Russian Dolls

In getting ready for the Race to the Azores and Back, the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club - the Club that is organising the race require in the Notice of Race that we need to do a non-stop qualifying passage of at least 300 Nautical miles most of which must be offshore and out of the sight of land.

Conveniently, the RCYC also run a race called the Yachting Monthly Celtic Triangle race which is run over three legs and goes from Falmouth in Cornwall to Kinsale in southern Ireland, then from Kinsale to Treguier in France, via the Fastnet Rock and finally from Treguier to Fowey back in Cornwall. The race is run over about 10 days with prizes for each leg of the race. In addition to the normal first second and third, there is also a prixe for the Ancient Mariners, that is for the crew with the shortest time but with a combined age of at least 120 years. Sadly, we qualify for that too!!

Helpfully, the second leg (Kinsale to Treguier) is also a qualifying passage for the AZAB. However .........

Before we can do the YM Celtic Triangle, we need to do a qualifying passage! That one though is a little shorter at 125 nautical miles. Hence the Russian Dolls, we need to do a qualifying passage in order to do a qualifying passage in order to do the race that we wanted to enter in the first place (the AZAB)!

To that end, we did a qualifying passage from Portland to Le Havre in late April, setting off from Portland mid- morning to ensure that we also did an overnight segment on the way (one of the requirements of the rules). The track that we took from Portland to Le Havre is shown in red on the chart below.

Incidentally, if you want to know more about the YM Celtic Triangle race, there is a great article in the May edition of Yachting Monthly, which even has a small feature on Mark and Martyn.

Qualifying Passage GPX