Back Before Breakfast

A cracking Round the Island Race saw a new record set and one of the highest finisher rates in recent years.

- Toby Heppell

None of the talk ahead of this year’s Round the Island Race in association with Cloudy Bay was of records falling. The forecast had been for a fairly slow race with winds in the mid-teens due to moderate as sun started to shine in the late afternoon. But, fall they did.

Ultimately, it was the MOD70, Concise 10 in the limelight, and rightly so as Ned Collier-Wakefield steered the 70ft trimaran to set a thrilling race record of 2 hours, 22 minutes, 23 seconds – shaving exactly a minute off the time set by Phaedo3 in 2016. 

It was not an especially clement start as the first boats set offat 0530 in a north-northwesterly breeze in the high teens and a scattering of rain.

At least the wind and rain helped wake the competitors up a little and perhaps wash away some of the excesses from the night before. The early weather also conspired to give the 1,342 racers a fast start, close reaching down the Solent with the tide beneath them; there were personal best times recorded to the Needles across the board.

Concise 10, easily the fastest boat on the water, started at 0540, made the Needles by 0610 and went on to make St Catherine’s Point at around 0650.