Round the Island Race - Gold Roman Bowl winner announced

by Peta Stuart-Hunt on 3 Jul 2016 The provisional winner of the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race's biggest prize, the Gold Roman Bowl for the first IRC boat on corrected time has been announced as Bernard Langley's TP52 Gladiator. She powered around the course to become the second monohull to finish, crossing the line less than four and a half hours after her start.

Gladiator's owner, Tony Langley, is currently racing his other TP52 in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, but his three children, Tom, Charlotte and Bernard all sailed on board today, the latter as helmsman.

'It was a windy and rough race,' says boat captain Brett Aarons, 'especially in the overfalls off St Catherine's and Dunnose. It was very wet, both on deck and below.' Nevertheless the team never held back, hoisting the A3 spinnaker at the Needles, before peeling to the A4 at St Catherine's Point and hitting speeds of 20-24 knots.

'At that point we knew that we had a chance of a good result,' says Aarons. 'At that kind of speed, the adverse tide only slows you by a small percentage. Once we were back in the eastern Solent we were still in the last of the west-going favourable tide and were almost able to lay the finish line in one tack - it was a huge advantage.'

Although the top four places overall went to high-budget campaigns, the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race has always been one in which amateur sailors and those with possibly shallower pockets can excel. Paul Dunstan's modest 25ft Folkboat from 1974 was one of the best placed smaller boats this year, taking ninth place overall on corrected time and second place in IRC Division 3D to Andy Shaw's Flying Boat.

Multihull record smashed

Lloyd Thornburg's MOD70 trimaran Phaedo 3 shattered the multihull race record in a time of 2 hours 23 minutes, 23 seconds, an impressive 28 minutes ahead of the record Sir Ben Ainslie set in 2013.

'Today was incredible - one of the best sails we've ever had on the boat and the sun really shone on us,' says Thornburg.

'We're over the moon, the team work on board was fantastic and it was just on the edge where we could keep the full main up, so the boat was totally powered up. Reaching and downwind it was right on the edge.'

The largest monohull in the fleet, Mike Leopard's 100ft Leopard, took monohull line honours, but failed to beat the record time he set in 2013 by 13 minutes.