraz
440	RATTLE & HUM	Keith Willis	Steve Homewood
433	NETCARRIER	Brian Caldwell	Linda Pasquariello
446	KOATI	Emmanuel Renaud	Armelle Gegaden
463	BLUE GIN	Fabien Baetz	Eva Strasser
498	RACKAM LE ROUGE	Olivier Lardeur	Michel Sastre
517	WWW.DEFERLES.COM	Sebastien Marssett	Thibault Reinhart
529	BLACK MAMBA	Clement Baetz	Guillaume Le Masson
590	MINISKIRT	Joe Radmore	Andy Freemantle
618	CAP MONDE	Olivier Auram	Loic Auram
685	TOUD SUITE	Cecile Hoffart	Andre Wood
711	MARE.DE	Jorg Riechers	Andraz Mihelin