One thing’s for sure: nobody can say the Rolex Middle Sea Race is a boring event.
This year’s edition unfolded against the backdrop of a truly spectacular October gale – lashing rain, explosive thunder, massive waves, and gale force winds of up to 40 knots.
The effects of the storm were bad enough on land, with trees uprooted, buildings damaged and three Enemalta electricity polls felled, in a weekend that kept the Civil Protection Department on constant high alert.
Out at sea, conditions were little short of life-threatening. Less than two days into the event, some 80 per cent of the participating vessels had already pulled out – some because of damage sustained, others out of sheer prudence.
Ironically, by that time the race had already long been won. America’s 90-foot maxi-yacht Rambler cruised into Marsamxett on Monday after only 47 hours 55 minutes and three seconds, claiming in the process a historic treble – overall win, line honours and course record – for the first time in seven years.
More significantly, Rambler’s record time is one which many, including Royal Malta Yacht Club commodore (and Primadonna Medbank skipper) George Bonello Dupuis, deem “impossible to beat.”
“We retired at around midnight (Sunday) with a torn mainsail,” Bonello Dupuis tells me as he monitors the progress of the remaining yachts from the comfort of the Royal Malta yacht club on Manoel Island. “Afterwards we put into Syracuse harbour where we found a number of other crews which had also abandoned the race.”
This was Bonello Dupuis’ fourth participation in the annual event, and in his own words there is simply no comparison with previous experiences.
“All my other races were champagne sailing compared to this,” he says. “The sea-state was incredibly horrible. The boat would take off a wave, and then land back in the water with a terrific bang. You’d think she was about the break up…”
Bonello Dupuis is not the only skipper to be daunted by the extraordinary swell and sudden squalls that characterised the Rolex Middle Sea Race 2007. Ken Read, skipper of the race-winner Rambler, was also suitably impressed, as his after-race comments reveal: “The hardest part of the race was day two, waiting for the front to come: the anticipation, that nervous feeling in your stomach [when] you know 50 knots is coming… when the front finally hit and we saw 40 knots straightaway we were storm jib and triple reefed so we did not have that panic that we’ve got to get stuff squared away. Waterspouts were forming all around us and we had one fully coned waterspout pass about a half-mile away from us.”
Back at the Yacht Club, George Bonello Dupuis explains why the same weather patterns that made life hell for the smaller boats, were actually ideal for the larger and faster maxi yachts such as Rambler, which stunned the local yachting community by breaking the previous course record by a scarcely credible 16 hours.
“It was the perfect storm for a perfect record,” he says without any discernible trace of bitterness, “With a fast boat like that, you are always one step ahead of the storm.”
But not all maxi-yachts fared quite as smoothly. Even as Rambler rounded the Egadi islands for the final sprint to Malta, another boat in the same category – the Australian Loki – found herself rudderless and in serious danger of foundering off the Golfo di Castellamare.
Initial rescue attempts by the min-maxi Atalanta II – which abandoned the race to offer assistance to the stricken vessel – were hampered by 35-knot winds and near-zero visibility. “The sea was so high that sometimes the waves were breaking over the mast,” Atalanta II crewmember Tommaso Chieffi afterwards recalled. “It was very difficult to go too near to Loki, the rolling motion was so huge that it was absolutely too dangerous.”
In the end it had to be the Italian Guardia Costiera to airlift Loki’s crew to safety, ending hours of high drama which could have had far more serious consequences. All 16 of Loki’s crewmembers are now safely ashore in Palermo, and efforts to salvage the abandoned yacht are still under way.
As weather conditions are set to improve by this afternoon, 15 yachts – including Maltese vessel Elusive, skippered by MSR veteran Arthur Podesta – are still in the race. But back on land, yachtees and non-yachtees alike are already discussing how the astonishing new record set by Rambler will impact future editions of MSR.
George Bonello Dupuis admits that larger maxi-yachts may be discouraged from participating in a race in which the existing record is practically impossible to beat.
“But for the smaller classes it’s a different story. The MSR is something you get hooked on. The boats which retired from this year’s race will definitely be back next year.”