Dorade and More in Middle Sea Race

The 2015 Rolex Middle Sea Race, hosted by the Royal Malta Yacht Club will start this Saturday, with 117 entries. This 36th edition has attracted competitors from 22 countries. The 606-mile race starts and finishes in the historical environs of Malta’s capital city, Valetta (Malta is an island nation south of Sicily). Competitors will sail close to a number of scenic islands around Sicily and Malta before returning to the Royal Malta YC. World champions and pros from the Volvo Ocean Race and America’s Cup will race alongside recreational sailors.

Last year proved one of the toughest in the history of the race with storm-force winds in the latter part of the race. Lee Satariano’s Maltese J/122 Artie, the overall winner, will be back this year to defend the title.

A record number of 11 canting-keel, carbon-fiber speedsters are all, weather permitting, capable of breaking the course record, which has stood since George David’s Rambler 90 record run in  2007 (47 hours, 55 minutes and 3 seconds). Leading the assault on his own record will be David himself in the Juan K American maxi Rambler 88.

The MOD70 Musandam-Oman Sail was to be the first entry from Oman in the history of the race, which dates back to 1968. Sadly, the trimaran lost a crewmember, Mohammed Al Alawi, overboard during a delivery from France to Italy in the predawn hours of October 7, and the team is still searching for him.

Lloyd Thornburg’s St. Barth-based MOD70, Phaedo3, will be making her Rolex Middle Sea Race debut. Another first-timer, Californian Peter Aschenbrenner, will be competing against Phaedo3 in his Nigel Irens 63-ft trimaran, Paradox. After MOCRA time correction, Paradox beat both Musandam-Oman Sail and Phaedo3 in the Rolex Fastnet Race, and she beat Phaedo3 on corrected time to win the Open Class of the 2015 Transatlantic Race. "Malta is an amazing place, a crossroads of civilizations for three millennia," enthused Aschenbrenner. "I love the 600-mile format, which is long enough to be a proper ocean race with lots of tactical challenges but an approachable commitment time-wise for those of us who take the occasional week off of work."

An entry in sharp contrast to the carbon-fiber high-speed multihulls is the Bay Area-based 1929 52-ft S&S yawl Dorade. "Dorade is competing in all of the races in the Atlantic series, and of course the Rolex Middle Sea is one of those,” commented her owner, Matt Brooks. "This is our next chapter in Dorade’s history, to take on races she has never done before, particularly iconic and challenging offshore races."

Read more about Dorade in a feature in this month’s Latitude 38.

A 30-mile warm-up race was sailed today in winds that exceeded 30 knots, giving the fleet a foretaste of the ocean racing to come this weekend. Texan Bill Coates’ Ker 43 Otra Vez corrected out to win the Rolex Middle Sea Coastal Race overall. "It was fantastic today," he reports. "The boat speed was routinely 18-20 knots off the wind, and in the lee of the island the sea was pretty flat for the strong upwind conditions — it was as comfortable a 20-knot beat as you could have."