Middle Sea Race outcome contested

The 42nd Rolex Middle Sea Race, the 600-mile offshore that starts and finishes in Malta, proved ferocious both on and off the water.

- 

Big wind conditions saw course records fall, with the MOD70 trimaran Argo taking multihull line honours and setting a new overall course record of just over 33 hours. Three giant maxi yachts were in contention for monohull line honours, with the 100ft Comanche taking the win ahead of the ClubSwan 125 Skorpios and smaller Rambler 88.

Neal McDonald, former Volvo Ocean Race skipper and part of the crew on Skorpios, commented: “The chances of going downwind across the top [of Sicily] and then downwind across the bottom again is zero.”

Mitch Booth, skipper of Comanche, agreed: “It’ll be a tough one [to beat]. I don’t think we could have got a better weather window than that. It was pretty close to perfect.”

Comanche’s finish time of 40h 17m 50s seconds demolished the previous record by over seven and a half hours.