For exclusive video footage of the Rolex Fastnet Race, click here.

The strong winds that caused such a high attrition rate among the 271 boats that started the Rolex Fastnet Race on Monday off Cowes on the Isle of Wight proved ideal record-breaking conditions for Mike Slade’s new 100ft super maxi, ICAP Leopard of London.

With a top-class international crew, Leopard passed the Plymouth finish line shortly before 9am yesterday to take the classic 608-mile course’s monohull race record inside two days for the first time. Their passage of one day, 20 hours and 18 minutes shattered the nine-year-old mark by 8hr 50min.

Leopard, launched only in June, is a comfortable cruiser-racer that the designer, Farr, has turbocharged by using the latest canting keel technology and water ballast. It was built by Slade, a London property developer, with the intention of taking on the world’s classic offshore races.

At noon yesterday, with conditions improved in the Celtic Sea between Land’s End and the lonely Fastnet Rock on Ireland’s southwest corner, more than 190 boats had retired. Vincent Riou, the Vendée Globe winner from France, sailing two up with Seb Josse, won the Open 60 Class on his new Farr-designed PRB, while the race leader on handicap yesterday was George David’s 90ft Rambler, which finished second into Plymouth.

Great Britain’s Olympic squad spent most of the first day of the Qingdao International Regatta drifting, waiting for enough breeze. Of the 17 races scheduled yesterday for the dress rehearsal for next year’s Olympic sailing regatta in China, only one, for the 49er Skiff fleet, was completed in a fitful whisper of wind.