Monday, October 24, 2016

DRAMA AND SURPRISE ON THE MIDDLE SEA RACE


Maserati, the Italian 70ft trimaran was the first to arrive beating the American 70ft Phaedo3 that leaded all the race. A stupid mistake regarding navigation took the victory away fro, Phaedo3. They took the small Island of Linosa for Lampedusa and instead of passing out of Lampedusa passed out of Linosa. When they found out the mistake they turned away and made the correct route, but too late, Maserati had overtook them and maintained the lead till the finish line.

Later I found out that Maserati had done all race handicapped and not on the configuration that we can see on the video above due to an accident that broke one of the foiling rudders. They have to change and race the boat with the non flying configuration, with the old foils and rudders, due to the impossibility of having a new flying rudder in time.

More boats have arrived, as expected the American Rambler a beautiful 88ft JK designed racer (2014) had no trouble in arriving first among the monohuls, beating the 50Muli trimaran (that is one from the previous generation -2005) followed closely by Trifork, the fastest of the VOR 70, another JK design (2008). Trifork was once named Groupama, a VOR winner and the fastest of all VOR racers ever made.

Aegir
Just now three more boats are rounding Malta, very near the finish line: Wild Joe, the well known Australian racer (cheers to the Australians to come racing in the Med), a 2002 RP design closely followed by Aegir, a very interesting and fast 82ft cruiser racer (2010, designed by Rogers).



The third one is Mascalzone Latino a surprisingly fast Coockson 50 (cheers to them). The Cockson  is basically a shortened TP52 with higher freeboard to have an interior that allows it to ocean race, featuring a canting keel. The concept was thought out by Coockson and developed by Farr (2004).

Here a Cookson 50 on the 2007 race, Cippa Lippa 8. This one is also racing this edition and doing a good race. It is approaching Malta, not far from the Infiniti 46, having ahead a beautiful Baltic 78 (2009 by Judel/Vrolijk)



Next, after the Cookson 50 comes Caro, a favorite boat of mine, Caro beat the ARC record some years back leaving way behind a Gunboat 62 catamaran. It is a 65ft cruiser racer designed in 2014 by Botin partners. Caro leaved behind Green Dragon a VOR 70 racer designed in 2008 by RP (entered after Caro). What a performance for Caro!!!.

Caro
Next entered another incredibly fast boat, a racer too but only with 46feet!!!!! Maverick, a Infiniti 46R, a brand new boat and I cannot tell you how I am satisfied with that.
That definitively proves the competence of Hugh Welbourn as a top racing designer as well as the validity of his DSS design (see the post about that on the Index). The concept had been used on other boats including Wild Oates XI but this is the most outstanding result on a boat designed by him ....what a race for theInfinity 46, on the tails of a VOR 70!!!



Next boats to arrive are a TP 52 that is beating a VOR 60 (the first among them) that comes just behind. Than a considerable space without boats (from Lampedousa to Malta) and turning around Lampedousa comes the first  production boat, a A13, unfortunately the last boat made by Archambault before going bankrupt.  The A13 is followed by many bigger boats, many of them production boats but also by the fastest among the smaller boats with special relevance to Artie, a J122 that risks to win again this race (in compensated).
http://www.rolexmiddlesearace.com/tracker/#pt
and for the wind:
https://www.windytv.com/?36.091,13.939,9

Don't forget, I have been making the coverage of the race (and boat/crew performance) on the comments of the previous post and probably some missed that. Instead of making several posts about a race I am going to utilize this system that allows replies and direct comments to what I post. If you are following please comment.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Paulo, so great to see your blog working again!. Regarding Maserati, do you know if thye were sailing in "foiling mode" since they lost the a foil and the T-rudder upon arriving Malta (http://maserati.soldini.it/maserati-multi70-in-malta-with-severely-damaged-rudder/) and I thougt they would have to abandon. But it seems they managed to fix it though retiring the other T-rudder and using both to normal custom rudders for the ocassion. So it seems they were not sailing in full foiling mode and that´s a pity because to see that beast to flying past phaedo would have been amazing.

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  2. Hi!
    It seems you know more about it than me. I didn't see the notice about the rudders on the link you posted.

    In fact I was surprised to see the Maserati, new foils and all, not being able to fight or even going faster than Phaedo3. Phaedo3 has a great crew and more experience with the Mod70 trimaran but even so I thought that the foils would make the difference.

    The link you posted explains why they were not faster. In fact they were not foiling at all. If you read again the notice you will see that they say that because they were not using the rudder foils they had to change also the boat's daggerboards and were using the old foils. The boat raced in a configuration they had not used for many months, not the flying one.

    Take a look at my comments about the race on the "comments part" of the previous post about the race (previous post). There are some boats making an incredible race. Do you care to join your comments on that? You seem well informed;-)

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  3. It seems that the winner of the race (IRC winner) is found, Mascalzone Latino, the Coockson 50 that made a fantastic race and entered among the first boats.

    Many should be thinking: What about Artie, the J122 that is making a fantastic race?

    Well, Artie and his crew had bad luck and on the final leg of the race are having much less wind pressure. Artie is making now only 4.9K, tacking against the wind on very very weak winds.

    That means that Artie was less well sailed than Mascalzone Latino? I doubt that, just bad luck and that is unfair. That's why I think it makes not any sense to have a race winner on IRC but only several race winners for boats with a similar rating and that therefore will found the same sail and sea conditions during the race.

    Yes, I know that there are IRC class winners, but the focus is on the overall winner, a winner that is (among the class winners) found by luck, luck regarding the more favorable conditions one of the class found, compared with others. Everybody that knows something about handicap race knows this and things remain the same. I don't get it.

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