Gareth Thomas and Trevor Griffiths sailing the J/120 Jalfrezi, made it a hat-trick of line honours victories in the Triangle Race, when they crossed the finishing line of the last leg in Torquay on Thursday evening.

However Thomas, from Plymouth, was not optimistic about his chances of repeating his corrected time win of the second leg, or an overall victory in the event.

“I just couldn’t shake them off,” he admitted, “I had the radar on, and I was able to pick them up, we got three and a half miles ahead, stretched it to four miles ahead, then back down to three and a half miles.

“The other guys sailed really well, because we were doing our damndest, and it just wasn’t going to happen for us.”

Eventually Jalfrezi crossed the Royal Torbay Yacht Club’s finishing line off the harbour entrance at 19:51, with the Grand Soliel on Brian Mills and Russell Farrington just under 15 minute astern.

Less than a minute later Stephen Gosling and Andrea Treat in Scarlet Jester cross the line, and from then on the fleet streamed in across Torbay, with plenty of close battles.

One of the contenders for overall honours, Dreamer a starlight 35 sailed by James Yallow and Gary Heward, battled all the way with brothers Andrew and David Smith in Fayme, finishing two minutes behind them.

Also in with a chance of winning is The Flying Fish, smallest boat in the race, in the hands of husband and wife team Kathy and Rupert Smalley, who finished at 21:46, after a fast trip across the English Channel.

They had a close tussle all the way with Robert Coates and Jeff Grist in Andromeda, their main rivals for victory in class 4.

“In the first half of the leg she got away,” Kathy said, “but when the wind went a bit further aft, and picked up to 20 knots, the boat started surfing, and we just managed to reel her in until we were two minutes behind, and we stayed that way for 50 miles, it was hard work.”

The leg was a fetch all the way, with only a few boat even trying to use spinnakers, which proved to be ineffective.