The RORC Myth of Malham is an alternative to the more usual passage style of offshore race, featuring a course which starts and finishes in the Solent, and takes the fleet on a tour of various marks in the English Channel. Indeed, the two new offshore marks, RORC Offshore Light Buoy positioned 15 miles south of St Alban's Head and Ocean Safety Offshore Light Buoy positioned 16 miles south of Selsey Bill were used for the first time during this race.

A short postponement mid-sequence in order to allow a large ship to pass through the line was followed by a restart at the preparatory signal, causing a good proportion of the fleet, through either confusion or oblivion, to set off 5 minutes early. After the resulting general recall at the proper start time, the fleet finally made it away at 1725 with Civils with Flair making a good start and leading the IRC3 boats through Hurst and past Needles Fairway. Darkeness fell before rounding RORC Offshore, where we made our first tack of the race! Another reach took us back into Poole No1, arriving around 0230 alongside Capitali$m, with Quokka, Jeronimo, and Carpetbagger not far ahead. Bar Buoy is a familiar sight to us from Poole, though it's usually a sign of being nearly home, rather than the start of a 40 mile run! Two gybes, the chance to snatch a couple of hours sleep, and the realisation of fleet positions at sunrise proved to be the only entertainment on this leg. We arrived at Ocean Safety just before 0800, heading up for yet another another long fetch towards the Forts at the entrance to the Eastern Solent.

We were fortunate to make big gains on this final leg, staying higher than those ahead of us, which paid dividends as the last part into the Solent became a short beat. Crossing ahead of Jeronimo and Capitali$m at our first coming together, we'd definitely saved our time, even though they managed to just beat us to the line, with the three boats finishing within in a 30 second period after over 16 and a half hours of racing!

In the 'standard' RORC results, we finished 4th in class, behind Whooper, Quokka and Carpetbagger. However, for the RCC trials, GPS data has been submitted to the RYA selectors and the race will be scored in two halves. Each half of this race will be scored with a weighting of 4, and combined with the 6 inshore races held last weekend. A further 8 races are set to come at the IRC Nationals next weekend, where we look forward to the opportunity to continue improving our results!