Mr. JPK with his 10.50 m boat (and in doubles) won the legendary Fastnet

The 2025 edition of the Rolex Fastnet Race, which on this occasion this year also marked the return of the Admiral’s cup, has come to a close. It was never a trivial race that took the 450-boat fleet to round Ireland’s southern lighthouse, this time marked by medium and rather erratic winds.

The first boat to cross the finish line was Tom Laperche’s trimaran Ultim Lazartigue, which boasted super star Peter Burling on board for the occasion. The first monohull, on the other hand, was Black Jack 100, which confirmed itself as one of the most “line of honor” maxis around.

For the IRC overall classification, which awards the overall Rolex Fastnet victory, the overall win went to Jean Pierre Kelbert’s JPK 1050 Leon (owner of the JPK yard), racing in doubles with Alex Loison. It had happened before that the Fastnet was won by a crew in doubles, it was 2015, and it was again a JPK, in that case the 10.80 Corrier du Leon.

In second place was another crew in doubles, Didier Gaudoux’s L’Ann Ael 3, an MN35, which had already won the Giraglia of the strong wind in 2024. Third again for a pair, the Pogo RC Amarris of Achille Nebout and Tanguy Bouroullec. The first crewed team is the Fast 40 Jolt 6, which helped the Yacht Club de Monaco’s Admiral’s Cp win. Among the Class 40s was the sixth place of Luca Rosetti’s Maccaferri Futura, which was racing in crew don Matteo Sericano and Edoardo Bianchi.

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In general, the small boats took advantage of the slowdown, caused by thunderstorms, on the descent to Cherbourg that affected the big boys in the fleet, where Team Django’s Wallyrocket 51 in the Admiral class also lingered. JPKs once again confirmed themselves as a longboat, even in these non-extreme conditions, not surprisingly, Django JPK’s sixth place and several class placings of this yard’s boats are also noteworthy.

Admiral’s Cup, Team Django’s balance sheet.

There were 15 teams competing for this return of the legendary Admiral’s Cup, and considering the level of the fleet with 13 nations represented and sailors coming from Olympic classes, the America’s Cup and the top of ocean sailing, Team Django’s third place marks a successful campaign.

Winning the Admiral’s Cup of the rest is a difficult feat: you race between buoys, in coastal races, and in pure offshore as in the case of the Channel Race and the Fastnet. This means that it is not easy to choose two boats that perform well in all situations to make the team.

This edition of the Admiral and Fastnet was then “anomalous” from the weather point of view, with lighter wind conditions than those encountered on average in the Solent this season. Conditions that, especially during the inshore races, greatly favored the lighter, sail-powered Fast 40s over the JPKs, which do best in tougher conditions. Django JPK still managed to pull out a great performance at the Fastnet, finishing third on handicap by only 14 minutes after 695 miles of racing, after leading the handicap leaderboard at various stages.

The descent from the Fastnet at the carrying gaits, on which Wallyrocket 51 was relying heavily, was with winds never exceeding 15-18 knots, with even brief phases of pure becalming. The Italian 51 made up a lot of ground on the TP 52s on the return to Cherbourg, but on handicap it was unable to pull away enough from some boats that were behind it such as the Dutch Ker 46 Rost Van Uden and the Tyson 48 Elida.

Summing up, then, we can say that what may have determined Team Django’s third place may have been the points lost on the way by JPK during the inshore and the long upwind to the Fastnet of the Wallyrocket, a gait in which the boat in the IRC configuration pays a bit in terms of performance. The 51′ with a little more sustained strong wind on the descent to Cherbourg could probably have brought home a different result, but in offshore racing you “cook” with the weather ingredients you can find, and sometimes you need a bit of luck as well. What remains is a third place team finish that nevertheless outlines a well-structured and prepared campaign, with two boats that still proved to be very competitive within a fleet of very high value.

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Mauro Giuffrè