The Royal Ocean Racing Club’s Caribbean 600 is one of the great ‘600 mile’ ocean race challenges, along with epics such as the Rolex Fastnet Race and the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race.

Its tropical setting might lead you to believe that it is not such a hardcore event as those others, but that would be misleading. The Caribbean 600 features a tortuous course between islands, working with currents, beating into tradewinds and coaxing past the lee of land in one of the most interesting offshore courses to be found anywhere in the world.

The race annually attracts a great range of yachts from the latest IRC designs to big classics and schooners, and is firmly in the calendar of the some of the world’s best racing sailors.

The 600nm course circumnavigates 11 Caribbean Islands starting from Fort Charlotte, English Harbour, Antigua and heads north as far as St Martin and south to Guadeloupe taking in Barbuda, Nevis, St Kitts, Saba and St Barth’s.