Andreas Hanakamp – Vaquita
1600 CEST

“Just passed out of the Strait, which makes us very happy. We went too far offshore last night and lost out. We worked our way back going inshore and are now sailing near the other Class 40s, which is great. This is the first real race for us against the class and it is going well, particularly since the weather forecast has been wrong. We have had lots of sunshine today and the wind is following us at the moment.

We expect a spectacular view of Stromboli tonight, with nice sailing weather. The leg from Stromboli looks tricky. Our routing suggests we head north, but I am not sure about that.

The skipper is delighted, the crew is feeling jolly and no bad words have be exchanged! We’re eating freeze-dried food and dried fruit. The Rolex Middle Sea Race is the first big test in a long-term distance-racing project. We are accelerating slowly towards the goal and so far everything has been cool.”

Arthur Podesta – Elusive II St RegisNoon CEST
“Everything is fine, we are 19…20 miles from the Strait. We had a good night with lots of sail changes, and one patch of no wind at all. This morning we could see 40 yachts around us and it was a question of who got into the wind first. We were not the first to get going, but we were not the last.
We have enjoyed beautiful views of Etna, my daughter Maya who is helming at the moment got alovely picture of a rainbow over Etna plus a water spout.
Yesterday we damaged a spinnaker, but nothing too serious. The crew is in fantastic spirits, we had a super breakfast served up by Maya. We’re cracking under asymmetric, doing 9.4 knots in the right direction. We expect to exit the Strait in about two hours assuming the wind holds.

Austrian Class 40 Vaquita going quite nicely.

This picture shows the number of people which is needed to hoist a spinnaker. As many sailors as possible on the winches on deck to hoist a spinnaker. We are “peeling” – this means we are hoisting one sail in front of another sail, which in turn is taking down afterwards. The aim is to make sure there is always one sail up catching the air, and most importantly that it is the right sail up for the current wind condition. In this case we had one spinnaker of close 500m2 but since the wind decrease we “peeled” to a lighter/smaller spinnaker that will better capture the lighter wind.

Boris from Alligator SLO 747 (SERBIA) 1000CEST

“Getting on fine, 40nm from Messina Strait, 25nm off the coast. We have light winds of around 6 knots, but doing 5 knots in boatspeed. We had some problems yesterday, tearing our gennaker and a spinnaker, but we’ll carry on and both will be OK.

Our watch system is working well and spirits on board are good. Everyone is up at the moment. We had some cheese sandwiches for breakfast, and soup last night because it was cold. We can just see the base of Etna, but the rest is in cloud”

For Fans of OILTANKING JUNO. Go to:  www.ustream.com/channel/junoracingteam

They are streaming live video each day!

All of the Juno crew are members of the Royal Malta Yacht Club, skipper David Anastasi telephoned the club this afternoon to say that all was well on board with great spirit in the team and it looked as though they would get out through the Messina Strait before the tide will turn.

Here is ther post from yesterday.

Once out of the harbour some local storm clouds brought with them squalls (high winds that come very quickly). We saw some boats tear their code 0’s, and spinnakers. On Juno we were not free of problems either. Even though we made the correct sail calls at the right times, at one point we lost both our spinnaker sheets and tack lines giving us major problems with one of our spinnakers. Due to great teamwork we managed to make a good recovery and now find ourselves sailing up the east coast of Sicily towards the infamous straights of Messina.
Thanks for reading and please look out for some live broadcasts tomorrow! We will update you half anchor before we turn on our ustream live channel on our Facebook page.

The Oiltanking Juno team

Running under (repaired) A2 spinnaker through the straights with Italy to starboard, Sicily to port.

Not too much breeze but we are trickling along nicely.

Opposition got away a bit so having to work hard to reel them back in.

Last of the fresh food for dinner tonight, then its onto the freeze dried. Nice. NOT!

JB

Here we are passing the Straights of Messina at 8.30am this morning, 21 hours after the start in Malta. Beautiful morning after rain and wind and eventually nothing around 3am. We had the 3 “eggs” – the 000 at the wind speed of the boat. The water was so calm it felt like we were sailing on oil. We still have the current with us, we are sailing between 9 and 10 knots. Passing the tip of the Sicily Island close to which many fishermen are at work or leisure fishing from their little boat. Onto the next rounding which is 40 miles north from Messina. We cannot see competition anymore. Esimit is way ahead, the crossing the straight during the night, the rest of the fleet is way back. Breakfast served at sun rise, mist disappeared. What a beautiful day!

I can see many boats around me the stream of wind is parallel to the sicilian coast a shifts very much un predictably weather predictions are quite different from reality we managed to gain quite much water round capo passero pointing to the coast Ton Ton is 5 miles ahead NE just passed the slovenian 44.7 this night we passed Bongani and may be a old Swan Pita Mha is chasing Ali Raja not far from us, 4 miles E bad habit is that at least 12 boats where visible and just a few had AIS on same for nav lights, we will face a most probable lack of wind after Catania waiting for a SE after a few hours all the best from Atame cheers