Rolex (Other watch brands are available) Fastnet Race 2025
Every sport has its classics—races in iconic locations and over grueling distances. Cycling has the ‘Monument Classics’: Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo. Great races about 300 km in length and in historic cycling locations. Running has the world marathon majors like London and Tokyo. Sailing? Sailing has races like the Rolex Fastnet, Middle Sea, and Sydney Hobart, all races between 600 and 700 miles in historic sailing locations: Cowes, Malta, and Sydney. For the 100th anniversary edition, I’d be racing with Ellie Driver on her Figaro 3, “Women’s Engineering Society.”
The Fastnet Rock
Passing the Fastnet Rock, the summit of the mountain we’d been chasing for 60 hours of upwind sailing, we started the fun part: a 48-hour downwind spinnaker session (for non-sailing friends, this is the biggest and most powerful sail), feeling like we were running back down the mountain!
Except there was work to do. We were sitting miles back from those battling for the first Figaro home prize. Ellie and I chatted strategy to try to win every meter we could over the next 300 miles.
Back to the Start
Our race hadn’t always required a 20-mile recovery to get back to the front; in fact, we nailed the start in Cowes 52 hours earlier. We battled our way into a nice position on the IRC One (for boats between 15 to 18 meters) start line. As we accelerated across the line with the gun going, it dawned on us just how tiny our little 9-meter Figaro was racing against those the organizers had deemed “fair racing.”
We knew the opening three hours sailing out of the Needles would be horrible, but we weren’t ready for just how horrible it would be. Our tiny boat couldn’t hold its place in speed or angle. Muscled out of every gap we fought for, I’ll be honest: it was hard to keep a positive mindset.
South Coast
Two Brits racing on home waters along the south coast, passing places Ellie and I have been racing since childhood—you’d think we’d nail the strategy over our French rivals! You’d be wrong. Committed to looking for small plays along the south coast, which didn’t work, we ended up sailing extra distance while others went wide of the coast. Narrowly missing all the key tidal windows only compounded our error.
We were at the back of the Figaro fleet, hanging on, trying to keep our heads up. Down on morale, we hesitated too much at the Isles of Scilly and lost even more distance.
Irish Sea
On our way north to “the rock,” we started making clearer and clearer decisions. We built a longer-term plan and began to believe that in the building breeze, we could push harder than everyone around us. As the wind built up to 30 knots (55 kph), we believed in our abilities to push hard in these tough conditions while others started to back off. At 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, we went around the Fastnet Rock, and for the fifth time in a row for me, it was at night.
There’s a massive rock somewhere in this photo
The Downhill Run
And so there we were at the top of the metaphorical mountain. Sailing around the Fastnet Rock is tricky; there’s an exclusion zone two minutes after leaving, leaving no room for problems or errors. We took the cautious approach and created some space before hoisting our kite and began a 48-hour maximum attack downwind session. Pushing like crazy, we had a brief chat about whether we could actually hold this crazy pace until the end, and we decided to keep going.
We started picking off boats one by one, then in groups. We picked our moment to head towards the south of the Isles of Scilly. Passing ever larger boats, our morale only increased.
The Channel
Back into the Channel, the wind began to soften, and so did our smiles, but that didn’t slow us down relative to the others. We tried to use those in front as a reference point for where the wind holes lay.
Remember how we messed up the English side of the race strategically? Well, going along the coast of France, we made good decision after good decision. We took risks, and almost all of them paid off. How on earth we managed this, I’m not sure, but I guess we’re becoming French.
The Channel Islands
The final dance of this 4-day race was passing through Europe’s most tidal place, the Island of Alderney. To our joy, we found the 2nd place Figaro, and we were on the podium in our category. Now, we just had to see how high we could get!
Smelling blood (not really), we agreed on one last meal and a big push to the end. Playing with the current as it shifted from against us to with us, we made our final strategic move. By linking two tidal back eddies, we aimed to see if we could pass. It was a nervous 30 minutes, but our risk paid off, and we passed them by 300 meters with 9 miles or 1 hour of racing to go.
We pushed to the end, getting as close to the rocks as we could to reduce the distance we had to race.
We crossed the line in second, happy with an epic comeback but annoyed at our earlier errors.
After hugs and high fives, we looked at our results and learned that the team we thought had beaten us received a 2-hour time penalty for a false start! Ultimately, we had won our category; we had come back to win, although we were too exhausted to really celebrate.