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Chieftain Wins Fastnet |
(17.08.2007) - Ger O'Rourke's Cookson 50, Chieftain (IRL), has been confirmed as the overall winner of the Rolex Fastnet Race. The Farr-designed carbon fibre yacht finished Wednesday night at 19:43:44 local time with an elapsed sailing time of 55:04:43.
O'Rourke, the first Irish trophy winner, will be awarded the Fastnet Challenge Cup and a Rolex Yacht-Master timepiece at the prizegiving on Friday, 17 August at the historic Royal Citadel in Plymouth.
O'Rourke, a property developer from Limerick, Ireland has been sailing for the past 20 years, cruising on a succession of 30-40 footers along the south coast of Ireland, before he got the racing bug, sailing out of the
Western Yacht Club in Kilrush, County Clare as crew on some race boats. He then started racing dinghies and worked his way up to bigger grand-prix yachts.
Chieftain was built in 2005 at Cookson's in New Zealand. It was the fifth Cookson 50-foot design built at the yard, but with some key modifications including adding a single forward canard and removing the trim tab. The
boat has had some good success, including this summer's HSH Nordbank Blue Race (transatlantic race from Newport to Hamburg), where the boat was 2nd across the line, 2nd in class, and 1st in IRM class.
As for Chieftain's prior race history, shortly after it was launched the boat went straight to Australia for Hamilton Island Race Week, where it came in 5th, it then won class in the 2005 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race before being shipped to Ireland. Back home, Chieftain competed in all of
the 2006 season RORC races and won class in the Round Ireland, won overall in Round Britain and Ireland Race, and were deservedly awarded Boat of the Year in Ireland in 2006. At the 2007 Antigua Sailing Week the boat beat
ABN AMRO on handicap once, and then it headed north to Newport, Rhode Island and the transatlantic race earlier this summer.
As of the latest OC Tracker position update at 1300 BST, leading on corrected time are Rambler (USA) in IRC Super Zero; Chieftain (IRL) in IRC SZ Canting Keel and overall; Courrier des Coeur (FRA) in IRC Zero; Scarlet Oyster (GBR) in IRC 1; Foggy Dew (FRA) in IRC 2; Persephone of London (GBR) in IRC 3, and PRB, in the Open 60 class.
As of Thursday at 1300 BST, 22 yachts had finished, 45 yachts are racing and approximately 204 yachts have retired from the race.
* The newly-launched Class 40 monohull, 40 degrees, co-skippered by British sailors Miranda Merron and Peter Harding with three crew onboard, crossed the finish line at 15:36:11 BST.
Merron and Harding will be racing in this November's Transat Jacques Vabre - Merron has raced it three times before -- and used the Rolex Fastnet as a competitive testing ground for the new boat.
As for the breeze and sea state during the first nights, Merron said "it was just very, deeply unpleasant, but we have a seaworthy boat and expect it to be able to handle the conditions and expect the crew to be able to as well."
After the launch in late June in South Africa, the boat was shipped to Spain before sailing a 450 mile passage from Vigo to La Rochelle in a "full Biscay blow, but downwind so that was all right. It was the first real test of the boat", then raced in the Class 40 Worlds and came in 2nd. Next
Merron and Harding did their obligatory double-handed 1,000 mile qualifier for the the Transat Jacques Vabre straight off the back of that, before Skandia Cowes Week and the Rolex Fastnet Race.
Crewmember Fraser Brown has sailed many ocean miles on 60+ footers and found the smaller boat physically testing. Referencing the 608-mile race just completed he said with a smile "it's long way on a 40-footer" after logging 74 hours at sea in very testing conditions.
Brown continued, "For a 40-foot boat. it was very moguly and the boat is like a cork in the seaway. It's the first time I've been in a 40-foot boat in a very long time. In a 60-foot boat you push through it much better. It's the difference of having 2 tons of ballast - and forward ballast - instead of 750kg. You have to really change your way of sailing to get through the seaway."
The crew looked a bit worn, but given the pounding not that bad. "We were pretty knackered coming down last night. I must say the trip up to the rock was pretty hard, No one actually ate anything of substance for 48 hours. We had a stew on the boat we managed to get down in the early hours of Monday night and Tuesday morning. After that no one got anything into them besides some fresh fruit and chocolate for 48 hours because the conditions were so horrible. I don't think you really sleep, you close your eyes, but you're not really sleeping, you're banging around. You get up on deck and you're pretty wiped out."
http://fastnet.rorc.org
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Marv Novak, Seabrook/TX (US) (E-mail)
2007-08-17 22:14:46 UTC
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