Stormy’s Chris Spray said of this moment: “We rounded the Fastnet rock a boat length or so ahead
of Dorade. To achieve that we actually had to pass them to leeward on our final tack in, which I frankly didn’t believe was possible. Dorade forced us to time our final tack to the rock with absolutely no margin for error so it was white knuckles on the tiller all the way in, with that huge forbidding rock staring me in the face. I aged about three years in those 10 minutes, but miraculously rejuvenated when we managed to pull it off! If only we could have fended them off all the way back to Plymouth! Dorade is sailed with great precision and they are extremely slippery downwind. We prayed for errors but they didn’t make any…
“It’s a huge credit to Olin Stephens that two of his early, but great, designs can still place so high in the fleet 80-85 years on.”
Photo: Daniel Forster/Rolex (From CS001)