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Friday 19th August 2011
French Domination
Finish line from the Plymouth Breakwater Lighthouse Credit:
Rolex/Carlo Borlenghi
ARMADA DESCENDED ON FINISH LINE
A shut-down of the wind and a foul tide just short of the finish line made for a
challenging few hours for the Royal Ocean Racing Club race team as an armada of
Rolex Fastnet Race competitors descended on the finish line. Between 0000 and 0200
this morning 105 boats, or just over one third of the record-sized fleet, crossed
the finish line.
Patrick van de Ven, sailing doublehanded with Igor Quik on the X-43 Lady of Avalon
(NED) in IRC 2, arrived at 00:54 BST this morning. Yesterday, while lying 20 miles
shy of the finish line, they had been forced to anchor, along with two other boats,
for ten frustrating hours. To manage this involved their tying together all their
available warps, sheets and guys in order for their anchor to set in the 70 metres
of water.
"When we put up the sails and got running, we looked behind and there was this massive
fleet of smaller boats coming in with the wind," recalled van de Ven. "It was beautiful
- there was this big cloud of red and green lights behind us. We were happy we were
in front of them."
Another Dutch doublehanded pair, John van der Starre and Robin Verhoef, on the newly-launched
J/111 J-Xcentric (NED), racing in IRC 2, had less dramatic, but no less a frustrating
finish yesterday afternoon. Finishing just one minute behind a fully crewed J/111,
they were forced to anchor 200 metres from the finish line for one-and-a-half hours.
Van der Starre and Verhoef led the 36-strong double-handed division for most of
the race. They eventually lost first place in the double-handed class to the Sigma
36, British Beagle (GBR).
This was their first Rolex Fastnet Race and Van de Starre said he was impressed:
"This is a great challenge of tactics, handling and everything. There is so much
in it - I had a really good experience. Racing double-handed is about management
- everything has to work well, you need a good autopilot, all the preparation in
advance should be perfect, and we had it very well organised." The duo had a small
problem that left them unable to charge their boat's batteries (and therefore unable
to use the all-important autopilot) for 36 hours.
CLASS WINNERS ANNOUNCED:
Today the class winners have been announced. With Niklas Zennström's J-V72 Rán (GBR)
claiming the overall IRC handicap prize ahead of Mike Slade's 100 foot maxi, ICAP
Leopard. Rán also won Class Z ahead of the Oakcliff All American Offshore Team on
Vanquish (USA) and the TP52 Near Miss (SUI).
In most other classes, France dominated. IRC 1 saw victory go to regular RORC race
competitors Nicolas Loday and Jean Claude Nicoleau on their Grand Soleil 43 Codiam
(FRA), ahead of Laurent Gouy's Ker 39 Inis Mor (FRA) and the First 47.7 Moana (BEL)
of Francois and Mathieu Goubau.
Class 3 was claimed by two JPK 10.10 designs: Noel Racine's Foggy Dew (FRA), overall
winner in the RORC's Myth of Malham Race earlier this year, ahead of Vincent Willemart's
Wasabi (BEL). France also dominated Class 4 in the familiar form of Jean Yves Chateau's
Nicholson 33, Iromiguy (FRA), overall winner of the Rolex Fastnet Race in 2007,
ahead of Persephone (FRA), Yves Lambert's Stand Fast 37/Tina .
One exception to the Franco-Belgium domination of this year's race was American
Rives Potts, whose 48 foot McCurdy & Rhodes-designed Carina won Class 2, ahead of
two French boats - the JND35 Gaia and the J/122 Nutmeg IV.
Despite his boat dating back to 1969 and originally having been the Nye family's
replacement for Carina 2, back-to-back winner of the Rolex Fastnet in 1955 and
1957, Potts is a boatyard owner in Connecticut and has been constantly tinkering
and upgrading Carina since he acquired her in the early 1990s. Less obvious is
that he is also a five-time America's Cup sailor and winner, having competed on
Freedom in 1980 and subsequent campaigns with Dennis Conner through until 1995,
and who completed the 1979 Fastnet Race aboard the winner, Ted Turner's maxi Tenacious.
"It is fabulous," said Potts of his win. "This is a 71-boat class with some very
good boats in it and we feel very fortunate. Our navigator Dirk Johnson did a fabulous
job. He was always looking for where there was the most pressure and the least current.
The race was probably 90% going to weather and that is our strong point. Had it
been more off the wind I'm sure the lighter, more modern boats would have left us
in the dust. It was a good race for us."
With Rolex Fastnet Race and Bermuda Race wins behind her, Carina is now off to Australia
to attempt to obtain the last piece of what Potts described as the "triple crown",
namely the Rolex Sydney Hobart.
With 248 finishers and 41 retirements, 25 boats reindex on the race course this afternoon,
with the prizegiving for the Rolex Fastnet Race due to take place this evening at
the historic Royal Citadel. The Citadel, home to the 29 Commando Regiment Royal
Artillery, overlooks Plymouth Sound and Sutton Harbour, where the majority of the
fleet are berthed.
Eddie Warden Owen, CEO of the Royal Ocean Racing Club
CEO of the Royal Ocean Racing Club, Eddie Warden Owen commented on this year's Rolex
Fastnet Race: "It's been a really interesting race because it offered everything:
It's been a tough race - not just because of the wind conditions on the first two
days, but also tough getting back for the little boats, because they had very little
wind and parked up.
"And we had the Rambler incident (capsize and subsequent rescue of her 21 crew)
and we had to get our act together very quickly because the first boat (the 40 metre
trimaran Banque Populaire) arrived after 32 hours, so we'd only just got here and
got the place set up.
"The fact that the Volvo guys finished within five minutes of each other is amazing.
And the Class 40s had a really close finish as well. Just rounding the rock now
are Maybird and Morwenna, the two classic pilot cutters - they are having their
own battle out there. They'll finish in three, four days time. This Fastnet has
been full of opportunities for people, an experience for everybody involved in it."
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