The race comittee announced that the French naval authorities will not allow any Classe Mini boats in the open sea after Tuesday morning. The original route of the Mini Fastnet is 700 miles from Douarnenez, round the fastnet Rock and back to Douarnenez. Instead the fleet will only be doing a two hundered miles long race nearer to the coast of Brittany. As high winds (up to 40 knots) are expected the skippers are due back in Doaurnenez late Monday night, Tuesday morning. After a day of rest the organisers of the Mini Fastnet are planing on making another two short races in Douarnenez on Wednesday and Thursday.
Of course this did not go down well with the skippers who were expecting to do the race in record breaking time. Especially since the race comittee had no problems organising a prologue for one hundred boats in 25 knots of wind (with gusts up to 34 knots) on a 10 miles radium. There are a lot of high profile names here in Douarnenez: Armel Tripon, Phil Sharp (2006 classe 40 Route du Rhum winner), Dee Cafari and even Franck Cammas was here to join Isabelle Joschke as a guest on the prologue. Add to this the skippers of Classe Mini - Yves Le Blevec, Isabelle Joschke, Erwan Le Roux, Peter Laureyssens, Adrien Hardy, Andraz Mihelin and Kristian Hajnsek - who all have serious chances of winning and you have a whole list of very unhappy skippers who were expecting a very exciting race for the podium positions.
After the anouncement I spoke to Phil Sharp who is joining Slovenian Andraz Mihelin onboard Adria Mobil 510 how he felt about the race beeing 500 miles shorter. His responce: "We came here to get our revenge. Last year Andraz and I were third and this year we were going for the win. So 200 miles along the coast of Brittany, just won't be the same".
To this Andraz added:"it is really frustrating. Imagine winning the race and saying - I've won the 2007 Mini Fastnet - but at the same time knowing that you didn't even round the Fastnet Rock. Is it stil the Mini Fastnet then?". -- From Leo Voorneveld's Mini forum:
http://www.minitransat650.com/simple/
