The 2019 edition of the Rolex Fastnet Race will start on Saturday 3rd August 2019, which is two weeks earlier than the original published date.
Unusually, the race will now run the week before Lendy Cowes Week, whose dates remain unchanged, starting on Saturday 10th August. This break with tradition, in consultation with Lendy Cowes Week, has been made for a number of reasons, including weather concerns over late August.
“We have been wrestling with this decision over the summer and particularly the relative timing with other events in Cowes and the Solent,” said RORC Commodore Steven Anderson. “A late August start has weather implications for our big fleet and we anticipated running into the summer bank holiday would cause difficulty for many participants. Bringing the race forward by two weeks addresses these issues and allows us to encourage the fleet into Cowes in the pre-race days before the start.”
Commenting on the change of date, RORC Racing Manager Chris Stone said:
“Bringing the race forward to Saturday 3rd August will give more time for those competitors who wish to race in Lendy Cowes Week. The prize giving in Plymouth will now be held on Thursday 8th August and this will allow competitors to make the journey back to the Solent in time to join the racing.”
More detailed information and the official Notice of Race will become available very soon on the Rolex Fastnet Race website: http://www.rolexfastnetrace.com/
Press release from RORC
Image shows Stormy Weather and Dorade rounding the Fastnet Rock in close combat in 2015. The two S&S inboard yawls, winners of the Fastnet Race in 1935 and in 1931/33 respectively, had duelled all the way down Channel from the start at the Squadron Line, on August 15 to round the famous landmark off southwest Ireland before dash- ing back across the Irish Sea to Plymouth to finish within half an hour of each other.

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)