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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 55 boats across four editions admitted to the fleet — the 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions are populated in the analytic record, with the most recent 2026 edition fielding 26 of those 55 boats on the start line in February 2026.
The classified fleet runs AEROBLADE-led at 34% (18 boats), with AEROMAX at 30.2% (16 boats) and DEEPFRAME at 11.3% (6 boats) behind — a blue-water offshore signature. AEROBLADE is the light, agile racing-platform archetype that converts open-water trade-wind reaches into sustained speed; AEROMAX is the power-efficiency hybrid that drives upwind at moderate displacement; DEEPFRAME is the deep-hull stiff platform that runs drag-optimized through chop. The top three archetypes together account for 75.5% of the 53 classified boats — a clear offshore signature where light reaching speed, power-efficient upwind drive, and deep-hull efficiency carry the long passages. GRAVITYRUN and STEELFORM each hold 9.4% (5 boats apiece), with GLIDEFORM, KEELFLEX, and STEELCORE rounding out the eight populated archetypes at one boat each. Two boats lack enough certificate fields for classification. Sixteen countries are represented across the 55-boat fleet, led by GBR (14), USA (10), and FRA (6).
The Caribbean 600 is also an Atlantic-Caribbean campaign — 17 of the 55 fleet boats (30.9%) 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 leads the fleet at 8 boats (14.5%) as the most-common designer, ahead of Rod Johnstone (J/Boats) at 6 (10.9%), Judel-Vrolijk at 5 (9.1%), and Reichel/Pugh, Frers, and Humphreys at 4 apiece. No single board holds the largest share — Farr's lead is real but lives inside the fleet's wider multi-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.