Almost 1,600 yachts, including some of the top names in British sailing, have already entered for this year's Round The Island Race, around the Isle of Wight, on Saturday 22 June 2002.

First boats, the big multi-hulls and grand prix yachts, will cross the startline in front of the Royal Yacht Squadron at Cowes at 8.30am. The bulk of the fleet will start between 9am and 10am.

Many of the skippers taking part in the race - arguably the biggest yacht race in the world and often dubbed the London Marathon of yachting - have sailed the course before and know the ropes. But for new entrants and the less experienced, organisers the Island Sailing Club have issued top tips for skippers.

The Round The Island race is organised by the highly respected Island Sailing Club, based in Cowes and for this year's race - the 66th - race partners supporting the event include Ocean World, Red Funnel, Champagne Mumm, MDL and Isle of Wight Tourism.

2001 was a record-breaking race. Windy conditions enabled the French trimaran Dexia Eure et Loir, helmed by Olympic medal-winner Rodney Pattisson of Poole, to take almost an hour off Pattisson's own 15-year-old record, also set in a trimaran. Dexia, whose crew also included French ace sailors Thomas Coville and Francis Joyon, went on later in the summer to take line honours in the Fastnet race. Dexi completed the course round the Island in just 3hr 8min 29sec.

A new monohull record was also set in 2001, by Mike Slade's 90ft super sloop Skandia Leopard. Leopard, completing the course in just over four hours and taking more than an hour off the old record. It was the third time Mike Slade has held the round-the-Island monohull record.

In all ten monohulls in the 2001 race achieved better times than the previous record of 5hr 12min 3sec, including the GBR Challenge training yacht GBR 44, Kit Hobday and Tim Louis's Farr 52, Bear of Britain, and two Ultra 30s.

The record set by Dexia Eure et Loir during the 2001 Round-the-Island race has already been broken, by Steve Fossett's 125ft catamaran PlayStation, with an astounding time of 2hr 33min 55 sec in October 2001.