Class40 top guns enter Rolex Fastnet Race
by James Boyd / RORC 17 Jun 23:45 PDT
26 July 2025
Class40 start in the 2023 Rolex Fastnet Race off the Royal Yacht Squadron line © Paul Wyeth/pwpictures.com
Now 20+ years old, the Class40 has proved itself one of the most successful genre of offshore race boat ever. Since Géry Trentesaux and class co-founder, round the world sailor and journalist Patrice Carpentier entered their first Pogo 40 in the 2005 edition, the Rolex Fastnet Race has included a strong entry from this French box rule class, providing it with its own class since 2009. Today the Rolex Fastnet Race features in the Class40's main championship.
More than 200 Class 40s now exist. The latest hull number allocated by the class is #212 Luca Rosetti's Muso 40 Maccaferri Futura, which is one of the 24 so far entered in this year's edition of the Royal Ocean Racing Club's premier event, due to set sail from Cowes on 26 July.
Currently Italy is the rising star in the French short-handed classes. Like Ambrogio Beccharia who won the Mini Transat in 2019 then graduated up to a successful Class40 campaign, so Rosetti won the 2023 Mini Transat and his brand new Maccaferri Futura is the latest iteration of the Italian-designed and built Musa 40, of which Beccharia's Alla Grande-Pirelli was the first.
The former Alla Grande-Pirelli will be raced in the Rolex Fastnet Race this year by Spaniard Pep Costa as VSF Sports. Since winning the last edition as crew on Everial, Costa has since won a competition to skipper for three years a Class40 backed by French automotive glazing company VSF. "Since I was a child, the Rolex Fastnet Race was for me an emblematic, mythical race, a race every sailor wants to do," says Costa. "I was extremely happy to do it on Everial. Now I am looking forward to doing it on my own boat." Since acquiring the boat Costa says they have upgraded the foils. His crew includes the successful Pablo Santurde, previously part of Gonzalo Botin's winning team on Tales II.
The second Muso40 Andrea Fornaro's Influence2 is back having finished third in 2023. "It's an iconic race, a beautiful race to do, because everybody thinks of it as the pinnacle of offshore sailing, one of the most prestigious races, etc. We've got a new keel, new rudders and made some modifications.Last time we were third - this time we want first."
Another Musa 40 is Les Invincibles of Frenchman William Mathelin-Moreaux, who finished second in 2023 with his previous boat Dekuple.
Making her race debut in Cowes will be the brand new Agité 40, Alex Le Gallais' Trimcontrol. This has been conceived by Michel Desjoyeaux, having been developed by Desjoyeaux's company CT Mer Forte and built by Mer Agitée. She will be a scow, although with a less extreme bow - for example, her chine will not extend to the bow. "The rule is simple, but the way to optimise around the rule is quite complex because there is a minimum weight but a minimum and maximum righting moment," says Desjoyeaux. Having pioneered the enclosed IMOCA cockpit, the Agité 40's cockpit can be fully enclosed with fabric walls and inflatable tubes providing stiffness. Also on board will be well-known RORC son Carlo Vroon (who raced with Le Gallais in 2023).
Other hot prosects include regular podium placer Legallais, the Lift V2 skippered by Figaro sailor/Volvo Ocean Race winner Fabien Delahaye, who finished second in last year's Class 40 Championship. Pierre-Louis Attwell is back with his Mach 40.5 Vogue avec un Crohn, the 2024 Class 40 Championship winner. Also entered again is Nicolas Lemarchand and Matthieu Derenne's Lift 2 Weeecycling, previously Yoann Richomme's 2018 Route du Rhum winner. Then there's Machouquette, Guillaume L'Hostis's 2023 vintage Mach 40.5, which was fifth in this year's Normandy Channel Race and Thomas Jourdren's Pogo S4 TNST Racing & Cabinet Z.
RORC Rear Commodore American Greg Leonard returns this time with his state of the art Mach 40.6 Round Ireland winner, Swift, having twice previously entered Swift's predecessor Kite.
There are two British competitors: RORC regular and instructor Jonathan Tyrrell and Dan Jones' Pogo S4 Gambit, and Stuart Sawyer, two time IRC Nationals winner with his J/122 Black Dog, who is new to the class. He began racing shorthanded on a Sun Fast 3300 but then met Robin Elsey-Webb. A graduate of the Artemis Offshore Academy, Elsey-Webb nearly lost his life during an assault in 2023 and has since been on the slow road to recovery. The two conjured up two year program including the Rolex Fastnet Race and other RORC races culminating in Elsey-Webb competing in the 2026 Route du Rhum. Sawyer has acquired a Mach 40.4 (now with 40.5 appendages), previously Antoine Magré's 2021 Rolex Fastnet Race and Transatlantic Race winner E Leclerc Ville La Grand. "It is a highly competitive fleet and delivers the sheer thrills we all like," says Sawyer of his Black Dog VI. Their Kernow Ocean Racing team raises money for and awareness about brain injury.
Other nations represented include Belgium in Jonas Gerckens' Lift V2 Abeona (previously Marc Lepesqueux's Curium life forward) and Angolan Globe 40 round the world race competitor Jose Guilherme Caldas' Barco Brasil-Mussulo, (highly successful over 2017-19 as Aymeric Chappellier's AINA Enfance et avenir).
Other competitive boats of this vintage entered include Romain Van Enis' Max 40 Denti Aile, formerly Ian Lipinski's Credit Mutuel and sistership Gran Rhino, campaigned by the sole female Class40 competitor this year, Spain's Aina Bauzà. Lawyer Renaud Courbon is back on the Cape Racing 40 The3Bros after failing to finish in 2023, while Italians Matteo Sericano and Francesco Rosati are campaigning the VPLP Clak40 Lucente, after finishing fourth in May's Paprec 600 Saint Tropez. Engineer Emmanuel Hamez, skipper of the Pogo S4 Viranga has been campaigning Class40s regularly since 2014 but returns for the first time since 2017.
While the modern example are all scows, a sub-set are the 'sharp bowed' Class40 - effectively hull #157 and older. Among these are German orthopaedic surgeon Sebastian Ropohl, back again on his Cantaloop40 and Nicolas Guibal's Pogo S3 Moonpalace. "We're entering the Rolex Fastnet Race with a clear goal: to be the first among the sharp-bowed Class40s," comments Guibal.
For further information, please go to the race website: rolexfastnetrace.com.
List of Class40 Entries here.