Countdown to Fastnet Ocean race start

August 7, 2005 Final preparations are underway in Cowes for the start of one of ocean racing’s elite events – the Rolex Fastnet Race - on Sunday morning. The start is one of sport’s greatest spectacles with 230 yachts amassed prior to tackling the treacherous 608-mile course from Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, out the Solent and across the often tempestuous Celtic Sea, around the Fastnet Rock off the SW Irish coast and back to Plymouth. First sailed in 1925, and run biennially since the early 1930s, the Fastnet race immediately captured the imagination of sailors the world over. It was one of the first true tests of offshore sailing skill – to win this race is an ambition of every racing sailor.

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