Ask Paul Flynn why he entered his cruising-friendly 63-foot carbon fibre offshore trimaran Paradox in the Rolex Fastnet Race and he barely hesitates. The Fastnet has been lodged in his head since childhood. The 1979 edition cast a long shadow for all the wrong reasons, yet the lore and the lessons stuck. He read the accounts, dreamed about the rock, and filed it under “one day”.
This season the stars aligned. A cruising summer grand tour saw Paradox fly down the Portuguese coast, dip briefly into Spain, before heading off on a blisteringly fast run out to the Azores for some spectacular island hopping. That put the boat in the right place at the right time for Flynn and the crew to sail the delivery trip back to the boat’s home port of Falmouth in race mode as training for the Fastnet Race.
The plan was never to turn Paradox into a strung-out grand-prix animal. Flynn is honest about the programme. Although last year Flynn and his crew took line honours in the Round Ireland Yacht Race, most of the time the boat is set up for fast, comfortable cruising.
But there is pedigree. Under a previous owner the boat won the MOCRA division of the Fastnet back in 2015 when she was fresh out of the wrapper, and she has a history of trading punches with serious multihull protagonists, like the clutch of modified MOD70s that do the rounds of the world’s major offshore races.
The 2025 Fastnet – the 100th edition of the race – attracted a staggering 464-boat entry and saw the fleet race from Cowes on the Isle of Wight, around the Fastnet Rock off the southeast tip of Ireland, and back to a finish in the French port of Cherbourg. The multihull class was made up of a diverse mix of 20 entries, including two well-known MOD 70s – Argo and Zoulou – which were both earmarked as pre-race favourites.
“When we looked at the Fastnet MOCRA fleet, we framed the target as the MOD 70s,” Flynn says. “On paper they are more race boats than we are, but our righting moment and rig proportions let us take reefs later. If it blew dogs off chains we thought we might make life hard for them.”
Only it didn’t blow. The 2025 Fastnet turned out to be light to moderate and, for long stretches, unusually north-westerly. On the face of it, not Paradox weather. Yet by Tuesday morning just before 0700 local time – after almost three days of racing Paradox crossed the finish line in Cherbourg as the first MOCRA boat on the water and, after a tense wait ashore, the winner on corrected time too.
Flynn was part of a six-person crew led by Paradox skipper Adam Davis. “Adam knows the boat inside out,” Flynn says. “He ran the original refit and the boat is in top shape thanks to him.”
Navigation was handled on deck, not from a dark cave with glowing screens. Former Paradox captain Jeff Mearing teamed up with Davis as a two-headed brain trust, trading calls on wind, tide and lanes as the race unfolded.
“Some teams sail with a dedicated navigator at a desk,” Flynn says. “We don’t. Jeff sails, but he and Adam were amazing with the calls. This race really showed how critical that is.”
More pros rounded out the afterguard and the horsepower. The trick, Flynn maintains, is finding sailors who meet the Fastnet’s qualification rules and bring the right racing experience that doesn’t just include a monohull-only playbook. Multihulls are still a niche at this level, and Paradox, while forgiving, is its own animal. They managed only a day and a half of on-the-water practice before the gun, but the muscle memory from a summer of many cruising miles still counted.
Fastnet starts can be pure bedlam. Although conditions for the 2025 edition were benign by the race’s standards the Paradox crew had plenty to think about in lightish winds and a typically tricky Solent tide.
“I think we might have been first across the line,” Flynn says, “or very close.” The opening chess move, though, rewarded the brave who snuck tight along the Island shore. Paradox stayed a little lower-risk, a touch higher and wider, and bled positions in the first leg out of the Solent.
Once past the Needles and into the English Channel the breeze freshened into the mid-teens and Paradox found her feet. There was even a little private match-up with the slick black carbon maxi Pyewacket in the late afternoon near Start Point that served as a speed test. At 15 knots they were even. When it nudged to 18, the tri stretched away.
“It’s always fun to look out from a multihull and see these guys all lined up on the rail. It was maybe an hour before sunset and we were two on deck – both of us with a cup of tea – as we sailed past them.” Down below, Paradox's off watch sailors slept comfortably on memory foam mattresses.
The evening turned golden, then black. There was no moon on the long beat to Ireland, only a confused cross-sea and the red-green flash of mastheads sliding past in the dark.
The working rhythm overnight was simple and relentless as the crew switched back and forth between the Code 0 for the lulls and the J1 when the wind speed ticked up.
“I lost count,” Flynn laughs. “Fifteen to twenty full headsail changes through the night.”
Upwind they were hovering at or just under wind speed most of the time. Downwind later, the speedo would again flirt with true wind speed as a baseline. For a boat that sleeps eight and carries a proper galley, that is an impressive party trick.
Yes, a proper galley. You can forget the freeze-dried. The multihull lifestyle means a little more comfort and a lot more morale. “We ate well,” Flynn says. “A local Italian in Portsmouth loaded us up with trays of lasagne and gnocchi the night before. We heated them on the stove and ate dinner together.
“We freestyled breakfast and lunch, but we had a big hearty crew dinner that we ate all together,” Flynn explained. “It makes it when you eat well, and especially when you eat all together and not in shifts, it just makes the whole experience a lot more fun.”
Sometime around 0200-0300 the Fastnet Rock loomed as a blacker shape against a black sky. No postcard view, just instruments, white water and running lights.
“There wasn’t much to see. It was pitch black out there and the sea at that point was a bit more confused than it had been. So you sort of had waves coming out of the dark at you – nothing huge but you felt them when they hit.”
Once around the rock it was downwind all the way to the finish. Sails eased, boat attitude changed, the noise pitch shifted. From there Paradox was generally running or reaching at wind speed as she made her way east, ticking down the miles to the Cotentin Peninsula and the finish line off Cherbourg.
Managing tidal gates has always been a key factor in the Fastnet Race, but the new Cherbourg finish makes it even more so – especially on a light-air edition like this was.
Davis and Mearing set up the final approach with meticulous precision, overshooting the final approach to offset the effects of the fast running tide.
“We sailed with Cherbourg to port and let the tide correct us down to the line,” Flynn recalls. “It meant we could avoid a last set of gybes. If we had misjudged it, the result could easily have changed.”
They also had the clock on their shoulder. The window for favourable tide was closing fast, and the forecast suggested that the wind would sag through the day. Paradox squeaked in under that falling curtain. Boats behind would have less breeze and a worse tide.
They crossed just before 0700 on Tuesday. Elapsed time: two days, nineteen hours, thirty-eight minutes. The next MOCRA finisher on the water was roughly fourteen hours back. But no one on Paradox was opening champagne yet. The crew did what offshore sailors always do at the end of a long one. They found a bar, ordered breakfast, and refreshed the results. And refreshed again, and again, and again…
“We figured we needed twelve to fifteen hours before we would really know,” Flynn says.
It went to the wire. When the numbers were finally crunched, Paradox was still on top. MOCRA winners.
The story works because it was so unscripted. The crew was small. The boat was set up to go cruising as much as it was to race. The expected big breeze never showed. Strategy was not a laminated binder, just a string of good, clear, on-deck decisions that respected the tide and the angles. There was nothing mystical about it. Sail the boat well in the wind you get. Change sails when the number tells you. Protect the lanes that matter. Eat well together. Sleep when you can. Don’t get greedy when opportunities arise.
Flynn is quick to pass off the credit to the rest of the crew. Skipper Adam Davis set the boat up for success and sailed a cool race. Navigator-helm hybrid Jeff Mearing called the lanes and the tide with a steady hand. The rest of the six-person squad backed them up with clean boat handling and the kind of temperament you want when the breeze is fickle.
“We didn’t go in with a grand strategy,” Flynn says. “We went in to sail well and enjoy it. The Fastnet gives you a bit of everything and asks if you can knit it together. This time we did.”
For a campaign that set out to savour a season of miles and memories, capping it with the Fastnet and a MOCRA win is a sweet twist. Paradox remains what she was at the start of the summer - a quick, comfortable machine with a cruising soul - only now with another famous trophy on board and a fresh story to tell about a night at the Rock, a smart glide into Cherbourg, and a long day in the bar waiting for the results to be confirmed.
