The pontoons have rapidly filled at the Royal Malta Yacht Club throughout the past two days. With the line honours winner of the 2012 Rolex Middle Sea Race, Esimit Europa 2, arriving on Wednesday and the overall race winner, Hi Fidelity, confirmed on Thursday evening, the focus shifted to welcoming home the first Maltese boat along with the remainder of the fleet following a slow and punishing 606-nm race.
Early yesterday morning, the first Maltese finisher and last year’s overall champion Artie, crossed the line. “This is a difficult race. The first night makes or breaks it,” explained co-skipper Christian Ripard, a veteran of the race. “We worked very hard that first night and got it right. Unfortunately we then got stuck in some big holes, which was very frustrating.” At Capo San Vito (the halfway mark) Artie failed to make the slight wind shift in time while her closest rivals took advantage and pulled clear. “The boats slightly larger than us were always a little bit ahead with the weather,” admitted Ripard.
Artie RTFX was under considerable pressure to be the first Maltese boat home. Jonas Diamantino & Ramon Sant Hill’s ILC40, Comanche Raider 2 Gasanmamo pushed them all the way to the finish, as Christian Ripard explains.
‘Comanche caught up about 20 miles on us, I was anxious watching them close the gap on us but in a way that was fantastic. There are a lot of good people doing the race this year. All of the crew on Artie are amateurs but they are top class sailors, we have had more or less the same crew for the last three races. I am the old man on the boat but they really know what they are doing and they keep me young! Many of them are dinghy champions that have got into keelboat racing and they are the future of yachting in Malta and the Rolex Middle Sea Race is a major occasion in our country and a fantastic showcase for our sport.”
Times recorded at waypoints along the course suggested Artie was leading on handicap for much of the race. Ripard insists that this did not affect the crew’s approach. “The race is over when its over, and we weren’t really aware of that. We did our best, it was a great race and everybody did a great job working really hard but we just kept on getting stuck.”
British boat Trustmarque Quokka crossed the finish line at midday yesterday. Skipper Philippe Falle was brimming with enthusiasm despite the long week: “Retiring never really crossed the mind. It was an intriguing race, a bit off the wall with the conditions and parking. The overall performance of team and scenery made up for everything. This is my favourite of the four (Rolex Middle Sea Races) I have done even though it was so slow.”
Meanwhile on Thursday, at 18:02, Josef Schultheis & Paolo Semeraro’s Xp44, XP-Pact crossed the finish line to provisionally win Class 3. The team has three Maltese sailors on board, Timmy Camilleri, Zach Cassar Torregiani and Sebastian Ripard.
“ That was a long race and we are very happy with our performance,” explained Sebastian Ripard. “The Xp44 is a great yacht but fully fitted out and considering the light conditions, we did very well to take the class. The last night at sea was a tough one, after we came around Lampedusa, a massive squall caught us by surprise, we had too much sail up and we just had to run before it, the situation was pretty bad but it got worse when the force of the wind meant we couldn’t get the sails down as we would like and everybody was scrambling around on deck getting the sail down as best we could.”
The nine boats still sailing have until this morning to complete the course ahead of tomorrow’s final prizegiving, to be held at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, Valletta at noon.