12/06/2008 04:59. Line honours favourite Alfa Romeo led a fleet of 170 boats out of the Gulf of St Tropez this afternoon as the fleet set out on the 243-mile Giraglia Race. After winning two of the three inshore races of the Giraglia Rolex Cup, Alfa Romeo's skipper Neville Crichton has high hopes of notching up a handicap victory in the offshore race to Genoa.

The other big target is a shot at the course record, a time of 22 hours, 13 minutes, 48 seconds which Crichton and his team set in 2003 with the previous Alfa Romeo, a fixed-keel 90-footer. The current Alfa Romeo is a 100-footer with canting keel and powered winches, an altogether more potent beast. And yet the Giraglia record has eluded the newer boat.

"We should have kept that boat," joked Crichton, referring to the 90-footer which brought him so... // BYM News