Irish sailing was well represented in the sprint of the MOD 70s to new records yesterday in the Volvo Round Ireland Race 2016, with Damian Foxall on board the first-to-finish Musandam-Oman, while Justin Slattery was only minutes away aboard Phaedo 3 writes W M Nixon. Yet oddly enough, as they have made their careers on the international stage, both of them were Round Ireland newbies. There’s nothing like starting at the top…

Admittedly the green jersey was absent from the new mono-hull record setter, the American Rambler 88, but we can take great encouragement from the showing by our boats in most of the IRC Divisions, with Class 3 in particular currently seeing a clean sweep as they race along the north coast.

Leading the class in some style – and lying third overall behind Rambler 88 and Eric de Turckheim’s Teasing Machine – is Paul O’Higgins’ very new JPK 10.80 Rockabill VI (RIYC), which was passing Inishtrahull at today’s 1630hrs position fix. This remarkable twin-rudder French design is proving to be such a consistently good performer in major events that she poses a problem for potential owners. Put bluntly, if you get a JPK 10.80 and don’t win races, then where are you going wrong?

Be that as it may, with a crew of all the talents built around Mark Pettit and Brian Mathews, Rockabill VI is going almost embarrassingly well, as any other boats around her are significantly larger, and the second-placed boat in Class 3 – Dave Cullen’s J/109 Euro Car Parks – is well astern off the east end of Tory Island. Nevertheless the Cullen boat has a massive lead on all the other J/109s, so her distant second in class is not so much a reflection on her own performance, rather it’s a reinforcement of the impression that the JPK 10.80 is in a league of her own.

Third in IRC 3 is Conor Fogerty’s Sunfast 3600 Bam!, (pictured above) which has certainly had her ups and downs in this tough race, but as we write she is sweeping past Bloody Foreland at a crisp 8 knots, shaping up to gybe for the west end of Tory Island.

In the overall rankings for Irish contenders, RORC Commodore Michael Boyd (RIYC) is next best after Rockabill VI, as his First 44.7 Lisa is fourth overall and second in Class 1 behind Teasing Machine, while Euro Car Parks is sixth OA, and Alan Hannon’s Reichel Pugh 45 Katsu is 7th.

Next up on the overall leaderboard for Ireland is Stephen Quinn’s little J/97 Lambay Rules at 10th, and she also lies second in Class 4 behind Patrice Carpentier’s Sunfast 3200 Groupe 5 from France. Carpentier is putting in a fantastic showing, as he is in the Two-Handed Division, which he now leads from Michel Kleinjan’s Open 40 Roaring Forty 2, with Ireland’s top representatives being Liam Coyne and Brian Flahive in the First 36.7 Lula Belle at fifth (pictured below).

All of these boats are still sailing in the lee of the land in southerly breezes along the north coast, although as anyone who has done the Round Ireland will readily affirm, being in the lee of the land does not necessarily prevent the North Coast from being one very restless bit of water.

But the larger leaders of the main pack of boats are now bashing their way into the Irish Sea, after battling with a foul ebb tide in the North Channel for the last five hours. Admittedly when the new flood starts to make at around 1900hrs, it will kick up a steep sea if the southerly wind stays at its current fresh level, but meanwhile during the north-going ebb, it has been a joy to watch the tactics of Eric de Turckheim’s Teasing Machine as she rock-hopped her way close inshore down the County Down coast to minimize the effects of the adverse stream.

On Saturday evening in the early stages of the race, she did exactly the same thing successfully along the Wexford coast from Cahore Point southwards. So having observed this latest bit of neat tide dodging, we can only assume that the French navigator aboard the de Turckheim boat once upon a time cruised the Irish coast in a very small boat, and learned that getting in out of the worst of the tide can make a great difference to progress.

Whatever way these skills were learned, Teasing Machine had just passed the South Rock Light at the 1700hrs position fix, and she now has less than 90 miles to go to the finish, whioe her neresty challenger, the Open 50 Pegasus, is over towards the isle of Man and a mile or two further from the finish.

But unlike Rambler 88 which was able to lay the course, today’s backing of the wind makes it almost inevitable that Teasing Machine and Pegasus are going to have to beat every inch of the way to Wicklow. As we wait for that arrival, there seems to be one inescapable message which boat owners can draw from the Volvo Round Ireland Race 2016. If you want to do well in the big time offshore races these days, get a second rudder.

IRC overall leader Rambler 88 is twin rudder configuration. So too is Teasing Machine in second overall. And it’s just the same with Rockabill VI in third.

There it is, folks. Old-fashioned single centre-line rudders are just sooooo yesterday…

See Round Ireland tracker here and keep to up to date with the fleet's progress with Afloat's regular Round Ireland 2016 updates here