NEW FOREST sailor Ben Ainslie has smashed the Round the Island race record today.

Lymington's four-time Olympic sailing champion stormed across the finish line this morning in a time of two hours, 52 minutes and 15 seconds to break the previous record held for 12 years.

He dedicated the win to Sherborne sailor Andrew Simpson, for whom he was a pallbearer at his funeral on Friday.

Tributes were also paid to the sailor, who died in an accident in San Francisco, before the race.

Ainslie finished the race at 8.02am accompanied by a swarm of RIBs, carving more than 16 minutes off Francis Joyon's 2001 time for the yacht race around the Isle of Wight. Second across the finish line was Mike Slade's ICAP Leopard.

Having sailed the first half of the race in 1 hour 40 minutes the giant monohull looked to be well inside the record time of 3 hours 53 minutes she set in 2008.

However, Ainslie's Leopard slowed in the second half of the race and it wasn't clear that she would better the record time until she was a few minutes away from the finish.

She finally crossed the line at 0843.50, shaving 9 minutes 45 seconds off her previous record. A fleet of almost 1,500 boats are taking part.

With the winds stronger than forecast so far, some damaged sails have been seen.

Paralympic Gold medallist Helena Lucas, sailing with Campbell Field on the Elan 450 Squire Sanders, reported splitting a spinnaker in half between the Needles and St Catherine's Point.