Bellino makes it four as Craigie retains RORC season's points title

Sept 21 - Rob Craigie's Sun Fast 3600 Bellino, racing with Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) Commodore Deb Fish as co-skipper, retained the Jazz Trophy as IRC Overall champion of the RORC Season's Points Championship, a fourth consecutive title, the club said on Monday.

The 2026 season, a non-Fastnet year, took 341 boats across eight bodies of water from the Mediterranean and Atlantic to the Caribbean, English Channel, Celtic Sea, Irish Sea, North Sea and Baltic Sea, running from the 2025 Rolex Middle Sea Race to September's Nautical Cloud Cherbourg Race.

• Ian Hoddle's Sun Fast 3300 Sky Business - Game On, sailed two-handed with Willow Bland, finished second overall.

• Fujitsu British Soldier, owned by the Army Sailing Association and skippered by Will Naylor, completed the podium.

• Bellino also won the IRC Three and IRC Two-Handed titles.

• IRC Zero went to Olivier Magre's Mach 50 Palanad 4, while Trevor Middleton's JPK 1180 Black Sheep won IRC One, Derek Shakespeare's J/122 Bulldog IRC Two, and Inka Luhrs and Richard Bretherton's Sun Fast 3200 Zanzibar took IRC Four.

• Peter Coote's Dazcat 1295 Slinky Malinki won the multihull MOCRA class, with Greg Leonard's Swift taking Class40 honours.

• The next championship opens with the Rolex Middle Sea Race in October 2026, building toward a 2027 season that brings back the Rolex Fastnet Race and includes the 25th Admiral's Cup.

• IRC handicaps boats by size and speed potential, so a slow adjusted time can still beat a fast one — it ranks boats on how well they sailed relative to what their boat should do, not on who crosses the line first. REUTERS