‘Modern classics' converge on record-breaking centenary Rolex Fastnet Race
by James Boyd / RORC 11 Mar 10:12 GMT
26 July 2025
Ermanno Traverso's 74ft ketch Stormvogel at the start of the Rolex Fastnet Race © Paul Wyeth / pwpictures.com
This year's special centenary edition of the Royal Ocean Racing Club's Rolex Fastnet Race may have the biggest fleet on record when it sets sail from Cowes on 26 July.
In 2023 the race had 430 entries of which 381 were racing under corrected time for the main prize, the Fastnet Challenge Cup - the largest fleet of IRC yachts ever assembled. Registrations in the 2025 race for the IRC fleet alone (excluding the Ultimes, IMOCAs, Class40s, Ocean 50s and MOCRA multihulls which race in their own classes) currently stand at 401.
While entrants have still to comply with the race's stringent qualification requirements, at present the centenary Rolex Fastnet Race seems set to have yet another record-sized fleet, spanning Seng Huang Lee's 100ft SHK Scallywag to the Contessa 32s, Sigma 33s and a Hustler 35 at the opposite end of the rating spectrum.
While no pre-WW2 yachts are entered, there are many examples of yacht genres from the second half of the 20th century, that have helped the Fastnet become the world's largest offshore yacht race.
It will be a great privilege again to see Stormvogel competing for a third consecutive edition. The 74ft ketch was launched in 1961 and campaigned by Dutch plywood pioneer Kees Bruynzeel, who had won the race outright with his S&S 57 Zeearend in 1937. Following her launch in South Africa, Stormvogel's first race in 1961 was the Fastnet in which she claimed line honours. Over the next decade she went to on achieve success in all of the world's major offshore races. Remarkably her present custodian, Italian Ermanno Traverso has owned Stormvogel since 1982. During his tenure she has starred in the film Dead Calm and undergone various refits/rebuilds, most recently in Turkey starting in 2014. Despite Stormvogel's age, Traverso's crew continues to race her hard and with impressive results: she finished the breezy 2021 Rolex Fastnet Race seventh overall in the IRC fleet of 269 yachts.
Of a marginally later vintage is the 1969 Alan Gurney-designed Crusade, originally campaigned by Sir Max Aitken, while Eric van den Born is racing the 1973 vintage Stardust, one of the last Nicholson 43s built. Hiroshi Nakajima's 1971 Frers-designed Swan 49 Hiro Maru knows the way having competed in the last three editions, starting with the 2019 race, which followed her winning class in the west to east Transatlantic Race. A boat as intriguing as she is good looking is the 59ft Nielsen-designed, Hound, built in aluminium by Abeking and Rasmussen in 1970. Today she is campaigned by Dan Litchfield, who has updated her rudder and keel and had a carbon mast fitted.
New York designers Sparkman & Stephens cut their teeth in the Fastnet Race when Olin and Rod Stephens sailed Dorade, one of Olin's earliest designs, to overall victory in 1931 and 1933. This year there is a strong turn-out of their subsequent designs including the mighty Kialoa II, famously campaigned back in the 1960s by American Jim Kilroy and second home in the 1969 Fastnet Race. The 73ft yawl competed in 2017 and 2023 Rolex Fastnet Races and is back for a third time under her present Anglo-Australian owner Paddy Broughton. Also from this era are Robert Nichols' S&S-designed Swan 48 Snow Wolf from 1972 and the 1969 Swan 43 Reindeer, in which present owner Jack Meredith has competed in five Rolex Fastnet Races (2005-2007, 2019-2023). A previous owner, E Newbold Smith wrote a book about his adventures taking the appropriately-named Reindeer up to Spitzbergen.
Then there is Sunstone, the 1965 vintage S&S 40 - truly the ultimate cruiser racer having excelled as both. Long term owners Tom and Vicky Jackson famously beat an Admiral's Cup fleet in the 1985 Fastnet and Channel Race, winning the latter overall, then in the 1990s accumulated much silverware under both IMS and CHS. Six times Sunstone won the RORC Season's Points Championship and she also won her class four times in the Fastnet Race. From 1997 the Jacksons took Sunstone on an extended world cruise, that literally spanned the four corners of the globe, including New Zealand and Alaska. Finally they sold their beloved home in 2021 to Will Taylor-Jones, MD of Fox's Marina in Ipswich, who uses her for cruising and racing with his family. The Taylor-Joneses competed in the last Rolex Fastnet Race but were forced to retire.
The 2025 entry includes six Sigma 38s. Originally this David Thomas one design was the result of a design competition held jointly by the RORC and the Royal Thames YC in 1985, to come up with a yacht able to withstand the rigors of offshore racing, incorporating design improvements introduced following the 1979 Fastnet Race Enquiry. The six include the favourite, Chris and Vanessa Choules' With Alacrity which was once again top Sigma 38 and third in IRC 4 in 2023 (but top fully-crewed yacht).
With a successful return of the Admiral's Cup anticipated, there are at least three significant yachts to compliment that. The 1971 vintage Nicholson 55 Quailo III, originally owned by RORC Commodore and Admiral Don Parr, in 1973 was part of the British Admiral's Cup team and won the Southern Cross Cup. She is entered by RORC Committee member Andrew Tseng, who has owned her since 2018. Graduating up from a five tonne J/109, to the 22 tonne Quailo, Tseng says required both him and his crew to relearn sailing. "All sorts of things are different, gaining momentum through tacks, putting the spinnaker up, etc. Everything has a lot more power. And we have got a pole on the Nicholson 55, although we sail with an asymmetric off it. We have symmetric kites but we have not really used them." Quailo III has her original interior but a new carbon fibre mast that is now fractional.
The Polish-crewed Fujimo AB is a Judel Vrolijk Two Tonner originally built as Rubin X for Hans-Otto Schümann. That a boat and crew of this calibre failed to make the German Admiral's Cup team in 1987 demonstrates how tough the competition was then to get a berth on your nation's Admiral's Cup team. Another Two Tonner entered is the 1978 Peterson design Snifix Dry of German Dirk Lahmann. She took part in the 2021 and 2023 races and the Sevenstar Round Britain & Ireland Race in between "...not too bad if you take into account that our 2021 race was intended as a 'once-in-a-lifetime-event' for the crew and the boat," Lahmann explains. "But the Fastnet has a very special addictive factor which even captures elderly gentlemen - this year the average age of our crew of four is 65."
Also signed up is Panther, a Mumm 36 which was the result of another successful competition run by the RORC looking for a one design to be the Admiral's Cup new Class 3 'small boat', subsequently adopted for the 1995 to 1999 events. Owner James Stableford has campaigned Panther for many years, his last full RORC season being in 2002.
Several examples of VO60s, VO70s and the more recent one design VO65s are entered in this year's race but among the previous generation IOR Whitbread boats is the Baltic 55 Outlaw, the former Equity & Law which competed in the 1985 round the world race. More recently with present owner Australian Campbell Mackie she took part in the 2023 Ocean Globe Race.
For further information, please go to the race website: rolexfastnetrace.com or see the Entry list