Winners of Middle Sea Race!
The start of the 2016 Middle Sea Race is in light wind conditions. The Grand Harbor in Valetta is crowded and it is difficult to maintain a good starting position in the light breeze. After the start we are slightly stuck behind much larger boats, but the Italians on Class 40 Vaiquita get a good start in free air and gets out of the harbor faster than us. They keep the lead for a long time in Class 40 and throughout the route from Malta to the straight of Messina, they clearly show how they master the local conditions in the light air. We continuously struggle with shifting between jib and code 0. We slowly catch up but as soon as the wind disappears, they show they know where to be.
Smoking volcanos
The straight of Messina, that is the straight between Sicily and the Italian mainland, is famous for its rapidly changing conditions. From one moment of calm seas, the next moment can be gale conditions. We experience exactly this and although we had closed in on Vaiquita up until this point, they now slipped away and on the way to Stromboli they increase their lead to nine nautical miles.
While closing in on Stromboli, we lost Vaiquita on the AIS – but instead we realize that Stromboli is actually a real and active volcano! Didn’t know that, wtf – ash, smoke and fire is shot out the top of the mountain. After a beautiful sunset, impressive and powerful strokes of fire points straight up the sky.
After rounding Stromboli, the route turns westwards. According to the forecast there will be a huge wind shadow at the north western tip of Sicily. This gives us some very important tactical opportunities to overtake Vaiquita in case they make mistakes. From the forecast we estimate the best route to get around the wind shadow, and still be flexible to adjust according to what we see in reality. By using the AIS from bigger boats ahead of us, we can navigate around the slow wind area. Effectively overtaking Vaiquita. We leave Vaiquita behind and start preparing for the gale that is forecasted to hit us during the night.
Playing the cards right
Having Vaiquita behind, focus now is to play the cards right. The gale rolling in during the evening give us hard upwind beating towards Pantelleria and then further on towards Lampedusa. Hard upwind beating is our thing and we have no problems keeping the lead.
After passing Lampedusa the course is north east. Wind is slowing down and turning downwind. The forecast shows a wind shift of 90 degrees, westerly to northerly, later and now we need to choose the point for a gybe very carefully. Too early and we will sail in the wrong direction, too late and we will not make it to the mark without tacking upwind at the end. To our surprise we see Vaiquita continuing towards east after we gybed, thus making us worried for tactical reasons. Always keep yourself between the competitor and the mark.
But we stay strong in our belief we did it right and it appears as we selected the gybing point to perfection. We could keep the kite up right in to the northern tip of Malta, even if it was very tight angles. And then continued with the kite straight into the finish line. Vaiquita had to spend several hours beating after the wind shift and finished several hours behind us.
What a nice feeling, after a very tight fighting with Vaiquita for the entire race, we finally won the Class 40 class of the Middle Sea Race!
