We are under way for this 2nd night of the race around the island of Sicily, the Rolex Middle Sea race. We are sailing now towards our next rounding point which is the furthest Eastern point of Sicily, passing Trapani – we can already see the loom of the city. There is no moon tonight, or if there is one, she is for sure waning big time, we can’t see much! Instead we have a sea of stars and planets in the sky. Everywhere you look there is something shining filling this clear dark sky. We believe Venus is the dazzling star that outshines all the others.
On board, the deck is filled with dark bodies all looking alike and wondering around manoeuvring or coming and going from down below deck. Voices keep asking “who is this”. The wrong answer is to say “me”! That does not help as there are 17 “me” on board! We walk around sometimes like a mini christmas lights with a red light on our forehead, especially when moving around downstairs as it is pitch black there too. In order not to disrupt the trimmers’ vision, torches are always on red lights at night. On deck, there is only a very small reflection of the navigation lights onto the spinnaker (green light starboard and red light port for night lights at the bow) which give a bit of light on deck by reflection from the white sail to which the red or green lights project. But not much! One of the helmsmen is not comfortable with those reflections on the sail, so we change and switch on the navigation lights on the mast instead. Changes of sails happen in the dark. Imagine a well-choreographed ballet performed in a tunnel with the sound of the waves as the background music – well you can picture yourself on-board with us at this moment!
We are getting close to half way in the distance of this race. We are 100 miles approximately to our next point. Boat speed is about 10 knots and the wind speed is about 9 knots. We have been sailing downwind for many hours and it seems this will continue. This is very pleasant as it keeps the boat relatively flat. The sea state is quiet so there is no big banging of the boat on the waves. So far no rain.
Behind us, our competition is creeping on us slowly as we can see on the race tracker. They have gained, it seems, 10 miles on us. On one hand it is relieving not to see competition around knowing they are following behind, on the other hand, it is very lonely at times to race in this empty sea! We then have to enjoy our own company: Happy troops on board, our menu tonight was a delicious Beef stew!