Slightly stronger breeze and more reaching than was anticipated resulted in the offshore race of the Rolex Commodores' Cup, providing the 45 yachts taking part with a most complete test.

For the small boats in Class 3, the bigger conditions also made for a shorter race with the leaders arriving home unexpectedly early, at breakfast time this morning, with the Hong Kong boat, Yeoman of Wight, skippered by Jamie McWilliam winning by a substantial margin of 17 minutes ahead of Radboud Crul's Netherland Red yacht Rosetta from the Rocks and 25 minutes ahead of France White's Felix, skippered by Samuel Prietz.

With a race that started off the Royal Yacht Squadron yesterday in drifting conditions, to the conclusion of the race for some in more than 20 knots, and with the wind shifting between the southeast and southwest on the multiple leg course, the boats were subject to a whole gamut of conditions. "The only sails we didn't use were the storm jib and the storm trysail," reported John Greenland, helmsman on John Shepherd's GBR Red big boat, Fair Do's VII, which after leading out of the Solent posted a disappointing sixth place at the finish.

"Both downwind legs back to the Needles, the wind kept filling in from behind," explained an exhausted Stephen Park, navigator on Fair Do's VII, taking time off from his normal role managing Team GBR's Olympic sailing team. "We were a bit unfortunate because all the boats were taking back everything we'd pulled out on the upwind legs. And on the second, the wind filled in and headed us and we were the only boat that had to gybe."

In Class One, Rolex Commodores' Cup defending champion and offshore specialist Géry Trentesaux on his Lady Courrier in France Blue came out on top with a 15 minute lead on corrected time over Anthony O'Leary's Antix Eile and more than an hour in front of Tim Costello's third placed Tiamat/Alfa Romeo.

"We were not so good at the start and not so good on the first beat, but then it came good," reported Trentesaux, who added that they caught up a lot of ground overnight on the leg southwest to the East Shambles mark off Portland. "We were using the spinnaker and the wind decreased and we kept the spinnaker until maybe 200m before the mark. Perhaps we won the race there." Trentesaux paid homage to his crew that includes navigator Erwan Dubois and tactician Christine Briand but acknowledged that the conditions, the wind shifts and the tidal gates had also favoured mid-fleet boats such as his Lady Courrier.

The most taxing part of the race for all the boats came in the early hours of this morning, short tacking along the cliffs between Anvil Point and St Alban's Head in order to stay out of the powerful eastbound tide. On Fair Do's VII they came within a boatlength of the cliffs on several occasions tacking every two minutes or so. The most impressive account came from Jump Juice, Conor & Denise Phelan's Class 2 boat in Ireland White. "We did 78 tacks in 70 minutes," reported tactician, Olympic sailor Maurice O'Connell. "We looked at our track on the GPS and I've never seen tide like it: It was 3.5 knots and we were only doing 4 knots over the ground. Ourselves and Batistyl and the Hong Kong guys on Orient Express and Aria - we were trading tacks the whole way up the shore, taking it right into the bricks, using the computer screen to tell us when to tack and not going 100 yards out before we tacked back in again. The guys were worn out."

On Lady Courrier the crew were forced hastily to cut through a headsail sheet after they got a riding turn on the winch with the white cliff face of the Dorset coast rapidly approaching their bow.

In Class 2, once again the winner was Kees Kaan's ROARK/Claus en Kaan Architecten in Netherlands Red. Sailing with a young crew that includes former Whitbread round the world race skipper Arend Van Bergeijk, the Dutch boat remains the lowest scoring boat in the entire Rolex Commodores' Cup fleet. According to tactician Maxim Van Pelt they seemed to get every part of the course right and impressively sailed most of the race up with the slower Class 1 boats. They made particular gains on the second beat out into the Channel. "The wind was building. At the Needles we chose to go more to the south, the boat most on the left, closest to the Isle of Wight - which was good because the wind went a bit more to the left and we overtook two or three Class 1 boats on that beat."

Skipper Kees Kaan added on the secret of his boat's success: "I think very good tactics and we keep on fighting and we have a very good team."

With the offshore race scoring with a X2.5 co-efficient so the results between the top teams have dramatically closed up with GBR Red on 77.5, now only two points ahead of Gery Trentesaux's France Blue on 79.5. Third placed Ireland Green is on 91.

Tomorrow sees one inshore race, prior to a lap of the Isle of Wight on Saturday. The latter is likely to be in big breeze with as much as 30 knots forecast.

Top Six Teams - Provisional Positions following the Offshore Race:

Team / Points / Place
GBR Red / 77.5 / 1
France Blue / 79.5 / 2
Ireland Green / 91 / 3
Hong Kong / 103.5/ 4
Ireland White / 107/5
Netherlands Red/ 123.5 / 6

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The Rolex Commodores' Cup is taking place off Cowes, Isle of Wight, from 29th June to 6th July 2006. Fifteen teams representing France, Ireland, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Hong Kong and Spain are participating.