Plymouth Fastnet 500 race starts today
By The Captain | Beagle maritime correspondent
Special report | Sunday August 16, 2026
At midday today the Fastnet 500 will start from a line between the Melampus Buoy (the red can buoy SE of Drake’s Island) and F Buoy, which is at the southerly end of Jennycliff Bay.
The finish line is between the Royal Western Yacht Club (RWYC) at Queen Anne’s Battery (QAB) and TS5 – the most easterly buoy in the trot off Mount Batten.
The Fastnet Race is run biennially and is about 695 miles long. It used to run from the Royal Yacht Squadron line off Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, to Plymouth Sound via the Fastnet off Southern Ireland.
Since 2021, for various reasons, including the inability of Plymouth to host the number and size of the competing boats, the Fastnet has finished at Cherbourg. The shorter (500 miles long) Fastnet 500 is easier, logistically, as both start and finish are not only in the same city, but also the same country.
However, both races head out into the Atlantic and the weather can be very challenging – as the 1979 race, that started on 11th August, proved. This race turned into the largest ever peacetime rescue operation ever mounted from Britain, with units from the Royal Navy, the RNLI, the Coastguard, the RAF, the Irish Navy, the Royal Netherlands Navy and the US Navy involved. 303 boats started, but only 86 finished. Five sank and 24 were abandoned.
Twenty-one people died - fifteen were race participants and the other six were in boats accompanying or observing the race. Unsurprisingly, and quite rightly, the 1979 Fastnet changed all the rules and regulations for Ocean Racing.
This year’s Fastnet 500 has 8 entries – ranging from an Open 60 – a pure racing machine described as a ‘Formula 1’ car at sea - via a pair of Dazcat catamarans to five different 33-35 foot monohulls. The Open 60 - Super Bigou – has competed in five Round the World races – finishing four times and winning the race twice. It is likely that Super Bigou will be first over the line, but as each and every boat has their own handicap, the actual winner will not be known until more boats are back.
Even though the Open60s are a French class originally, perhaps, surprisingly, most boat manufacturers use feet in their type names, even if they are based in metric nations – so Open60s are 60’ long.
The two catamarans are both Dazcats – one Slinky Malinki is a Dazcat 1295 & the other, DMS Vinyl, a Dazcat 1495. Just to prove that the exception really does prove the rule, both these boats’ lengths are in metres (12.95 and 14.95 respectively) and Dazcats are designed and built at Millbrook, in Torpoint.
The other five entrants – Liamar, Nova, Jodo, Moonpath and Manu - are all monohulls and will, almost certainly, be slower round the course than the three above.
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