Artie’s close crossing with Tala at dusk yesterday
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Artie
Tuesday 7.25am – Moral is high on board and crew is pushing hard. ARTIE is approx. 20/25km off San Vito Lo capo. Boat speed is just over 7 knots and still leading their group. A bit later on, as ARTIE rounds the North Western tip of Sicily and heads towards the next check point of Favignana, winds should pick up a bit.
Rambler
Beers at 6:30 in the morning is early if your just getting up but way to late when you’ve been awake for nearly three days.
The crew of Rambler would like to thank the Royal Malta Yacht Club and Rolex for giving us a venue to let Rambler do it’s thing.
We’d also like to congratulate the eventual winners of the 2015 Rolex Middle Sea Race and the entire fleet for making this possible.
Until next time.
Rambler
Posted in Day Four
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S.Y ‘EH01’ Global Yacht Racing
Blog– 20th October 8.30am
The last 24hrs has been a real mixture as the winds remain erratic to say the least, as we came up towards the top of the Messina Straits we suddenly saw an increase in wind speed to around 12-15 knots which was great, lifted our spirits with the A2 up and we were flying along. Lots of short gybing up the straits, a narrow miss with a very large ferry, a visit from the Italian coast guard (just checking us out!!), a race with a windsurfer, and a great view of the kite surfing on the north west tip of the straits.
Coming out of the straits the wind increases more and we are pushing the limit of the kite, 18 knots we are seeing and we are storming along at a good 10-11knots, then sadly we have a gybe issue and the kite needs to come down briefly to be sorted out, we try a re-launch of the A2 but there is a small tear so straight back down again to make repairs, but still making good speed under the J2 so everyone is happy.
As we near Stromboli the wind dies down again and we are back to managing the never ending light wind situation back under the A1, and with that the concerns turning to the potential food situation. Jokes on who we would eat first are being made, but we all know that tonight is the last boil in the bag meal we have!! Todays job, counting slices of bread and wraps and working out what can go in it, we may be moving to a post-war rationing system, porridge is looking top of the list, one slice of cheese per person, moving to Nutella wraps from tomorrow….
We are also somewhat disappointed by Stromboli, and thinking of making a complaint to the Italian tourist board and requesting our money back…. where’s the eruptions?, where’s the lava?… this is definitely not what we saw in the brochure when we signed up! Although the shooting stars, and amazing sunrise , amazing lightening shows (which we were thankfully sailing away from!) and a bit of a rainbow….. may just about make up for it, just a little bit.
Cruising back in the right direction at about 6 knots after yet another wind shift taking us away from our target, we’ve taken the A1 down and back on the old faithful J2, I’m off now to start the crew rationing… lets hope our joke of eating Tristan first doesn’t become reality, but at least we have our sense of humour still !
S.Y ‘EH01’
Global Yacht Racing
Posted in Day Four
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Artie
Artie’s crew are all well, just passed off Palermo (3am) light winds and hoping to keep the boat moving!
Lee Satariano (Owner/Co-Skipper) – Artie
Rambler
#rmsr
Lampedusa and in. In what seemed to be a gift from above Rambler has enjoyed 17 knots of breeze on what will be the longest beat of the race. It looks like the fate of the eventual winners will be decided on this leg. Tonight and last night have been sailed in the illumination of a partial moon which has provided silhouette vistas of these rugged shorelines. We have been fortunate to share these waters with the people of Malta, Italy and the competitors of the 2015 Rolex Middle Sea Race.
Next stop The Finish
Dorade
We began the day in the Strait of Messina, having battled hard to catch the group of boats in front of us. The night was dark and the wind was not playing ball (we had every direction imaginable except for the forecasted one and had given up trying to guess what was coming next). We were keeping a close eye on our competitors and just ‘going with the flow’ but even the faintest of zephyrs required a flurry of sail changes.
Eventually, still under cover of darkness, we exited The Strait with the wind behind us. For the first time in two days Dorade could really stretch her legs, and we were able to fill every conceivable gap in our rigging with canvas. The final number of sails in the sky totaled six, and we were finally making good progress up the course and through the fleet. However, it didn’t last; the arrival of the sun signaled the exit of the wind once more. Stromboli, our next land mark, was on the horizon but with a boat speed of less than one knot made it feel impossibly far away. There was nothing to do but go for a swim, and bait the fishing line in the vague hope that we could have Sushi for lunch. As it turned out, we had lamb chops, which were enjoyed so much Matt Brooks commented: “This is the best thing we’ve ever had on the boat! Except for Pam’s cooking of course.”
While I’ve been writing, we have had a light Easterly breeze fill in and are sailing at about five knots toward the volcano. We are hoping it will put on a show for us tonight.
– Richard Mason
Jivaro
The night started at a slow pace with the smoke of the Etna lit up by the last rays of the sun to the West.
The wind gathered strength as we entered the Traffic Separation Scheme of the Strait of Messina just before 10pm.
On doubling Capo Peloro at 11pm it had built up to a nice 25 knots, which was driving us at more than 12 knots at times – our highest speed since the start of the race. But this was having my heart beat faster for other reasons: the upper wind speed for our light A1.5 spinnaker is only 14knots ! So I summoned all crew on deck and a nice peeling was swiftly executed under the stars. With our A2 runner up, we were elated to see the breeze hold until the late hours of the night.
As dawn was breaking, the shadow of Stromboli with its cloud of smoke emerged due East !
Yves Grosjean, Skipper of JIVARO
S.Y ‘EH01’ Global Yacht Racing
Day 3 has been a long one, with a lot of sail changes due to constant shifting wind directions and speeds. Its been a long day and nights slog to get to the straits but we are there and slowly making our way forward. We did have some moments where speed picked up but the majority has been very light to nothing, looking out over a millpond.
Situations like this we need stories and jokes to keep us going and the occasional person humming or singing. Just as we move to the A2 in the early afternoon we saw dolphins a small pod off the coast of Sicily, Andy explained that the race provided a pack to record dolphin sightings and type of dolphin, providing a chart to recognise them etc. Our decision was that dolphins need their privacy too and we should not stalk them!! As always it was fun to see them enjoying surfing the bow waves…. at least at that time we had some as we were moving at a few knots in the right direction…. thank goodness!
Overnight was a different story, a random breakout of Irish jokes thankfully not offending the Irish contingent on the boat. Zero wind for a long time, lots of sail changes and a struggle to keep going in the right direction but EH01 and crew are fighters and we will not give up, we will not surrender and we will make it through the Messina Straits to Stromboli – fingers crossed that happens today!
On my watch we have our fearless leader Andy, master and commander of EH01… we all have to watch the film before joining the boat under his orders, who has vast experience in this race and many others, I think we all know him in sailing. We also have John, he has previously been called an ‘old sea dog’ by the Pure crew on their blog but we like to say a ‘distinguished gentleman of the sea’, great experience his tale of being clipped on and swept overboard and then pulling himself back into the boat shows his form, and he is our master trimmer. Richard or Richo, the Aussie contingent working towards getting his yachtmaster, he’s a pilot amongst other roles off boat and excellent helmsman/trimmer keeping us going in the right direction. Corrine a fabulous German lady, she’s an all rounder with great sailing experience and training with PYR for their apprenticeship yachtmaster and on the side takes care of the foredeckie (that’s me) with excellent bow room services of cups of tea and biccies! Shaun our Irish contingent doing his first offshore, a little nervous but feels he has the most to learn and gain from the experience, he’s getting stuck in everywhere and good on the mast, finding his way around the boat well and very positive. Finally Me, Ali on the bow, I’ve done about 8000nm on EH01 over the 7 years racing with Andy, currently funemployed and looking forward to finishing this race as 7 years ago (on EH01) we were struck by lightening, tore our main and were unable to finish after being hit by a squall with 65knots of wind suddenly… so there is unfinished business for me here….
Next time we will meet the other half of the crew, but all together we are a cheerful bunch with hopefully enough jokes and stories to see us back to Malta…