Today, at 6:33 p.m. BST, Matt Brooks and his team aboard the 52-foot classic yacht Dorade finished the 2015 Rolex Fastnet Race in Plymouth with an elapsed time of four days, six hours, 13 minutes and 42 seconds. The team’s preliminary standings (pending the rest of finishes) are second in IRC 4 and eighth in IRC overall. The Sparkman & Stephens 1929 yawl is a two-time winner of the legendary race in the 1930s.

The 2015 Fastnet marked her final event in a series of four major ocean races in the team’s “Return to Blue Water Campaign.”

RETURN TO BLUE WATER CAMPAIGN

Conceived shortly after Brooks and his wife Pam Rorke Levy bought Dorade in 2010, the campaign was initially called “Matt’s Crazy Idea,” but soon after the completion of a year-long refit Dorade began winning races, both offshore and in coastal regattas in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean and on the West Coast, proving that she could once again be competitive.  The team silenced the campaign’s critics once and for all in 2013, when Dorade was the overall winner (on corrected time) in the 2013 Transpacific Yacht Race, 77 years after its first victory with the race.  That was followed by an IRC class win in the 2014 Newport Bermuda Race.  Earlier this summer, the team completed Dorade’s most significant victory, the 2015 Transatlantic Race, beating Olin and Rod’s 1931 record by 26 hours and taking second place in IRC 4.

DORADE BACKGROUND

Dorade was designed in 1929 by Olin Stephens and built under his brother Rod’s supervision the following year in City Island, New York.  Dorade’s 1931 Transatlantic victory helped the brothers launch their careers and established them as two of the sport’s most gifted innovators.  Dorade went on to win many of the world’s most demanding ocean races, including the Fastnet and the Transpacific Yacht Race, and Olin Stephens became one of the most successful yacht designers of the 20th century, responsible for six America’s Cup wins.  Brooks and Levy purchased Dorade five years ago; since then the boat has been restored to its original racing form, with the addition of modern safety and navigational equipment.  The current campaign has adopted the rigor and discipline of a modern race program, continuously searching for ways to improve performance under all conditions, and relying on the combined strengths of a skilled and passionate team.  For Dorade’s full history visit http://Dorade.org/history/