A tiny winning margin, barely five minutes, was enough to secure the clubhouse lead in the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Yacht Race on Thursday evening for French entry SL Energies Groupe Fastwave.
Skipper Laurent Charmy and his crew had just left the showers at Wicklow Sailing Club and were preparing their 36-foot yacht to return to Dún Laoghaire when they realised the conditions were favouring them.
Chasing hard was the 33-footer Snapshot from Howth, one of the smallest boats in the 44-strong fleet that started the 705-nautical-mile course on Saturday.
After days of light winds and total calm on the Irish Sea for the final 100 miles, the turning of the tide every six hours had a huge influence on the standings at Wicklow.
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For brothers Mike and Ritchie Evans on the Dublin boat, the sorely needed wind they were relying on only filled in after passing Dublin Bay.
As they neared the finishing line Charmy and his crew lined the pier at Wicklow and counted down the minutes remaining in the handicap time difference that would decide which of the boats would take the lead in the overall standings.
After almost 150 hours at sea, five minutes was the equivalent of a 0.055 per cent margin — a split second in offshore racing terms.
“We really enjoyed the first day, it was very fast,” Charmy said at Wicklow SC afterwards. “Then we got to the West coast and it got very rough, very difficult waves and lots of seasickness.”
The provisional win for Fastwave sits along with their victory in the round Corsica race that followed the Middle Sea Race. The Round Ireland was on their growing bucket list of projects.
Mike Evans, on his first long offshore race, was ecstatic with provisional second overall.
“The boat was definitely tougher than us and held together really well, no issues and no leaks,” he said. “It was a very confused sea with waves coming from different directions.”
However, with just over one-third of the fleet finished and boats still battling light winds as far north as Belfast Lough, organisers at Wicklow SC would not declare an official result pending more certainty the standings would not change.
The fresh winds and blue skies that greeted Thursday’s finishers were expected to extend northwards, which could aid those still at sea.
In what has become a small boat year for the Round Ireland race, numerous noteworthy performances were achieved, and not by the universal goal of finishing the course.
For those crews who endured the pasting off the Blaskets on Sunday, keeping going to reach easier conditions in more sheltered waters might have seen faster times for the smaller, lower handicapped entries still at sea and expected to finish on Friday.
