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While the toughest competition in the Rolex Fastnet Race will be within the individual classes, the ultimate kudos comes from winning the Fastnet Challenge Cup, the outright prize for IRC corrected time for the world's largest offshore yacht race. The challenge will be all the harder for this year's race has an immense fleet of 336 boats (excluding the 60 racing in the non-IRC fleet).

The weather will play a significant outcome in determining the overall results of the Rolex Fastnet Race. Winning your division is more within each team's control, and here we'll look at the top three IRC handicap categories in terms of size and speed. IRC Zero is where the biggest boats congregate and is likely to produce the monohull line honours winner. However, you have to go back to the 2009 and 2011 editions of the race to find the last Maxi to win overall - on both occasions the impeccably sailed Rán 2.

World Sailing, the world governing body of the sport, has renewed the Special Event status of the World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) through to 2028.

Perhaps it is because people are becoming increasingly time poor, or because it neatly side-steps the problem of keeping a large crew together, but one area of offshore racing undeniably gaining popularity is doublehanding.

The city of Charleston and race owners OC Sport Pen Duick are pleased to announce that the 2020 edition of The Transat, the world’s oldest solo ocean sailing race, will finish in Charleston, South Carolina for the first time in the race’s history.

The IDEC SPORT maxi trimaran arrived back in her home port of La Trinité-sur-Mer yesterday morning after a quick journey to the Mediterranean and back. Francis Joyon has been carrying out public relations work in Cagliari (Sardinia), showing off his maxi-trimaran, which won the Route du Rhum and the Jules Verne Trophy.

The Mirpuri Foundation has announced that it will soon be ‘Racing For The Planet’, as it confirms both its environmental message and the name of its new VO65 racing yacht for the next edition of The Ocean Race, beginning in 2021.

While crew lists for August's Rolex Fastnet Race are far from finalised, currently just over 10% of those competing in the Royal Ocean Racing Club's biennial voyage from Cowes to Plymouth via the Fastnet Rock will be women. While this is a long way from parity between the sexes, it is at least a step up from races say 20 years ago when the equivalent figure had yet to reach 5%.

One of the key racing events in Europe is just a few days away. Organised by Yacht Club Sanremo in co-operation with Italy’s UVAI (Unione Vela d’Altura Italiana) and France’s UNCL (Union Nationale Course au Large) the IRC Europeans are in fact scheduled for next week, from 23 through 29 June.

Among the 300-350 boats in this August's record-sized Rolex Fastnet Race fleet, many of the 3,000 crew members are competing to fulfill a personal challenge or to tick the world's largest offshore race off their 'bucket list', but several crews are also using the Royal Ocean Racing Club's premier event to convey a special message, or support a chosen charity.