RORC Caribbean 600 2026

English Harbor, Antigua — 23 February 2026

Caribbean IRC offshore classic 600 nm island circuit
53 boats in the fleet 3 editions covered 16 countries 600 nm International event fleet · as of 2026-08-20
Kinship

An Atlantic-to-Caribbean offshore campaign.

17 of the fleet’s 53 boats also raced the 2025 Fastnet — the long-haul offshore programs that thread the Atlantic, the Solent, and the 11-island Antigua loop into one winter.

 Hidden Shape

AEROSTREAM leads at 41.5%.
The blue-water offshore signature on a 600 nm tropical loop.

22 towering, rig-powered platforms among the 52 classified boats; AEROCORE follows at 24.5% across its two measured slots, and AEROFORCE completes the offshore podium at 18.9%.
Character

Eleven islands, six hundred miles, a trade-wind blue-water classic.

The RORC Caribbean 600 is 600 nautical miles around the volcanic Caribbean island chain from English Harbor, Antigua, where trade winds, squalls, and dramatic island wind shadows make a different race every fifty miles. The course rewards hull efficiency on the open-water tradewind legs, crew execution through the physically demanding island roundings, and tactical intelligence in the squall and katabatic-wind game that defines the passages between islands. The Guadeloupe wind shadow downwind of La Soufrière is the race's tactical crucible; the night passages off the volcanic slopes are a second one. FleetEdge tracks 53 boats across three editions admitted to the fleet — the 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions are populated in the analytic record, with the most recent 2026 edition fielding 25 of those 53 boats on the start line in February 2026.

The fleet runs AEROSTREAM-led at 41.5% (22 boats), with AEROCORE second at 24.5% (13 boats) across its two measured slots and AEROFORCE third at 18.9% (10 boats) — a blue-water offshore signature. AEROSTREAM is the towering, rig-powered family: a level posture carried on a stiff righting reserve, strongest upwind and moderate on the reach. AEROCORE is large as well, sailing upright on a tender reserve, and in banked race evidence it carries a measured downwind advantage — under the 2026 census one word covers two measured slots here, 13.2% (7 boats) and 11.3% (6 boats), each slot keeping its own measured signature. AEROFORCE is the third large-platform word in the front tier, level in posture on a neutral righting reserve. Together those three words account for 84.9% of the 53-boat fleet — a front tier built on scale, which is what a fleet assembled for 600 nm of open-water trade-wind passage-making tends to look like. LEANRUN carries 7.5% (4 boats) across its two slots, and LEANFORCE at 3.8% (2 boats) and HEFTLINE at 1.9% (1 boat) close the eight populated measured slots. One boat lacks enough certificate fields for classification. Sixteen countries are represented across the 53-boat fleet, led by GBR (14), USA (8), and FRA (6).

The Caribbean 600 is also an Atlantic-Caribbean campaign — 17 of the fleet's 53 boats (32.1%) also raced the 2025 Fastnet. The overlap is structural, not coincidental: programs that target the long winter offshore in the Caribbean often thread the Solent in summer on the same boat and the same crew. Farr Design anchors the fleet at 18.9%, ahead of Rod Johnstone (J/Boats) at 6 (11.3%), Reichel/Pugh and Judel-Vrolijk at 4 apiece (7.5%), and Frers and Ker at 3 each. Farr's lead is the clearest single-board signal in the fleet, but it still sits inside a wide designer mix — and the next edition in February 2027 runs the same 11-island course under whatever trade-wind regime the Atlantic delivers on the day.

Event cohort view · 25 boats · as of 2026-08-20

Selected Race Result

RORC Caribbean 600 2026 — 600 nm round the volcanic Caribbean chain.

25 of the 53 fleet boats raced the 2026 edition on 23 February 2026 across 10 countries on one race — an offshore-island-circuit course scored under IRC in divisions from Super Zero down to Two, with comparative-allowance data on the boats that reached FleetEdge’s comparative-data threshold.

Headlines

Dimension leaders — RORC Caribbean 600 2026 (23 February 2026).

Leaders from the published 2026 edition data. Comparative Time — the allowance delta in sec/nm against the fleet’s ORC median — reads negative = faster than the rating expects; Crew Residual — the sec/nm gap between a boat’s actual pace and its archetype-expected pace — reads negative = the crew beat that baseline. Both comparative boards rank most-negative first.

Allowance — sec/nm vs ORC

1. SCOWLING DRAGON · −69.92
2. RIKKI · −63.05
3. BLACK JACK 100 · −55.54

Sail Drive Index

1. JACKKNIFE · 38
2. MORPHEUS · 37
3. RIKKI · 34

Upwind VMG — 12 kt, kn

1. BLACK JACK 100 · 8.84
2. MONSTER PROJECT · 8.74
3. AEGIR · 7.32

Downwind VMG — 12 kt, kn

1. BLACK JACK 100 · 11.55
2. AEGIR · 8.58
3. INO NOIR · 7.98

Rated Pace — sec/nm

1. BLACK JACK 100 · 325.2
2. MONSTER PROJECT · 394.7
3. INO NOIR · 471.7

Crew Residual — sec/nm

1. SCOWLING DRAGON · −69.92
2. RIKKI · −63.05
3. BLACK JACK 100 · −55.54
Stories

What the Caribbean 600 2026 fleet surfaced.

Performance Verdict

INO NOIR converts a Ker-46 platform into a Zero-division podium.

INO NOIR (Ker-46, Ker, GBR) finished 3rd in IRC Zero at the 2026 Caribbean 600 — the best published placing by any of the fleet’s 25 starters at this running. The result is platform-consistent rather than platform-defying: the Ker-46 sits 3rd on the fleet’s Downwind VMG-12kt board at 7.98 kn, 4th on Upwind VMG-12kt at 6.28 kn, and carries the third-fastest rated pace in the fleet at 471.7 sec/nm — a 46-footer holding podium dimensional presence in a fleet whose boards are headed by a 100-foot Super Maxi and a Volvo 70. The boat’s physics said front-of-fleet; the corrected scoreboard agreed.

  • IRC Zero: 3rd · published 2026 standings
  • Downwind VMG-12kt: 7.98 kn · 3rd of 25
  • Rated pace: 471.7 sec/nm · 3rd of 24
Complete data RORC Caribbean 600 2026
Multi-Dimension Presence

BLACK JACK 100 stacks rated pace and both VMG-12kt boards.

BLACK JACK 100 (Super Maxi 100, Reichel/Pugh, AEROSTREAM) tops three Caribbean 600 fleet Headlines at once — Upwind VMG-12kt at 8.84 kn, Downwind VMG-12kt at 11.55 kn (2.97 kn clear of AEGIR), and the fleet’s fastest rated pace at 325.2 sec/nm. The 100-foot Super Maxi is the only boat in the 2026 fleet to lead three separate dimension families across the same race, and it carries that presence onto both comparative boards as well — 3rd of 11 on the allowance delta at −55.54 sec/nm and 3rd of 10 on Crew Residual at the same figure. On a running where the open-water trade-wind legs asked for sustained drive and the island-cluster sections asked for height, the AEROSTREAM Super Maxi turned length and rig power into a leading dimensional position on both points of sail.

  • Upwind / Downwind VMG-12kt: 8.84 / 11.55 kn · fleet-leading on both
  • Rated pace: 325.2 sec/nm · fastest of 24
  • Allowance / Crew Residual: −55.54 sec/nm · 3rd on both boards
Complete data RORC Caribbean 600 2026
Magnitude Gap

SCOWLING DRAGON runs 27.7 sec/nm faster than the comparative median.

SCOWLING DRAGON (Class 40, Owen Clarke design, USA) led the 2026 comparative-allowance field at −69.92 sec/nm vs the ORC median — 6.9 sec/nm clear of RIKKI (RP-42, Reichel/Pugh) at −63.05 and 27.7 sec/nm faster than the comparative field’s median of −42.21. The 40-foot offshore one-design out-sailed its allowance harder than the maxis behind it — BLACK JACK 100 took 3rd on the board at −55.54 — the signature of a planing-capable shorthanded platform in the sustained open-water reaching that the Antigua loop served up at this running. Over 600 nm, a 27.7 sec/nm edge over the median compounds to better than four and a half hours of corrected time.

  • 1st: SCOWLING DRAGON · −69.92 sec/nm
  • 2nd: RIKKI · −63.05 sec/nm · 6.9 sec/nm gap
  • Comparative-field median: −42.21 sec/nm
Complete data RORC Caribbean 600 2026
Composition Shift

The AEROFORCE concentration in the 2026 race field.

The 2026 running redraws the archetype mix around the rig-powered end of the fleet: where the 53-boat fleet baseline runs AEROSTREAM-led at 41.5% with AEROCORE second at 24.5% across its two measured slots and AEROFORCE third at 18.9%, the 11 of 25 starters carrying an archetype assignment at the view published nearest the race read AEROSTREAM 4, AEROFORCE 3, AEROCORE 2, and one apiece for HEFTLINE and LEANRUN. The two populations read on their own scopes — the baseline is the full three-edition fleet under the current published view, while the event slice covers only the classified part of one starting list — but the leader holds across both, AEROSTREAM reading 36.4% of the classified starters against its 41.5% fleet share, and the sharpest concentration belongs to AEROFORCE: 27.3% of the race field against 18.9% of the fleet, more than eight points of gain. The 2026 starting list still reads as a subset of the broader fleet because that fleet IS the Caribbean 600, edition by edition — the 2024 edition fielded 19 boats, 2025 fielded 23, and 2026 fielded 25.

  • Fleet baseline (53 boats, current view): AEROSTREAM 41.5% · AEROCORE 24.5% · AEROFORCE 18.9%
  • 2026 race field (11 classified at the race-nearest view): AEROSTREAM 4 · AEROFORCE 3 · AEROCORE 2 · HEFTLINE and LEANRUN close the set
  • Editions populated: 2024 (19) · 2025 (23) · 2026 (25)
Partial data Race group vs fleet
Race Archetypes

11 boats classified in RORC Caribbean 600 2026.

Archetype assignments dated 2026-08-20 — the FleetEdge analysis nearest this event.

25 fleet boats started the 2026 edition; 11 of them carry a FleetEdge archetype assignment at the view published nearest the race — a smaller classified population than the current Fleet DNA baseline, so the two surfaces are read separately. AEROSTREAM leads at 36.4%, AEROFORCE takes 27.3%, AEROCORE 18.2%, and HEFTLINE and LEANRUN field one hull each.

AEROSTREAM

Towering scale · level posture · stiff reserve — measured downwind advantage in banked race evidence.

Boats 4
Share 36.4%

AEROFORCE

Large scale · level posture · neutral reserve — reaching-constrained in banked race evidence.

Boats 3
Share 27.3%

AEROCORE

Large scale · upright posture · tender reserve — measured downwind advantage in banked race evidence.

Boats 2
Share 18.2%

HEFTLINE

Compact scale · level posture · stiff reserve — reaching-neutral in banked race evidence.

Boats 1
Share 9.1%

LEANRUN

Large scale · upright posture — downwind-neutral in banked race evidence.

Boats 1
Share 9.1%

International event fleet · 53 boats · as of 2026-08-20

Fleet DNA

How the Caribbean 600 fleet is built.

53 boats in the fleet. 28 ORC-rated and 25 mapped IRC entries attributed across 6 archetypes — 52 classified, the remainder lacking enough certificate fields for classification. The full classified archetype distribution, sorted by count.

The 8-archetype distribution.

AEROSTREAM

Towering scale · level posture · stiff reserve — measured downwind advantage in banked race evidence.

strong upwind · weak reaching · strong downwind

Boats 22
Share 41.5%
  • TP-52
  • XP-44
  • Farr 40

AEROCORE

Large scale · upright posture · tender reserve — measured downwind advantage in banked race evidence.

neutral upwind · neutral reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 13
Share 24.5%

AEROFORCE

Large scale · level posture · neutral reserve — reaching-constrained in banked race evidence.

neutral upwind · weak reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 10
Share 18.9%

LEANRUN

Large scale · upright posture — downwind-neutral in banked race evidence.

neutral upwind · neutral reaching · neutral downwind

Boats 4
Share 7.5%
  • First 36.7
  • J-109
  • First 35

LEANFORCE

Compact scale — downwind-neutral in banked race evidence.

weak upwind · neutral reaching · weak downwind

Boats 2
Share 3.8%

HEFTLINE

Compact scale · level posture · stiff reserve — reaching-neutral in banked race evidence.

moderate upwind · moderate reaching · moderate downwind

Boats 1
Share 1.9%

AEROSTREAM leads the fleet at 41.5% — the towering, rig-powered family that carries a level posture on a stiff righting reserve and is strongest upwind. AEROCORE is second at 24.5%, carried across two measured slots at 13.2% and 11.3% — large platforms sailing upright on a tender reserve that carry a measured downwind advantage in banked race evidence; under the 2026 census one word covers both slots, each keeping its own measured signature. AEROFORCE is third at 18.9%, level in posture on a neutral righting reserve. Together those three words account for 84.9% of the 53-boat fleet — a front tier defined by scale rather than by any one point of sail, which is what a three-edition entry list for a 600-mile trade-wind circuit tends to assemble. LEANRUN carries 7.5% across its two slots, and LEANFORCE at 3.8% and HEFTLINE at 1.9% close the distribution.

At a glance

Caribbean 600 — structural profile.

Scope
53 boats
28 ORC-rated · 25 mapped-IRC
Top 3 archetypes
  1. AEROSTREAM — 22 boats (41.5%)
  2. AEROCORE — 13 boats (24.5%)
  3. AEROFORCE — 10 boats (18.9%)
Eight canonical performance archetypes cluster the fleet by dimensional signature. See the full map →
Top designer cluster
Farr Design
10 boats (18.9%) — the most-represented design voice in this fleet.

Counts and archetype assignments above are measured from the current corpus. Commentary below is interpretive.

International event fleet · as of 2026-08-20

Classified fleet view · 52 of 53 classified · as of 2026-08-20

Fleet Stories

Caribbean 600 fleet signature.

Designer Density

Farr Design anchors the Caribbean 600 fleet.

Farr Design drew 10 of the 53 fleet boats (18.9%) at the RORC Caribbean 600 — the leading designer share in the fleet, ahead of Rod Johnstone (J/Boats) at 11.3% and Reichel/Pugh and Judel-Vrolijk at 4 apiece (7.5%). Frers and Ker sit close behind, with Humphreys, Jeppesen-Nielsen and Valer on 2, and a long tail of 16 single-board entries from Verdier, Owen Clarke, Botin & Carkeek, Juan Yacht Design, Finot-Conq and others. At 18.9% the Farr drawing-board clears the threshold where one designer visibly leads a fleet — roughly one boat in five on the 600 nm island circuit is a Farr line, and the remaining four-fifths are spread across more than 20 other boards. The Caribbean 600 is a Farr-led fleet with a wide bench.

  • Farr Design: 18.9%
  • Rod Johnstone (J/Boats): 11.3%
  • Reichel/Pugh & Judel-Vrolijk: 7.5% each
Complete data FleetEdge fleet-wide data
Archetype Density

A scale-led front tier — AEROSTREAM 22, AEROCORE 13, AEROFORCE 10.

AEROSTREAM carries 41.5% of the Caribbean 600 fleet (22 boats), ahead of AEROCORE at 24.5% (13 boats) and AEROFORCE at 18.9% (10 boats) — three Large-Platform words that between them account for 45 of the fleet’s boats. This is a fleet with one clear structural signature and a broad shoulder behind it: AEROSTREAM alone leads the second word by nine hulls, and the second leads the third by three. All three sit in the Large-Platform family, and the difference is in how the platform is carried — AEROSTREAM is the towering one, level in posture on a stiff righting reserve; AEROCORE is large and upright on a tender reserve; AEROFORCE is large and level on a neutral reserve. In banked race evidence the split follows that carriage: AEROSTREAM and AEROCORE both carry a measured downwind advantage — a stronger showing than the fleet norm on that leg — while AEROFORCE runs reaching-constrained, a weaker showing than the fleet norm on the reach. What the front of this fleet expresses is a preference for scale; specialization happens below the three lead words rather than at the top of the distribution. LEANRUN at 7.5% (4 boats), LEANFORCE at 3.8% (2 boats) and HEFTLINE at 1.9% (1 boat) close the classified set, with one boat short of the certificate fields to classify.

  • AEROSTREAM: 22 boats · 41.5%
  • AEROCORE: 13 boats · 24.5%
  • Front three words = 84.9% of the fleet
Complete data FleetEdge fleet-wide data
Continue

Go deeper.

IRC Racing

All six IRC offshore classics in one analytical framework — the Caribbean 600 is one of the five flagship races with full HYCOM ocean-current treatment.

ORC World Fleet

The cross-fleet ORC reference for archetype, designer, and class signature — the dictionary against which the Caribbean 600’s 41.5% AEROSTREAM share reads.

RORC Transatlantic

3,000 nautical miles from Lanzarote to the Caribbean — the Atlantic feeder route that delivers programs to the Caribbean offshore winter.

Fastnet

The 695 nm Solent-to-Fastnet-Rock loop — 17 of the Caribbean 600 fleet’s boats also raced the 2025 Fastnet, the largest cross-event overlap in the fleet’s analytic record.

Middle Sea Race

The 606 nm Maltese loop — the third member of the IRC offshore long-mile triangle alongside the Caribbean 600 and the Fastnet.

Fleet Archetypes

The archetype design groups of the 2026 census that let us read the Caribbean 600’s structural signature — what AEROSTREAM and AEROCORE are and why the 600 nm Antigua loop puts scale at the front.

Analyze the Caribbean 600.

600 nm around 11 islands. Trade winds, squalls, and volcanic wind shadows.

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