When the first Fastnet Race was sailed in 1925 amidst controversy over the foolhardiness of bringing “reckless competition” into ocean voyaging, the last thing on the organisers’ mind was the crazy thought that by 2023, with the 50th Fastnet getting underway this Saturday (June 22nd), a significant number of boats will be racing with family-oriented crews, in some cases with as many or even more women than men, including some notably young people.

In 1925, it seems there were no women in any of the seven crews. And despite the fact that, just seven years earlier in the Great War of 1914-18, boys in their teens had been sent to almost-certain death on the front line, the impression of 1925 is of an all-male ruggedly adult lineup which subscribed to the notion that the necessary stamina and toughness came only with male maturity.

WOMAN SAILOR IN THIRD FASTNET RACE

It wasn’t until the third race in 1927 that there was a woman recorded as starting the race as crew, and she was aboard Conor O’Brien’s world-girdling Saoirse - we’ll elucidate the facts on that intriguing snippet in more detail in Sailing on Saturday’s race morning overview. Meanwhile, back in the day in the RORC’s annual programme, things continued to improve, such by the early 1930s the annual season-long championship was won by the Hunt family with their fast and able gaff cutter Spica.

1977 Fastnet Race overall winner Imp on her way ten years later to win the Philip Whitehead Cup in the 1987 Fastnet for Roy Dickson of Howth. In 2023’s race, she is being campaigned by Royal Cork’s George Radley II & George Radley III

Fast forward to 2023, and this week sees three of the Royal Cork YC entries with a clear family emphasis positioning themselves in the Solent area for Saturday’s extraordinary starting sequence, which will now involve 460-plus boats and still counting. George Radley’s legendary Holland 39 Imp – overall Fastnet winner in 1977 under the ownership of Skip Allen of San Francisco, and subsequent winner of the race’s Philip Whitehead Cup ten years later for Howth’s Roy Dickson – will have owner George Radley of Cobh and his son George Jnr aboard. My reckoning makes them George II and George III, but we may be much further down the line than that, as George Radleys seem to have been in and around Cork Harbour sailing for quite some time.

Then yesterday (Monday) morning, Noel Coleman’s Oyster 37 Blue Oyster took her departure from Crosshaven with daughter Karen and nephew Alan on board, soon followed by the ICRA 2021 Champion Nieulargo, the Grand Soleil 40 campaigned by RCYC Vice Admiral Annamarie Fegan and her husband Denis Murphy, with lead roles in their personnel lineup being filled by their daughters Molly and Mia. This means there’ll be four women on board in all for the race, as will also be the case on Blue Oyster.

The Coleman family’s Oyster 37 Blue Oyster is a family-friendly boat. Photo: Robert Bateman

Forecasting the weather in the current volatile conditions is even more of a guessing game than usual, but it looks like being a classic Fastnet Race start, beating into a westerly. Fortunately, you have most of the width of the Solent for the starting line if you want to avoid the usual melee close in at the Squadron end, but as Kenneth Rumball of Dun Laoghaire’s National Sailing School so effectively demonstrated on his way to victory with the J/109 Jedi in 2017, a good if inevitably port tack start in there in the thick of it sets up crew morale for the rest of the race.

Nerves of steel – Kenneth Rumball’s brilliant port tack start at the inner end of the line with Jedi in the 2017 Fastnet Race. Photo: Carlo Borlenghi/Rolex