The 44th Rolex Middle Sea Race turned into a David and Goliath battle between one of the biggest and the smallest entrants in a typically mixed set of conditions for the classic Mediterranean 606-mile offshore.
The 110 yachts starting on Saturday 21 October even saw widely variant breezes depending on their class start times, following a confused forecast and warm but overcast and humid conditions. As the multihulls began, the wind shifted from the south in the first part of the start area to the north by the time they were halfway down the harbour. Ten minutes later and two competing gradient winds left the start line virtually windless for the monohull fleets, though strong winds later filled in across the course. Racing the only MOD70 in the event, Alexia Barrier and Dee Caffari on The Famous Project’s Limosa showed the fleet the way round to be first home and take multihull line honours prize.
“The course has a little bit of everything and especially at night when you’re on a beast like this that just doesn’t know anything other than to go fast. You have to hang on for the ride and trust the boat,” said Caffari. “Alexia won the race last year on this boat, so she was really confident, but for many of us it was the first time steering in those conditions and, in the dark, it always feels so different. It was such a steep learning curve and a huge leap forwards for The Famous Project.” “In Messina in the dark, we had some big accelerations with 30 knots of true wind and, at one point I think, 54 knots of apparent wind which made us all work quite hard. Lots of tacking but not too busy with shipping.”
“We then had to tack across the top of Sicily to stay in the pressure,” recalls Caffari. “We reached the Egadi islands in darkness, then had a one-sided beat to Pantelleria. A couple of tacks there, before reaching Lampedusa at daybreak.
The end of the course was golden for us because I felt like we had tacked our whole way round to that point. We had a 70° true wind angle blast to Malta doing between 20 and 30 knots of boat speed. It was exhilarating and that’s why we’re all caked in salt but have huge grins on our faces.”
GIANT SLAYING ATTEMPT
One of the monohull line honours contenders, Bryan Ehrhart’s Juan K-designed Lucky (formerly Rambler 88) dismasted south of Favignana.
All crew were uninjured and no assistance was required. The 100ft Maxi Leopard 3, skippered by Chris Sherlock, was first monohull home, after a close battle with Andrea Recordati’s Wally 93, Bullitt. Bul
