Tactical challenges ahead for final race of IRC Two-Handed European Championship

Organised by the Royal Ocean Racing Club in association with l'UNCL Pôle Course du YCF, La Société Nautique de la Trinité sur mer, and Société Nautique de la baie de St Malo.

The Royal Ocean Racing Club's 150-mile Cowes Dinard St Malo race looks set to serve up a series of tactical challenges for the 57 double-handed teams competing in the inaugural Double-Handed IRC European Championship.

At first glance the course looks deceptively simple: west out of the Solent, then across the Channel, leaving all the Channel Islands and associated rocks to port, hang a left turn at the south-west corner of Guernsey, skirt the edge of the Minquiers plateau, then straight line for the last 15 miles to the finish. However, in reality it's often a testing race for navigators. Last year, for instance, one of the top Sun Fast 3300s lost out when sucked towards the wrong side of the Casquets lighthouse, west of Alderney, by the tide which can reach 5-7 knots. 

Extract Christian Dumard Weather Briefing

Less than 24 hours before this year’s start there is still plenty of uncertainty in the forecast, with Christian Dumard reminding competitors in RORC’s pre-race weather briefing the night before the start that: “there’s not good reliability of the high resolution weather models at the moment.”

A key influence will be weak weather fronts moving across the English Channel on the first night and following morning. It’s not yet clear whether these will be experienced as separate and distinct features, with four associated wind shifts, or if they will all merge together by the time they reach the fleet.

 As a result teams will be anxiously updating forecasts whenever they have a data signal. Dumard also advised competitors to look at the live rain radar output on Windy, saying this should show distinct bands of rain if the fronts remain separate features. If this is the case the wind will veer from the east to southeast and then southwest with the passage of each one, before swinging back to east of south as the next approaches. Managing this aspect of the weather successfully will be critical to the final result.

French competitors with local knowledge were perhaps advantaged along the south Brittany coast in the critical early stages of the first race of the championship, a 350-mile course from La Trinité to Cowes. Will the advantage pass to the British boats for the Cowes – St Malo race?

“I doubt it – they sail too well,” says Deb Fish, co-skipper with Rob Craigie on his Sun Fast 3600 Bellino, which is currently leading the RORC double handed season’s points. “It's interesting because the French sailors are much more into coaching than we are and I think it shows in their results,” she continues. “They have small training groups for weather and strategy preparation, so I think they're going into a lot more detail on where to route and what the best tactics are. I suspect they'll have another briefing before the start tomorrow for an update.”

“In terms of local knowledge, I think most of us are equally as disadvantaged, because it's a place where we all go maybe once a year, but not all the time.”

“The biggest challenge will be working out what the weather is actually going to do, and then getting the boat in the right position for the wind shifts,” says Craigie. “There’s an advantage for us in that it’s not a screaming reach across the Channel, then a beat all the way to St Malo. There's a bit of more variety, which gives us a chance, as we have less sail area when reaching.”

Extract Christian Dumard Weather Briefing

“It looks like it will also be challenging at the St Malo end, with more light airs,” adds Fish. “There's a definite rationale for getting a little bit of sleep so that you're not completely zonked by the end.”

She also cautions that exiting the Solent is not to be underestimated: “Often in a RORC race that first leg in the Solent is disproportionately important and you can pop out anything from 10 to 30 minutes ahead of your competitors and then keep that lead. From Christian’s weather briefing, we know the gradient breeze is southeasterly, but in the Western Solent the UKV model is showing next to no wind at the start, because a weak south-westerly sea breeze will be fighting it.”