After what has seemed like weeks of harsh southwest to northwest winds in Atlantic waters along Ireland’s West Coast, the fleet starting Stage 1 of the 2000-mile Royal Western Round Britain & Ireland Race 2022 to the Genesys-sponsored Galway stopover from Plymouth on Sunday (May 29th) may find that conditions have relented. Instead of slugging into classic headwind conditions from Land’s End to Mizen head, they might be lucky enough to experience a beam reach across the Celtic Sea with a moderate nor’easter.
Galway’s high standing in international IT is emphasised by the Genesys position as the lead sponsor of the Port’s RB&I stopover
Admittedly we’re in a phase of volatile weather, and today’s predictions may well be much modified in three days’ time. But with a course as challenging as this, and with several small and not notably fast boats in the fleet, a relatively gentle start may be just what’s needed. For the reality is that the business of going through the pre-race preparations and qualifying – which in recent days have included the new mandatory out-of-water keel and rudder inspections – will have piled on the pressure in our time-starved era, and some crews start in a state of near exhaustion.
One boat which is definitely coming to the start line on Sunday in optimal psychological and sailing trim is local star Hissy Fit, a Dazcat 46 catamaran raced by Simon Baker of Royal Western YC and Dan Fellows from Saltash SC. The Hissy Fit team have a proven record, in that they placed a close second in 2018’s race. But that makes it unfinished business until 2022’s race is properly put away with the right result in place, for in 2018 after 16 days of actual racing (with 48-hour stopovers in each port), they were beaten into second place by just 43 seconds (repeat: forty-three seconds) on elapsed time, and 10 minutes and 40 seconds on corrected time.
The Dazcat 46 being the multihull connoisseur’s choice for performance cruising and racing while not being extreme, Hissy Fit is attracting some of the smart money. But some shrewd punters are backing the Essex duo of Andrew Fennell and Paddy Hutchings from West Mersea YC with the Shuttleworth tri Morpheus.
Essex Girl leaping to it – the Shuttleworth tri Morpheus from West Mersea YC performs some hard-hat sailing. Photo: Rolex/Carlo Borlenghi
And of course, the mono-hull division is a separate prize list altogether, with line honours likely to be taken by Ross Hobson’s Open 50 Pegasus from Northumberland, which we’ve seen performing in the Round Ireland Race. We’ve extra interest too in Kuba Szymanski’s First 40.7 Polished Manx from the Isle of Man, and Irish Sea involvement also takes in Milford Haven, home port of the youngest crew, 19-year-old Lou Boorman and her shipmate Elin Jones with the vintage Contessa 32 White Knight. But the mercurial Conor Fogerty with his Figaro 3 Raw has found that trying to combine the time-consuming RB&I Into his complex Figaro programme in France is logistically impossible, so he won’t be on the Plymouth starting line on Sunday.
Meanwhile, in Galway, Stopover Organiser Nigel Moss and his team from GBSC are putting the final pieces together in one very complex race management and hospitality structure, as each boat has to have its finish time recorded precisely so that exactly 48 hours later, it can start on Stage 2, which is the very long haul to Lerwick in the Shetlands.
When you’ve a fleet which ranges from a DazCat 46 and an Open 50 at one end, all the way down to a vintage Vertue 25 at the other, even by the time they get to Galway they’ll already be well spread out on both time and distance. So all power to Matteo Richardi from Porto Vecchio in Italy for entering his Vertue 25 Mea in the RB&I 2022. Having sailed from Ireland to Iceland and Spain in a Vertue 25, I can vouch for the Vertue’s remarkable comfort as a sea boat. Which is just as well, as Mea’s crew are going to spend a lot of time out on the ocean getting round this challenging 2,000 mile course.
Ross Hobson’s Open 50 Pegasus from Northumberland
