Rolex Middle Sea Race 2023 | live start
Nu är man ju ganska sugen på att vara på Malta…
Båtar med Svensk anknytning att ha koll på:
- JPK 11.80 Garm med Per Roman, Tore Lewander och säkert ytterligare några svenskar. Nästan lite favorittryck på dem då deras båt vunnit RMSR totalt tidigare.
- Arcona 380 Kiboiko Tatu som ägs av den trevlige amerikanen George Greer, men seglas av Olof Granander, Per Tengå, Molle Melon, Håkan Grönvall och säkert ytterligare någon svensk. Tredje gången de kör.
- Ker 40 Swee med Birgitta och Lars Elfversson. Rutinerade offshoreseglare med bas i UK. Första gången de är med här.
- Pogo 40S2 Talanta, dere Micke Ryking är crew på sin gamla båt.
Nytt för i år är också att man kommer att kunna se korrigerade resultat på de enskida delsträckorna.
Oct 23, 2023 @ 04:54
Kul att vakna upp till den här. Både Garm och Swee ligger kanonbra till både i sina klasser och totalt 💪
Oct 24, 2023 @ 07:36
SJUUKT bra seglat av våra svenska team 💪
Ser faktiskt ut som om GARM ledde totalt vid Favignana!!
Nu leder Bewild, precis som 2019 då vi var 4:a totalt här.
Oct 26, 2023 @ 07:41
Bullit (90-100 fot) slår Red Ruby (33 fot) med 24 SEKUNDER på beräknad tid!!!!
Oct 26, 2023 @ 07:54
Helt sjukt!!!
Christina & Justin Wolfe som seglar SunFast 3300 Red Ruby hade tidigare J/111 Raku i USA (seglade bland annat Pac Cup till Hawaii). Vi har mailat en del om segelplan, roder och annat skoj. Det är en liten värld,
Fantastisk prestation i vilket fall!
Bra också av Garm & Swee som båda blev 5:a i sina respektive klasser. Säkert jobbigt nu då man ledde vid Favignana, men det händer mer på slutet än vad man tror.
Oct 27, 2023 @ 12:08
Jag seglade med GARM. Ja, det gick ju riktigt bra i totalen fram till slutet av racet. Vi fick en hel del bleke från Fontelleria och hela vägen hem. I slutet kom en front som hjälpte in oss i mål. Problemet var ju bara att alla mindre båtar fick samma skjuts och kunde segla raka spåret i riktigt bra vind från Lampedusa och hem. Så det blev ju svårt både mot de stora och små båtarna.
Men ett riktigt händelserikt race. Allt från hård kryss och grov sjö i 25knop+ till go mellanvind och bleke. Banan är ju riktigt utmanande, speciellt när det gäller att undvika stopp (speciellt på natten) bakom höga uddar och öar. Revansch är utkrävd!
Nov 7, 2023 @ 09:31
Här är en race-rapport från Christina & Justin Wolfe som vann shorthandedklassen, och var 24 sekunder efter totalvinnaren!!! De seglade tidigare J/111 Raku hemma i USA, men har valt att satsa hårt på shorthanded i Europa i en SuFast 3300.
RMSR 2023 – a few insights to our race on Red Ruby
We can’t thank all of you enough for the support, wonderful encouragement, and kind words – it means so much. Really.
It’s been a pretty epic race for us, for sure, but as we reflect back on everything that transpired, there are definitely some things worth sharing, which is what we want to do here. There’s been other (unexpected!) coverage so we wanted to share some of the other stuff that might be interesting to some of you (maybe?) on how we saw the race lay out over the ~4.5 days that it took us to complete the course.
Before the race, we were contacted by Rolex to see about providing some video footage – we had a lot of fun walking around Malta and sharing some of our thoughts on doublehanded racing. We’ve never done anything like this, but had a lot of fun with the amazing crew (Steve, Simon, and Graham) who, frankly, create productions that seem to be magical. Seeing how masters of film work their craft was surprisingly really inspiring for both of us – we could see the pattern of balancing the detail with the big picture – how similar is that approach to the sailing that we do?
The start of the race was chaos. We had the worst mix of bad luck (a squall went through right before our start causing us to swap our kites from our light-air A1.5 to the heavier A2), then all wind evaporated (we reversed ourselves and swapped back to the A1.5), a mistake (swapping tack and clew when we rushed to re-rig the A1.5), and then more bad luck (a complete jam of our J1 luff in the prefeeder that took us EIGHT HOURS to clear). The brightside was that during our fiasco, our fleet was all floundering at less than 2 knots, so we remained close! It also meant that we started the race “sailing in anger” (a shout out to Phil Liggett and the years we spent cycling ).
We did ~6 sail changes in the next 2 hours trying to get the boat moving along as a weather transition worked its way through the fleet. We felt we couldn’t get off the back foot, but eventually we found ourselves in more stable conditions and could focus on boat speed in the sail configuration we knew was – finally – correct. We settled in as dark fell and did everything we could to go quickly towards the Straits of Messina. When dawn broke the next morning, we were doing well in our fleet.
We kept pushing to the Straits without taking our normal off-watch breaks for the next half day, working to make gains against the other boats we were with (mostly the faster fleet ahead of ours and a few of the boats in our fleet). We made it through the Straits and immediately started our 30 minutes on/30 minutes off watch schedule that works well for us.
Stromboli was notable, to say the least. Light air challenges in a bit of lumpy seas, with the added distraction of an erupting volcano! We worked hard to get by, but also found ourselves completely entranced that we were seeing a firestorm and lava in the middle of the night. It was definitely one of the key memories we will take home.
The defining point of the race for us was off of the west coast of Sicily – night was falling, and the breeze was easing quite a bit. We both were really concerned about being inshore and made the decision to jibe offshore away from our fleet who seemed to be looking for a land breeze (that we thought was hours away from developing). This was a huge payoff, as it seems we may have put 20 miles into our fleet.
Much of the sailing was in excellent conditions for the SunFast 3300 – being able to reach more, close to broad reaching, was perfect for Red Ruby. We opted to take 2 code sails and left one of our kites on the dock, because of the conditions we expected, and we were happy with those choices.
Long races are often more about just the sailing, and this race was no different. We had two major “repair” issues we had to deal with. The first was with the jammed pre-feeder and our J1 – we finally got it sorted and the sail patched up, as we did cause damage to it trying to fix the jam. The second issue we had is that 2 days into the race, when we started the engine to charge our batteries, there was no water (the engine is water-cooled). Justin spent some time below trying to troubleshoot, while I drove (we were sailing downwind which is more difficult for the autopilot). He ended up finding that a loose belt for the water pump was the likely culprit, and he figured out a Spanish windlass approach to removing and retightening some particularly rusty bolts to fix the issue.
As we got closer to the finish, we were getting race tracker updates each time we were near an island – we started to see we were making gains in the overall rankings, and we also were seeing that our progress was much faster than our average speed to date (which is what is used by the tracker algorithm for projecting rankings). We knew we had a chance to do well in the overall, so we were focused on doing everything we could to keep the boat headed as fast as possible to the finish. At Lampedusa, we thought we had 2 hours more than we ended up having (the tracker seemed to change when we approached Malta, so not entirely sure what happened, but we focused on the new reality we had).
We entered South Comino Channel on the MHO, not quite sure what we would see on the north side of Malta. Boats ahead seemed to be going a bit slower than we expected, given that we were seeing ~20 knots of breeze. But we turned the corner, and the breeze apparently followed us, so we put up our A2 and worked our way downwind. By this time, it was dark, the breeze was on, and we were cognizant of trying not to make mistakes that would cost us time. We set up a letterbox douse and opted to do an early takedown, knowing that we still needed to find a fairway buoy to round. Even with GPS coordinates, it was difficult to see the buoy in the darkness, backlit against the Valletta city lights, but we eventually found it, sailing wing-on-wing with a jib. We managed to round it dead-downwind without jibing, and then we were reaching fast towards the finish…
…until suddenly we saw a very large ferry going very fast (~30 knots?) on a collision course with us. We opted to luff up and not test our fate, as tonnage typically wins. Finally, we were able to focus on trying to get to the finish line as quickly as possible. On approach, the race committee radioed in that they would count us down – and they did, by starting with “Three!”…followed by the longest pause in history before, “Two!”, and then finally “Finished!”. A rib had followed us in (the Rolex media crew), and they shared that they thought we had missed the overall by seconds, which was what we had suspected.
It turns out that time goes by really slowly when you want it to go quickly! And vice versa!
24 seconds. There were probably a million places on the course where we could have made up 24 seconds, of course. The thing is, though, you go into these races with a marathon mindset – they are long races, and it’s a delicate balance to maximize boat performance and crew focus/energy. We’re happy with what we did – not perfect, but we’re happy with it.
We’ve been overwhelmed with the aftermath of everything. The awards ceremony? Well, the President of Malta was there! And the owner of Bullitt (who ended up with the win) asked us to come up and take a picture with him with the award (we had messages and phone calls from others on Bullitt sharing congrats!). But you know what was the most amazing? It was the teenage Maltese girls who treated me (Chris) as if I were Taylor Swift and wanted to get selfies with me! And connecting with other women here – Evi on Aether and others – for us, getting to sail together as teammates, as a couple – it’s super rewarding, but probably a different dynamic for team development. I’m really grateful for what Justin and I have been able to do together
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We don’t get do overs in life. We do our best. And then we get to enjoy the memories.