I suspect everyone with a keen interest in sailing will have seen the news about the extremely challenging and difficult conditions endured by the plucky souls who took part in this year’s Round the Island race. 
Amidst truly testing and difficult sailing conditions we had a number of sailors who conquered the course and came away with honours. 
Huge congratulations to Colin Wetherall in Binkie II, Sam Pearson in Ruthless and the Aldridge family in Sea Jem for completing this year’s brutal Round The Island Race.
Some very revealing statistics to help give a flavour of the achievements: 
In IRC handicap fleet, there were 256 entries, of which only 76 completed the race, Ruthless was 18^th.
In the ISC handicap fleet, of the 410 entries, only 62 finished, with Binkie II 4^th and Sea Jem 8th. The winner was an Oyster 60, second a Dufour 40, then 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th and 6^th were Contessa 32’s! All 4 Contessa’s were within 3 minutes of each other and about 15 minutes behind the overall winner on corrected time.
To have completed the race in those appalling conditions (biggest gust Binkie II saw was 54 knots!) was a massive achievement and to cap it all, Colin Wetherall has won the Prestigious ISC Handicap team prize trophy for Parkstone for the fourth year running. None of the teams entered had more than one finisher so Colin won it all on his own!
A huge well done to anybody else who finished the race. it should be recorded as a massive feat!


Photos: Needles Webcam, Paul Wyeth