25th June: Round the Island Race

The first race start at 0800 hrs

With the first start at 8am the Round the Island race commenced later than usual this year. Starts continued at 1o minute intervals until the last mass start at 0930. I had booked the afternoon watch at Stone Point before I realised it was the date of the race so ended up booking the morning one as well and staying all day.  Fortunately the competitors made it past our bit of water without any incidents, at least not ones in which we were involved. However on the radio it sounded like all sorts was going on down at the Needles and at one stage the Coastguard had all the local lifeboats tasked.  The radios were so busy that the Coastguard reserved channel 00 (the Search And Rescue channel) for incident traffic, with routine SAR traffic moved to channel 67 and 62 being used for a working channel.

With so many boats it’s a difficult event to photograph but here are some views which perhaps capture the chaotic nature of the event.