Last month Malahide Yacht Club's Dermot Cronin sailing with his son Paddy won the double–handed division of the Rolex Middle Sea Race. The stand out international result for the Irish double–hander was achieved on his Beneteau 40.7 Encore. Here Dermot and Paddy, Afloat's Sailors of the Month for October, describe their win in the 600–mile race, the first time the Malahide yacht was sailed double–handed in the Mediterranean fixture.
Sat 17 October 1110 Encore off to a great start, we're the second boat to exit the Grand Harbour Valetta. Photo: Brian Flahive
Paddy: Sun 18/0600 off the South East corner of Sicily. We have network coverage and log onto the race website to see how we're faring after the first night at sea. It's a mixed picture. Basically the fleet has split in two, those who have not parked up have gone ahead towards Messina opening up a gap on the rest of the fleet. The fastest of the two-handed competitors 'Neo Double Banks Sails Racing' (IRC Rating 1.174) is where she needs to be, well ahead of us, but the good news is that she's now parked up further up the strait. No boat has broken out at the top of the strait. The bad news is that Little Emily, a First 40.7 like Encore, (IRC ratings: Encore 1.046, Little Emily 1.047), has got a lead of 5nm on us. It's too early to panic about this. Our strategy now is to position ourselves early on the Italian shorline and hopefully pick up a breeze off the land that will take us up the strait.
Encore from Malahide on her way to overall victory in the double–handed class. Photo: Rolex/Carlos Borlenghi
Two-handed Class result at Capo Passero
1. Neo Double Banks Sails Racing
2. Little Emily
3. Encore
4. Atame
5. Muca Maca
6. Waypoint
7. Azuree
8. Scaria
Dermot: Sun 18/2200 reaching inshore in 5kts wind, 90deg True Wind Angle. Closing the Italian coast most boats ahead are gybing out into the middle of the strait. Encore keeps going inshore. About 0.25nm off the land the wind backs. It backs more and then more again and soon we're reaching North hugging the Italian shore. As the ferry from the mainland to Sicily departs San Giovanni, Encore nips past her stern and passes the head of the breakwater no more than three boat lengths off. It's wonderful that after 63 years I can still come up with a stupid idea. I'm fast approaching the narrowest part of the strait where we had selected to cross the traffic separation zone. So, why don't I leave Paddy asleep below and cross over on my own? Weighing this up though, commen sense prevails and I call Paddy. Just as well because, as soon as he's up, a massive Cruise Liner emerges around the tip of Sicily and is turning to come down the south going channel towards us. Looking at the AIS Paddy sees that simultaneousely a bulk containor ship is now steaming north towards us. Cruising we'd probably wait, racing we don't and we go for it. I hope that those guys are watching us on AIS as we cross ahead of them. We get across, break out at the top of the strait into open sea and are welcomed by real wind, 20Kts behind us as we make towards Stromboli.
Paddy: Mon 19th dawn, wind slakening, we change up to masthead spinny. As we close Spromboli, slowly, slowly the wind dies so we change to the flat spinny. It's hot, very hot, being baked sitting to leeward looking at spinny telltales.
Encore flies her pink spinnaker to Strombili
Mon 19/1800 Encore rounds Stromboli, race tracker shows Little Emily has increased her lead to 22nm ahead, Neo is 70nm ahead.
Two-handed result at Stromboli
1. Neo
2. Little Emily
3. Waypoint
4. Atame
5. Encore
Paddy: When we round Stromboli I download another weather file but the forecast is bleak for the next 24hours. In the evening we pick up some wind from the East and there are flashes of lightning all around, we follow this cloud for most of the night ending up far to the North of the fleet.
Tue/0100: Eventually we gybe back South, carrying a course directly for Capo San Vito at the western end of Sicily….if the wind holds.
Paddy: Tue 20/2200 we close Capo San Vito anxious to pick up network coverage. When we log onto the race website, it's great news Little Emily is 2nm abeam on our Port side. We've chased them down. We've huge respect for our fellow 40.7 and its a huge boost to us to have caught them.
Dermot: Wed 21/0400: as we make our approach to pass through the Egadi Islands we change up to the Masthead spinny and go through a series of gybes in the channel between the islands of Levanzo, Maretimo and Favignana. During one of these Encore suddenly veers wildly off from the downwind course set on the Autopilot and swings upwind with the spinnaker starting to wrap around the rig. There's much shouting and gymnastics before we restore order. The heated postmortom leads to our only 'falling out'. Paddy logs on to the race webside and he breakes the silence with ”congratulations” to his crew, “you passed Little Emily on your watch, she's 3nm behind us and we're up to 2nd position in the results”. This dissipates the harsh words exchanged.
Result at Favignana
1. Neo
2. Encore
3. Little Emily
4. Waypoint
5. Atame
6. Azuree
7. Scaria
Dermot: Throughout the day the wind builds from ahead and we settle in to putting Encore through her gears in the long beat to Pantelleria. We had worked with Des McWilliam on our sailplan to try and hold onto the full mainsail and headsail up to 18Kts true. We binned the 3DL Mainsail we used in last year's race and in September I flew to Malta with some cruising friends and did some on-the-water Mainsail testing, sending photographs back to Des and Paddy. Diamond Freight, based in Cork, looked after the transportation of the Mainsail to and from Des's loft and now here it is now, a 2008 Kevlar Offshore Mainsail, performing like new, particurlarly since we can put huge loads on the Cunningham, having altered our setup to feed it aft to a coachroof winch.
By the time we're within 12nm of Pantelleria the wind is 27-29Kts, we've taken two reefs in the mainsail but we're still being overpowered. While the original plan was to race only with the headsail fully unfurled (up to this we only furled it for storage when the spiny was up) it now makes sense to use the furler to depower the sailplan rather than take the third reef or change headsails to our Heavy Weather Jib as we want to increase sail area immediately after rounding Pantelleria when it will be an offwind leg to Lampedusa. When we have the headsail furled to no more than a storm jib Encore powers upwind beautifully at 7Kts boatspeed..
Wed 21/1730 Rounding Pantelleria the wind is up to 30Kts. Logging on to the race tracker we see that shortly after following us through the Egadi islands Little Emily turned north and retired into Sicily. Scaria too has retired.
Result at Pantelleria
1. Neo
2. Encore
3. Azuree
4. Atame
Its great to see us in this position; between winner's - Neo won Class 2 last year and Azuree won both Class 6 and the two-handed Class. We know that the boats behind us have form as two-handers so there can be no let up if we want to hold on to a podium position. We unflurl the headsail fully and head towards Lampedusa at 9/10Kts boatspeed with bursts at 16Kts (True Wind Angle 150deg).
Dermot: Offwatch now its difficult to find a snug bolthole to sleep in. In the calm conditions we could sprawl across an aft bunk with no bother but, as we found last year, irregular seas build rapidly in heavy wind conditions and the aft bunks are impossible, like being thrown around in a tumble dryer.
As I toss and turn waiting to head on deck for my first night shift, it's difficult to put last years experience out of my mind. As we raced towards Pantelleria in 42Kts+ windspeed we had to drop the mainsail due to damage, had it and the boom lashed on deck and when still racing under G#4 headsail only, the top rudder bearing started moving laterally. Next, the headsail tack fitting (8mm stainless steel ubolt) sheared and the headsail split in two. As we approached Pantelleria to retire, out of nowhere we experienced a knockdown by a rogue wave. I was standing behind the wheel steering at the time and was washed out of Encore. As fast as this happened, I felf a reassuring tug on my chest as my lifeline held and then, as the boat righted, I was catapulted head first back into the cockpit. This left me with a handsome “gash” that got sorted in Pantelleria ...
Dermot took was left with a cut above the eye after the knockdown. Photo: Nick Lowth
As I come on deck, I see on the true wind indicator that it's a steady 33/34Kts and I'm honest with Paddy to talk through whether the sea has the potential to work itself up towards a repeat of last years conditions. While he had hoped to fly the storm spinnaker on this leg his opinion now is that the sea state rules this out. Also, the autopilot will not cope with the conditions so we'll be hand steering for the rest of the race and we'll shorten our shifts to two hours at a time (we had been doing 4hr day shifts and 3hr night shifts up to this). One thing we have no concerns about is the rudder. While Encore was hauled out over the winter Brian Flahive had reinforced the rudder setup and, unlike last year, the rudder is absolutely rock solid.
A big lumpy irregular sea has built up and steering takes a lot of effort to be alert to anticipate where each wave will come from and get the response right, particurlarly when caught by the odd one that breaks under the aft leeward quarter forcing Encore offwind towards a potential accidental gybe if caught unawares.
The two hour steering stints are really tough on the shoulders and staring at the 'heading' indicator would nearly pull the eyes out of your head. When the lights come on below it's a glorious relief to do the changeover, head below and get wedged into a saloon berth. Sleep or not is irrelevant, rest for the arms and shoulders and the oportunity to close your eys is all that counts.
Thu 22 0330, with the wind still a solid Force 7 we take it tight around Lampedusa and decide to 'tack around' rather than 'gybe' onto our new course towards the Gozo channel. Just as well as one of the lazy jacks has become unattached and gets entangled on a coachroof winch. We bail out of the tack, get sorted with the Lazy Jacks and 'tack around' again.
The leg from Lampudesa to Gozo will be closer to the wind, 135-140deg True Wind Angle but will free off as we close upon Gozo. The plan was that, in the shelter of Lampedusa, we'd drop the headsail (43sq.m.) and change down to the Heavy Weather Jib (23sq.m.). We now talk this through. We've drawn heavily from Liam Coyne and Brian Flahive's experience in Lula Belle in winning the two-handed Round Britian and Ireland Race where they could'nt get the furling headsail off in heavy winds and suffered damage to it and the furling system. We’re conscious of the potential for damage as we'll have Force 7 winds well into Thu morning, easing for a time but then increasing Force 8. The deciding factor though, is that Paddy is confident that we have a shot at winning the two-handed division overall if we don't slow down. So, we decide that rather than get into a sail change that could go wrong we'll stick with what's been working well for us and see how that fares. Like 'Lula Belle' had, we've got attachment ties on the Heavy Weather Jib to tie it around the furled headsail, or what might remain of it, if it gets to that.
With this discussion and the issue with the Lazy Jacks, Paddy has no time to log on to any local network to see how we're faring in the results.
Paddy: In the Middle Sea Race there is actually a lot of time spent in the darkness, twelve hours, compared with mid-June in Ireland where you can only expect five hours of darkness. Closing Malta after 15 hours of hand steering in the confused seas meant we were pretty exhausted at this point. We knew we were in contention but we had no idea we were leading the Double Handed Class. We felt we had until perhaps 7pm to finish and needed to average 5.5knots for the next 6 hours.
Initially we thought that would be easy but then we started doubting the wind in the lee of Malta, so we put up the fractional spinnaker in strong breeze and the snuffer jammed at the top. Again! This had happened earlier in the race in light airs. So, Dad hoisted me up the rig for a second time. It was blowing 25 knots in a confused sea and bouncing around I was thinking we had messed the race up. We get it down and still impatient to keep the momentum on, we muscle the two reefs out of the Mainsail. We also goose-winge the headsail not cool looking but we go through the Gozo channel at 12/13Kts boatspeed.
Not 'cool' but very fast - goosewinging brought extra speed
We hoist the Masthead spinny towards the east end of the Gozo channel to take a hike out to sea, avoid a fish farm per the Sailing Instructions and then gybe back towards the finish line. Going through the gybe sequence we look back and see a black wall of rain and wind descending upon us, Gozo, no more than a mile north, is already obliterated. It's a Tempest. We immediately drop the spinny. Almost simultaneousely, we're engulfed in rain, thunder and lightening and our run down the east coast of Malta towards the finish line is reminisant of a dramatic finish to a Round Ireland Race as you approach Wicklow in an blistering Gale.
When we came through the line there was more a feeling of relief than anything else. When you finish a race like that it is almost surreal, you are so wrapped up in the race and we only came back to reality when we had a lovely reception from other short handed sailors – Barry Hurley, Brian Flahive, Liam Coyne and Nick Martin who are on hand to take our lines and share some champagne.
We celebrated hard and enjoyed the Prize giving and Royal Malta Yacht Club's infamous post race party.
Two-handed Final Result
1. 1. Encore
2. 2. Neo Double Banks Sails Racing
3. 3. Atame
