Day 4 1900: In the approaches to Cherbourg, the notorious tidal streams are running favourably for Fastnet Racers approaching from the west this evening until about 22:30 hrs, at which time smaller slower boats may find that a gate has in effect been shut in their faces as the west-going ebb in the English Channel – or more properly La Manche on this French side of the storied waterway – begins to ebb with increasing vigour westward, reaching a two to three hour peak around half tide of sufficient speed to bring some of the little'uns effectively to a halt.
With those smaller slower boats still well down the line as the 300-plus Fastnet fleet continues over its new extended 695-mile course with the finish at Cherbourg rather than Plymouth, it will take time over the next two or three days to get a full picture of what the Cherbourg finish really means.
For now, the fact that the winds off Cherbourg are extremely light means that even the fastest boats are going to find the tidal effect playing a greater-than-normal role, and despite the favourable tide a usually swift machine like Richard Matthews' 52ft Oystercatcher XXXV has been struggling to get over seven knots in the final approaches to the finish.
This makes it a ferocious race against time and tide for a boat 30 miles astern, a boat which used to be in the Matthews stable, but is now James Neville's INO XXX and is currently (18:30 hrs) making better than 8 knots over the ground.
All of this is largely of academic concern for most of the boats of Irish interest, as they're generally still on the long haul from the Fastnet Rock to the Bishop Rock in the Isles of Scilly, or east of the Bishop in the approaches to the English Channel. Thus while INO XXX currently leads IRC1 by an impressive margin, the Lombard 46 Pata Negra of Pwllheli SC (Andrew Hall) is now fourth in IRC1, but with a substantial 112 miles still to sail to Cherbourg.
IRC 3 has been a special area of interest, but here the mega-talented Alexis Loison of France continues to lead with the JPK 10.30 Leon, and he also heads the IRC Two-Handed Division (his co-skipper is Guillaume Pirouelle), while the best-placed Irish continues to be the Murphy family's Grand Soleil 40 Nieulargo, in eighth position, with 231 miles to the finish.
In IRC4, Irish Offshore Sailing's Sunfast 37 Desert Star from Dun Laoghaire had almost got herself back into single figures, but during the past hour has slipped back to 13th with 274 miles to sail.
Up ahead, Kenneth Rumball and Pamela Lee continue to lead the now three-boat Figaro 3 two-handed class with RL Sailing, they've opened out a useful lead of better than two hours, and will shortly have less than 200 miles to race to the finish.
By the time they and the other Irish boats have got to this new Cherbourg line, we'll have a clearer picture of just how big a role that tide-riven approach to the finish is going to play. But it looks as though the big southwest winds expected tomorrow (Thursday) off the west coast of Ireland won't be spreading their tentacles sufficiently far to the southeast to significantly affect the Fastnet finish.
That said, apart from the biggest of the biggies, this race is still far from over with regard to the final placings
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