Competitors make their way past the Black Rock beacon in Falmouth. Photo: R Hastings / Getty Images

The Yachting Monthly Triangle Race was first run 1984 and continued with great success for many years with the Royal Torbay Yacht Club, but Covid killed off the event.

However, in 2025, thanks to the enthusiasm of the UK Doublehanded Offshore Series (UKDHOS) and the Solo Offshore Racing Club (SORC), the event has been reborn under the auspices of the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club as the Yachting Monthly Celtic Triangle Race.

While this brings some fairly battle-hardened and serious racing boats and skippers to what was previously a purely Corinthian event, it has created a vibrantly varied fleet in which there is still ample space for the amateur and novice offshore skipper.

The three-legged Celtic Triangle course takes a fleet of up to 40 single- and doublehanded yachts to three Celtic coastlines over a distance of 600 miles. The challenge of the course is that much of it is in coastal waters with all of the shipping, tidal gates and headlands that entails, but it is also long enough that it is no round-the-cans sprint.

From Falmouth to Kinsale is a distance of approximately 190 miles, followed by a long-haul from Kinsale to Tréguier of 300 miles, and finally Tréguier to Falmouth, over 110 miles. Stop-overs in Kinsale and Tréguier are an attractive feature of the race and are long enough to allow crews to recover, prepare and socialise before the next leg.