The 50th edition of The Rolex Fastnet Race has gone supernova, with 494 yachts currently registered, including around 3,000 crew from 32 nations.
The 2023 edition of the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s flagship event, the Rolex Fastnet Race will set sail in just under two months’ time on Saturday 22 July from Cowes to Cherbourg-en-Cotentin in northern France via the Fastnet Rock.
The fleet for the 600 mile offshore race has been growing steadily with every edition up until 2019 when it hit the present record of 388 yachts.
For this special edition entries are coming from across the globe, but none is making a greater effort line than Paddy Broughton and his crew on the famous 73ft maxi yawl Kialoa II. Originally raced by the great maxi yacht campaigner Jim Kilroy over 1963-74, Kialoa II was second home in the 1969 Fastnet Race.
Since 2016 it has been owned by English brothers Paddy and Keith Broughton who have sought to recreate Kilroy’s globe-trotting race programme. This included competing in the 2017 Rolex Fastnet Race.
Most recently Kialoa II competed in the 2022 Rolex Sydney to Hobart Race and has since been delivered from Sydney, all the way across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal and Caribbean, across the Atlantic to the UK on her own bottom (a Kilroy tradition). She is due to complete this four month odyssey this weekend.
Several entries have been bought especially or even built especially to take part in the race.
Among the most high profile of these is RORC Commodore James Neville’s Carkeek 45 Ino Noir and the CF520 Rán 8 of 2009 and 2011 overall race winner Niklas Zennström, and the new Lann Ael 3, a Sam Manuard-Bernard Nivelt designed 35 footer for 2017 race winner Didier Gaudoux.
The 50th edition of the Rolex Fastnet Race starts from Cowes, Isle of Wight on Saturday 22nd July.
For further information, please go to the Rolex Fastnet Race website: https://www.rolexfastnetrace.com/
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