Hungarian canting keel 60′ ‘smokin’ through The Strait of Messina last night.

There can be no more spectacular surroundings to an international regatta than the start of the Rolex Middle Sea Race in the Grand Harbour Malta! Overhung by medieval limestone fortresses, batteries, church domes and a variety of centuries old architectural masterpieces, Malta captures a feeling of greatness in years gone by.

Various class starts triggered by a cannon from the past,  gets the fleet off beating up to the harbour exit. A downwind run along the coast, giving spectators a wonderful sight, before setting of towards Sicily. Wind predictions were better than expected and we managed to reach along at a respectable 8.8 knots. The online results showed us in first position rounding Capopassero on Sicily! Setting our A2 spinnaker we were in good speed mode until a rip in the sail brought it down. Some good crew work had the A3 up in no time and we trucked down at good speed towards the Messina straits. A beautiful moon came out and surrounded by the lights on the Italian mainland on starboard and those of Sicily on port made for a memorable passage. Good winds took us through the straits and we are making good mode with Stromboli a few miles in front of us.

Photo leaving Messina Strait heading from Stromboli.

Skipper La Reponse Andrew McIrvine – After a good start we got round the first 2 buoys in the top 3 of the green fleet. As we set off for Sicily under Code 0 we got into the lead. Good speed through the night until it got very soft before the Messina straits. We had stayed low and away from the Italian side where there was much less wind. We got to the straits with wind filling from behind and max favourable tide. Went through at 10-11 kts over the ground. We were with our ‘big sister’ Elusive the First 45 and Black Bull j111. We can see Quokka a mile ahead. Apparently we are now 15th – up from 40th. Nice sunny morning tho Etna was obscured by cloud. 20kts behind us 9kts plus. S2 and staysail. Time for sleep !

From Bavaria MLT52 Windward. DH class.
Had a great crossing to capo passero leading the Maltese DoubleHanded fleet and match racing with another 2 class 40’s one of which was Patricia Ita 86 who started in our group but  just sailing with a crew of 4. In mid channel we had 2 hair raising moments , close encounters with 2 ships . We called them up on VHF and they assured us that they will change course but still ended up going closer than 100ft to us !! Other yachts sailing in close company at capo passero were XPAct and the Volvo 60 Big One.
Just off passero lighthouse we were doing 9 kts under code 0 in a 13 knot SE  wind when suddenly the wind increased to 17 kts and our code 0 halyard chafed at the masthead block and glided into the see to leeward of us . We only lost 0.4 of a nautical mile behind Patricia until we sorted the mess and pulled the 16o Sqm sail from the water. Luckily no damage to our sail but we will have to wait until morning before we can rig a new halyard .
I will try to send some pics in another mail.
Anthony camilleri & Andrew Agius Delicata

Best regards
Anthony Camilleri

From Atame
We propose a special award for the friend and 2 handed competitor Antony Camilleri
He managed to stop twice at the cross with 2 large ships
He litterally had to turn around before collision
This is the law of the larger !!
We are enjoing a Luna Rossa – red moon rising and just passes Capo passero

Beppe Bisotto

Tom Robinson-Volvo 70 Monster Project

Date: 19/10/13
Time: 15:00
Location: 36.22.24N 14.52.98E

So the race has begun and we are now heading towards Sicily at speeds around 12-14 knots under Code 0 with a TWA of 100. We pushed our way through the fleet of smaller boats relatively quicker after rounding the second Rolex buoy and holding a similar pace to the 2 IMOCA 60’s. We’re probably pushing how high we can go with the Code 0 for the wind strength we have, however we feel the need to put the hammer down early on and make as much ground as we can under these idyllic reaching conditions. This weather and Angle isn’t going to stay with us as long as we’d desire eventually getting lighter and turning into a run once we’ve passed the first cape off of Sicily.

Our start was pretty conservative, A time on distance run in at the starboard end under Code 0. We were trying to keep as much height to windward and keep close to the southern side of the break water so that we wouldn’t have to think about tacking to get through the small opening to get to the first Rolex buoy. We’d observed some of the earlier starts having to do this and we are never keen on trying to do quick short manoeuvres within Grand Harbour in a boat designed to do long legs offshore.

The Mini Maxis are still in sight, about 3.5 miles ahead, we’re impressed at their speed for this reach angle. IMOCA 60 ‘GAES’ is almost within touching distance. The Class 40 ‘Fulcrum2’ half a mile to leeward  ETA Capo Passero is around 5PM

We’ve had two minor snags so far; The first is a fracture / break in our top mainsail batten noticed just as we hoisted our mainsail. Although this won’t hamper our performance it does make the leach look a bit ugly. This batten basically holds the square top of the sail up and out. There wasn’t much we could do about it before starting so have decided to leave it in place.

The second;  A release valve for our starboard keel ram was very slightly engaged allowing the ram to ‘free flow’ and therefore putting the entire load of the keel onto the port keel ram. This resulted in a small leak of hydraulic fluid from the port ram under its load and this ‘bleed’. This allowed the keel to drop down from its normal 40 degree position by somewhere in the region of 10 degrees over about 1 hour since the rounding the second Rolex buoy. This impacted our performance slightly, maybe letting the trailing IMOCA 60 pull up level with us but after a quick clean-up and a top up of the hydraulic fluid we’re back at 40 degrees and pushing hard to claw back some ground.

We’ve decided on a 4.4.4.6.6 rolling watch system starting at 6PM this evening. This has shorter watches at night and longer ones during the day to allow more time to rest and a rotation of sailing at certain times of the day.

For myself personally, I’ve already been forced to open my “Sunday Morale Bag” of fruit juices and sugary sweets to try and recover from a lack of sleep due to late night and early morning boat preparation. Not ideal the night before an offshore!

Rolex Middle Sea Race has started, we are on our way to Sicily!

Hello All!

Kings Legend is ready to start the middle sea race 2013, we wish all competitors a safe and competitive race.

Greetings from Kings Legend

Gerard (navigator)