Rolex Fastnet Race class finishers wait with bated breath
by James Boyd / RORC 30 Jul 21:11 UTC
Peter Harrison's TP52 Jolt 3 finishes the race as the sun goes down - Admiral's Cup 2025 in the Rolex Fastnet Race © Paul Wyeth / pwpictures.com / RORC
Celebrations were finally subsiding this morning in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin's Port Chantereyne following Peter Harrison, Pierre Casiraghi and the Yacht Club de Monaco team's superb victory in the Royal Ocean Racing Club's successfully rejuvenated Admiral's Cup.
After the closest of finishes the Jolt duo - their TP52 Jolt 3 and the Carkeek 40 Jolt 6 - topped the leaderboard, rounding out the series 10 points ahead of Karl Kwok's Beau Geste representing the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. Read the full report here.
Finishing at 21:47:15 on Tuesday night, Jolt 6 was looking in good shape to also claim the elusive prize for IRC Overall in the Rolex Fastnet Race - the Fastnet Challenge Cup, first won by Jolie Brise in 1925. For the race Jolt 6 was skippered by Monaco royal Pierre Casiraghi, who brought with him some of his Malizia IMOCA crew, including British navigator Will Harris and round the world sailor Cole Brauer, joined by Nacra 17 World Champion and Olympian Ben Saxton and America's Cup technician Andrew McLean.
"I want to congratulate the team," said Casiraghi. "The job Will did as a navigator was just perfect the whole way. It was tough, really exhausting. Everyone is really tired - you could see it in their eyes. We were all ensuring we rested as much as possible to sail the cleanest race we could. Coming in with Callisto, we lost them at one point. We could see on the tracker that they had managed to stretch. But we managed to come back and knew that if we stayed close to them it was going to work."
If Jolt 6 had won the Rolex Fastnet Race outright she would have become the only the third yacht ever to achieve both Rolex Fastnet Race and Admiral's Cup victory in the same year since Dick Carter's Red Rooster in 1969 and before that Clarion of Wight in 1963.
Sadly, it was not to be and currently Jolt 6 lies sixth in IRC Overall astern of today's latest IRC One and Two arrivals.
Jolt 6 also won the Admiral's Cup 2 class for the Rolex Fastnet Race, by just 2 minutes 45 seconds on corrected time from Philippe Frantz's NMD 42 Albator, part of the Yacht Club de France team, with the Michele Ivaldi-skippered JPK 1180 Django JPK a further 11 minutes astern, as part of Giovanni Lombardi Stronati's Yacht Club Costa Smeralda team in third. All three are currently also within the top 10 of the record-sized 380 boat IRC fleet.
Aside from the star-studded Monaco team, some of the biggest celebrations that carried on well into the night were that of the Dutch team whose big boat won the Admiral's Cup 1 class in the Rolex Fastnet Race. Rotterdam Offshore Sailing Team's Ker 46 Van Uden is designed as a training platform for young talented sailors wishing to develop their skills racing offshore. It is skippered by round the world sailor Gerd-Jan Poortman, himself once upon a time part of the ABN AMRO youth crew in the 2005-6 Volvo Ocean Race. The young Dutch team's victory in their class was decisive, their time correcting out to 2 hours 45 minutes ahead of Daniel E Baum's second-placed Tison 48 Elida in the Hamburger Segel Club team, in turn 4 hours 10 minutes ahead of Eric de Turckheim's NMD 54 Teasing Machine of the Yacht Club de France team.
"We were quite fortunate with the weather conditions," confided Poortman. "We rounded the Rock in 10th or 11th, but still pretty close. Then the wind was always coming from behind, but it was moving over the course almost at the speed we were doing. Therefore the big boats were in less air all the way from the Fastnet to Alderney."
He continued: "To beat so many of these big teams is an absolute dream. In Holland it is exploding - the media is picking it up and sailors across the whole country are following it and loving it. It shows that you can enter and do well in the Admiral's Cup with an amateur crew if they train and prepare well."
It also nicely bookmarks a 26-year career in professional sailing for Poortman, who began his career as a 23-year-old winning the Admiral's Cup with the Dutch team in 1999 and most recently coaching youth sailors whose average age for the Admiral's Cup was 23, the youngest just 19 years old. Britain's Paul Standbridge, who raced on Black Pearl, first Admiral's Cup yacht to finish last night, is also hanging up his seaboots following a monumental pro sailing career dating back to the early 1980s.
Although they finished ninth overall in the Admiral's Cup, a third and a second for their boats made the Yacht Club de France clear winner of the Rolex Fastnet Race's Admiral's Cup classes.
Last night the Class40 was the last of the French 'pro' classes racing outside of the main IRC fleet to conclude their business in this the centenary Rolex Fastnet Race. In yet another photo finish - a margin of less than two minutes secured the Class40 victory for former Mini Transat winner Corentin Douguet and Axel Trehin's Lombard Lift v3 design Faites un don sur SNSM.org after 700 miles of tense, tightly fought racing. Impressively almost the entire first half of the 24-strong fleet finished in just 47 minutes. See full report here.
In the IRC fleet, with the last arrivals in IRC Super Zero last night, so Christian Zugel's upgraded VO70 Tschüss 2 has been confirmed as the winner, finishing on corrected time just over an hour ahead of Roy M Disney's turbo VO70 Pyewacket 70 with Joost Schuijff's Farr 100 Leopard 3 third. For a while Tschüss 2 seemed a strong contender for IRC Overall but she subsequently dropped down the leaderboard and is currently 22nd. Had she won she would have been the Rolex Fastnet Race's first yacht to win overall twice but under different names - she won in 2019 as the Askew brothers' Wizard. Sadly, the Rolex Fastnet Race was the swan song of Pyewacket 70 under her present owner and she is now up for sale (Disney still has another maxi yacht which he campaigns in the Transpac).
The upwind slog to the Fastnet Rock was to the liking of Norwegian Kenneth Bjoerklund's CND76 cruiser Enderpearl which won IRC Zero ahead of Eric Defert and round the world sailor Jean-Pierre Dick's Swan 76 La Loevie and the VO60 Boudragon of Dutch round the world sailor Hans Bouscholte, who bumped the class's line honours winner Australian David Griffiths' JV60 Whisper into fourth on corrected time.
Another heavyweight is currently prevailing in IRC One. In a truly impressive performance, the team on Australian Linda Goddard's Swan 53 cruiser Bedouin continues to hang on to first place in IRC One, ahead of several class favourites.
These include past overall Rolex Fastnet Race winner Géry Trentesaux's Sydney 43 GTS Long Courrier, who this year has been leading the RORC Season's Points Championship, and Ed Bell and the Mark Spearman-led crew on the JPK 1180 Dawn Treader. Currently second and third respectively, both suffered from a two hour time penalty imposed on them for being OCS at the start. Once again Ermanno Traverso's team on the still hotly campaigned 1961 line honours winner Stormvogel performed exceptionally, at present lying fifth in class and 27th overall. See the full report here.
In IRC Two, first home on the water at 11:22:15 BST today, and tentatively leading the class at present on corrected time (as well as IRC Overall AND IRC Two-Handed) were the familiar figures of Jean-Pierre Kelbert and Alexis Loison on Léon, only this year aboard one of the latest JPK 1050 models from Kelbert's Larmor-Plage based chantier.
Loison effectively 'owns' the IRC Two-Handed class. He won it first in 2005, the first occasion the RORC formally included a doublehanded class in the Rolex Fastnet Race, with his father Pascal on their J/105 Night And Day. In the ten races up until this one he had won it five times and in 2013 entered the history book when he and his father not only won IRC Two-Handed but also the race overall, a feature which Loison may again achieve this year. He last won IRC Two-Handed with Kelbert on the JPK 1030 Leon in 2019.
Loison's secret? "To do a lot of Solitaire au Figaros - it's the best offshore sailing school in the world. This is the same spirit: pushing the boat really hard all the time and to have the best strategy too. That achieves a good result. And this design is very successful because others of this model are doing very well in the race too. The design is inspired by the latest Class40s and maybe even IMOCAs while trying to keep the IRC spirit. The new design is crazy, especially going downwind. When we put the big spinnaker at the Fastnet Rock we were four knots faster than the other bigger boats."
Meanwhile IRC Three and Four are enjoying blasting back from the Rock in more pressure. This afternoon the bulk of the IRC Three fleet were mid-Channel due south of Start Point.
Out in front on the water and lying second overall under IRC was Philippe Girardin's J/120 Hey Jude, while leader Jean Cruse's A-35 Crew's Control was ahead and Rob Craigie and RORC Commodore Deb Fish's Sun Fast 3600 Bellino was lying a close third, 17 minutes behind the leader.
Meanwhile Ian Griffiths and Arlo Braund's Dehler 30 Black Betty and Ian Hoddle and Nicky Curwen's Sun Fast 3300 Gameon were on a flier, making their way around the north side of the Casquets TSS.
Not far behind is IRC Four where Romain Gibon and Alban Mesnil's JPK 1010 Abracadabra 2 is leading both on the water, immediately to the west of the Casquets TSS, and on corrected time albeit with Ludovic Menahes's JPK 1010 Raphael on her transom (and second under corrected time) - a match race that looks like it will continue to the finish.
Latest results here.