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Organisers of one of the yachting world’s classic races have denied that they have no plans to move from its “ancestral home” in Plymouth.

A Facebook page has been set up to fight to keep the finish of the Rolex Fastnet race in the city.

The biennial Fastnet was born in Plymouth in 1925 and until now every race has finished in the city.

Spokeswoman Trish Jenkins said there had been talk of a move a few years ago but this was no longer on the cards.

“We are working with Plymouth and want to keep it in Plymouth for the foreseeable future,” she said.

She said Eddie Warden Owen, chief executive of the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC), which organises the race, had said there was no intention to move the finish to any other destination.

“They are working with the city council on the 2019 race to make it bigger and better,” she said.

RORC, has already made a major change to the race, which traditionally was the finale to Cowes Week, the largest sailing regatta of its kind in the world.

Until now competitors set off from Cowes on the Isle of Wight, headed west to round the Fastnet Rock off the coast of Ireland, and then returned to Plymouth.

Next August the Fastnet will be run two weeks before Cowes.

Chris Arscott, vice-commodore of the Royal Western Yacht Club, where the race was conceived, said: “There has been talk and pressure for some time for the race to go elsewhere, and the French are keen to take it.

“If it goes to another finish, it won’t be the Fastnet Race. The finish has been Plymouth since its inception in 1925.

“It remains one of the most famous races around the world in the yachting calendar.

“If you talk to anyone in the world who knows about yacht racing, and mention Plymouth, they talk about the Fastnet. It is on every sailor’s bucket list and attracts a lot of the movers and shakers of the yachting world.

“Plymouth is the ancestral home of the race and it always should be. If it finishes elsewhere it will be a different race.”

(Image: SORC SOLO)

He said the race was started by the Royal Western Yacht Club, and at a meeting in Plymouth afterwards a new club was set up to run it – the Royal Ocean Racing Club.

Mr Arscott said that any attempt to move the finish to Weymouth or Cowes on the Isle of Wight would add several days to race and make it unviable for most small boats.

The French have already snatched the Golden Globe race away from the Westcountry. The gruelling single-handed non-stop circumnavigation now starts at Les Sables-d’Olonne on the Atlantic coast of France.

A severe storm during the 1979 race resulted in the deaths of 15 competing yachtsmen and three rescuers, and involved 4,000 people in what became the largest peace-time rescue operation.

In 1985 the maxi yacht Drum capsized after the keel sheared off due to a design error. Drum’s co-owner, the pop star Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran, was trapped under the hull with five other crew members for 20 minutes, until being rescued by the Royal Navy.

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