Hard upwind to the rock

Wind picks up for front runners in Rolex Fastnet Race

This article will be updated as we get more reports in...

The wind has picked up for the front runners who are now en route across the Irish Sea. Conditions at the Longships buoy at Land End's currently shows winds of 26 knots from the north. Mike Golding earlier this morning reported that Ecover had rounded Land's End just before first light this morning and was now sailing into 20 knots of wind under staysail and two reefs.

The 0800 position reports in the Open 60 class show PRB is leading, although there has been no position update from Sebastien Josse's VMI, which was leading the class yesterday. Ecover has moved up to second seven miles behind PRB with Dominique Wavre's Chaman 3 and the old Kingfisher - now called Skandia Set Sail - 12 and 16 miles astern of Vincent Riou's orange leader.

As ever with the Rolex Fastnet Race it is hard to get a clear picture of how it is going from on land. Among the leading Reichel-Pugh maxis Alfa Romeo reported that she was rounding Start Point at 20:05 last night followed by Zephyrus V and Nokia respectively 22 and 43 minutes later.

We would guess that they are probably half way across the Celtic Sea to the Fastnet Rock by now (the 0800 Open 60 positions showed them one quarter of the way to the Rock).

A majority of the class one boats rounded Start Point at 0400 this morning.

Mike Golding called at 09:30 this morning. At the time Ecover still had 129 miles to go to the Fastnet Rock. "We are laying the mark," commented Golding. "It's a one tack wonder at the moment. PRB has climbed off us up to weather and ahead and we think Skandia [Kingfisher] is tucked away in fifth position. We’ve got one maxi near us and climbing up above us, but not making much of a gain."

The new breeze from the north kicked in properly off Plymouth reported Golding. "The sea is quite lumpy and it’s a cross sea so it comes in much more from the east. So it is an awkward, screwy motion through the water which is not great for boat speed either but we are making reasonable progress – we are doing 11 knots over the ground."

Because the positions of the Open 60s are being polled by satcom while the rest of the fleet are reporting as they round headlands it is hard to guage where the Open 60s are lying relative to the rest of the fleet.

"We’re pretty happy," continued Golding. "We had very fluky breeze going down the Channel. It was kind of an inshore-offshore option and we took the long way round at the headlands. I don’t know whether we lost or we gained. We thought there might be some more pressure in there."

Looking forward Golding was expecting the wind direction to remain in the north or possibly go right, but he was waiting to see the effects of the high pressure system to the west. He feared that they might see the wind go light as they approached the Fastnet Rock. "Right now the barometer is rising and quite quickly. There is every reason to suspect it might moderate out."


Start Point

20:05 Alfa Romeo
20:27 Zephyrus V
20:48 Nokia
21:25 Hellomoto
22:20 Charman III (Dominique Wavre's Open 60)
22:23 Team Tonic-Volvo For Life (reported 10 knots of breeze from the north)
23:20 Leopard
00:00 Aera
01:23 Jazz (Chris Bull's J/145)
01:44 Nicorette (former Charles Jourdain Whitbread maxi)
02:30 Snow Lion (Laurence Huntington's Nelson Marek 50 from the US)
02:43 Gleam (first multihull)
03:09 Roxy 9 (Robert Davies' J/145)
03:31 Anthem (Thomas Gill Jnr's Tripp One Off from the US)
03:55 Hugo Boss

Lizard

01:10 Zephyrus
01:40 Nokia
03:44 Hellomoto (reports 15-20 knot breeze)
04:08 Team Tonic-Volvo for Life
04:10 Leopard
05:35 Venom (Whitbread 60)
05:59 Solune (Jean-Philippe Chornette's sexy looking French 60 footer)