Has Monaco won the Admiral’s Cup? Jolt team lead after high tension finish to Rolex Fastnet Race

The Yacht Club de Monaco team, racing as Jolt 6 and Jolt 3, has a 19-point lead in the Admiral’s Cup after the Rolex Fastnet Race finale – but it’s a waiting game until the final boat finishes.

The Yacht Club de Monaco team of Jolt 6, skippered by Pierre Casiraghi and Jolt 3, skippered by Peter Harrison, has taken the lead in the 2025 Admiral’s Cup after a high tension finish to the event’s conclusion, the 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race.

The top two places are all but finalised, with Monaco having a 19-point advantage over the Royal Hong Kong YC entry, after the leading boats in both the big boat AC1 and smaller AC2 fleets poured in Cherbourg in a frenetic finish that saw over a dozen boats over the line within an hour from 2130 on Tuesday 29 July.

However, the final deadline for protests is six hours after the last boat in the event has finished. With the slowest boat in the fleet (Hamburg’s Edelweiss) not due to finish until this evening – and rumours aplenty of potential protests on the Cherbourg docks as the big boats approached – organisers RORC are not officially confirming a winner just yet, and the crews were being equally circumspect.

Monaco wait to win Admiral’s Cup

Ocean racer Will Harris was navigating the smaller Jolt 6, which currently leads AC2 by just 2 minutes 45 seconds on corrected time in the provisional results. Harris explained on the dock straight after finishing:

“We were coming into this race in second place overall on the scoreboard with the Beau Ideal and Beau Geste team. And yeah, we think we’ve just managed to beat them into the finish line there, but we’ve still got to keep our fingers crossed and see how the other teams go.

“We know we’ve done everything we can and we’ll just have to see. But it’s a big relief to be here at the finish line.”

America’s Cup legend Ed Baird was helming the 52-footer Jolt 3. “The points were close. We had to do well in our division and so did our 40-footer. Sounds like they are going to finish okay,” he said.

“I would say there hasn’t been a lot of tension amongst the team but everybody was very aware [of how close it is]. But we realised that it was all up to just doing the right thing at the right time, and we just went out and tried to race the boat and hopefully make the right decisions and get around the course in a smart way.

“We have been racing both divisions of boats since April in Cowes, and we knew the whole time that it was going to come down to very, very tight margins.”

Seconds in it

Those tight margins initially dropped the Italian team out of the podium places in the provisional results, but the small boat Django JPK finished 3rd in class some 12 hours after the big boats finished to move them back up to 3rd overall.

“[The Fastnet Race] was very enjoyable and I think that we had a possibility to have a great result. Unfortunately, we lost by 55 seconds after 697 miles and that’s a little sad, but I think that I’m proud about what we were able to do,” said Vasco Vascotto, skipper of the newly launched WallyRocket 51 Django, the YCCS AC1 entry.

“But this was day 11 in the water for this boat and we were able to go around that Fastnet and that was a big challenge but we did it.”

Admiral’s Cup Fastnet finale

The Admiral’s Cup fleet had its own start for the 2025 Rolex Fastnet Race, with the 15 two boat teams scored on handicap in the big boat (AC1) and smaller AC2 class. Twenty-nine boats started, after the dismantling of Red Bandit (GER) during the inshore series. Ino Noir (GBR) also had to retire from the Fastnet due to electronics issues.

Going into the Fastnet, after one double-scoring Channel race and three days of inshore racing, the Royal Hong Kong YC team led on 36 points, ahead of Monaco on 44, the Italian team of Yacht Club Costa Smeralda in third on 59 points, and the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron’s team at 76 points in fourth.

The Rolex Fastnet Race counted for triple points, non-discardable, making some significant place changes possible on the overall leaderboard.

Intense racing

The Admiral’s Cup teams raced much of the 695-mile Fastnet course with the same intensity as the inshore series. “It was unbelievably intense racing with the other fast four teams,” said Harris. “We were racing like match racing the whole way around, neck on neck crossing each other really closely.”

A dominant north-westerly breeze also turned the Fastnet track into a 700-mile windward-leeward course. “A disappointing [result] in the end for us, but it was a cracking Fastnet race. Some beautiful conditions – and just a giant windward-leeward, but just a little shutdown at the end that tripped us up,” said Miles Seddon, navigator on Beau Geste.

Racing focussed on a single class, instead of competing against the whole 444-boat Fastnet fleet, also changed the strategy for the Admiral’s Cup teams. “When you’re racing IRC in general, you’ve just got to sail the boat as well as you can sail it. If it’s your conditions, it’s your conditions.

“But when you’re racing the Admiral’s Cup fleet, you’re just racing that fleet and you’re really focused on where they are all the time, which is quite draining,” explained Seddon.

“Just constantly keeping tabs on where everybody in the fleet is and how you’re going to manage them – and that’s 13 boats to manage. So it’s tough You’re constantly aware. I went into it knowing what we needed to do and then you’re constantly recomputing and looking at weather tracker updates, so you don’t get a lot of rest.

“Ultimately,with the finish here in Cherbourg, it’s fantastic. But it just adds that extra tidal gate and that’s brutal – it can be a real bonus, but it can take away as well.”

Dutch win in AC2

The biggest celebration of the night unquestionably belonged to the Dutch team on Rost-Van Uden, winners of AC2 overall,  whose supporters were out in force showering the team in traditional flowers, champagne and song.

The Rost-Van Uden team is led by Gerd-Jan Poortman, who was part of the winning Dutch team in the 1999 Admiral’s Cup, and made up largely of young sailors from Rotterdam. To take the class win against an entry list stacked with pro America’s Cup sailors, Olympic medalists and world champions was a phenomenal achievement for this team.

Admiral’s Cup return

There’s no question that for the crews, the Admiral’s Cup has been a hit. “It’s been really, really good. The racing in our division AC2 was just super close, you never really knew how it was going to pan out until the end – that was the way it should be,” said America’s Cup winner Dean Barker, who was part of a very high level crew on Callisto. 

“The Channel race was just amazing. Like that was some of the best downwind sailing I’ve probably done in my life actually. And then, the Fastnet on a 42-footer, it’s challenging,”

“The [format] adds a huge dynamic to the event because there’s a lot of inshore races specifically and not a lot have a strong offshore component. So to mix it up is actually really challenging for all the teams,” added Barker.

“The equal weighting between inshore and offshore, I think it’s a really good way to do it. You need to be able to be strong on both. So I really enjoyed it. It’s hard – but at the same time it’s what makes it rewarding in the end.”

“It’s been absolutely fantastic. The heritage of it, the history, it’s been a great event,” said Seddon.

“The lead up to it was fantastic. Hopefully it goes on strength to strength and really showcases the sport because it does everything – it does offshore, it does inshore and it’s team racing as well. So it’s been a really, really good event. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”

 

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