St. Malo Race

The RORC Season’s Points Championship continued last weekend with the highly popular Cowes Dinard-St. Malo Race (Cowes, England). With 173 entries, the 151 nautical mile race featured the largest RORC fleet since the 2013 Rolex Fastnet Race. With an 0850 hrs start time, the teams sail west out of the Solent and around marks consisting of Casquets-Les Hanois-St. Malo finish. The weather forecast was promising, but no one expected race records to be set. In short, the weather was fabulous, the breeze on big time and the race was nothing short of sensational. In IRC Two-Handed, three British teams racing J/105s swept the podium. Alex Adams and Chris Holliman on Voador won the class from Jester, sailed by Kelvin Rawlings and Stuart Childerley. Nick Martin’s Diablo-J was third. That was quite an extraordinary feat for the 20+ year old J/105 design, sailing against all the latest hot IRC designs from European boat shops! The three J/105’s performances were so emphatic that the same three J/105s took sixth, seventh and ninth in IRC Overall, crushing many of the top JPK 10.10s and JPK 10.80s and Sun Fast 3600s in the process. If that weren’t enough, trophies for this trio of J/105s, Voador, Jester and Diablo-J also took fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively, in IRC Three class (a fully-crewed division).