A livelier than expected sea off the Needles and a dying wind at the back end of the day favoured the larger yachts on this year’s Isle of Wight circumnavigation.

In fact, matters got off to a particularly bad start for one J80, Redshift. She collided with a larger competing yacht in the Western Solent and suffered a dismasting and severe damage to her port bow. The lifeboat was called to retrieve three injured crew from the smaller craft but all have been subsequently passed medical checks and left for home.

The larger yacht, Jackdaw, stood by Redshift to assist in the clean-up operation (pictured) and the J80 was later successfully towed into Cowes.

In another incident, Russell Peters’ Ultra 30 Reloaded Red Square lost a crewmember, Jerry Hill, over the side whilst south of the Isle of Wight, but he was retrieved successfully.

Reloaded Red Square finally completed the circumnavigation in 4hr 26min 22sec but she was beaten to a new Hoya Round the Island record by the 90ft super-sloop Skandia-Leopard which set a time of 4hr 8min 55sec. A second Ultra, Hoya, sailed by Olympic silver medallists Ian Barker and Simon Hiscocks arrived across the line just 23 seconds after Reloaded Red Square.

Whilst there were no notable successes, it was clear there were many plucky performances amongst the smaller and sportier end of the 1,735 yacht fleet that made up today’s race. Under grey skies and rain it couldn’t have been comfortable in the open-cockpit boats but the turnout was impressive, helping to make it this event’s second largest ever number of competitors.

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