War stories

50+ knot winds, man overboard incidents and decimated sails on the final day of the Rolex Middle Sea Race

With little or no wind since Saturday’s start of the Rolex Middle Sea Race, so last night the Mediterranean Sea to the west of Malta became reminiscent of a scene from the Old Testament as a massive thundercloud within a cold front, complete with 50 knot gusts, hailstones and sheet lightning, wreaked havoc in the 50 strong fleet.

“It was like the Doldrums, with more lightning than I’ve ever seen” described Swedish Volvo Ocean Race sailor and Black Dragon helm, Magnus Woxen of the wind that was prone to rise dramatically from single figures to 30 or even 50 knots in a matter of minutes sending the crew scrabbling to drop sails.

Worst affected by the conditions was Neville Crichton’s Alfa Romeo. Sailing on port gybe under Code Zero in the pitch black last night the wind increased to 12 knots and the crew had furled the powerful headsail and were half way through dropping it when a 30 knot gust struck. The furled sail began to writhe snake-like around on the foredeck, six crewmen unable to control it and the last to hang on to it, America’s Cup grinder John Macbeth, one of the beefiest guys on the Kiwi maxi, was tossed overboard.

“I was standing next to him when he went,” recounted Neal MacDonald. “It was all hands on to deal with the drop. It wasn’t really wild conditions, it was just big gear - the boat is big and things happen quickly. He went over like a rag doll as we were all still scrambling with it.”

Initially Macbeth (right) was being dragged along in the water still clinging on the sail as the boat accelerated in the gust. Adrian Stead, on the helm at the time, gave his perspective: “It is difficult when the boat is accelerating so fast and you have got someone in the water with the sail because if you turn up the boat is going to accelerate and then wipe out and also there is a good chance if I turned up – as I wasn’t sure if Jonno had let go – that then you put the transom into him because it is such a bloody long boat.”

When the MOB call was made, at the back of the boat an emergency beacon was thrown overboard and the MOB button pressed on the GPS recording the position of the incident as two crew kept a fix on Macbeth’s position as best they could in the dark.

Neal MacDonald said that the early concern was that in the pitch black more than one of the 21 crew on board had gone overboard. “Neville’s got a good numbering system and we got through that and we quickly ascertained there was only one person. But then you have to got to get rid of everything on deck before you turn the boat round. So that was a busy time - what we were half way through had to be completed, because you can’t have sails flapping around on the foredeck.”

Once the gear was squared away Stead tacked the boat round bear headed and the engine was started (after checking for lines in the water). They turned back upwind on a reciprocal course and then once back at the GPS recorded MOB position began beam reaching back and forth, as per the textbooks. “You definitely have to go further than you think so that you have room to tack,” Stead advises of this procedure.

In the water Macbeth said that he had quickly kicked off his shoes and his foul weather gear. Then it was a case of doing what was correct – wait for the boat to come back and make sure you don’t panic. “I could see the boat at all times. They had a bit of trouble spotting me I believe. I waited for them to come close and started hollering loudly. They had guys with torches and they were very well organised and I waved my arms and they spotted me and came alongside and pulled me back on board again. Given how dramatic it was it went very smoothly.”

The crew located Macbeth on the third pass. At the time he had been in the water for 12 minutes. “The guys on the boat all knew what to do and I had full confidence in them. All credit to them, they picked me up very quickly and I never really felt in danger at any time. They did a great job,” commented Macbeth, normally an Emirates Team New Zealand grinder.

Stead added that it was lucky the water was still reasonably flat at that time and they weren’t getting smacked around. “It could have been a million times worse getting him back on. This boat goes 20 knots without a problem and that is a mile every three minutes.”

So why were the crew not wearing lifejackets? Stead says that at the time of the incident although it was night time they had only been sailing in 8 knots of wind. “To be honest it all came in very quickly. The first time we saw over 20 knots was when we were dropping the sail. Once we recovered everyone had time to put harnesses on (lifejackets with a built-in safety harness) and they were harnessed up for the rest of the night.”

But the drama was not over for the Alfa Romeo team. After the man overboard incident the wind went light again and clocked through 360 under the cold front. “There was an incredible amount of sheet lightning and we were there in 5-10 knots of breeze and at times even less,” recounted Stead. “We had the Code Zero up and it was quite choppy but it was better to have that up rather than the spinnaker, because it was filling well. Then the wind went from 8 to 10 to 15 and we furled it up. And just after we furled it it hit 20 and you couldn’t ease the main out fast enough. And suddenly it went 30,40, 50 and we were already rounding up.”

Under full main and furled Code Zero – fortunately the upwind Code Zero which furls tightly – they full broached with mast and boom in the drink. “At the time we were seeing a steady 55-58 knots of breeze. The main was completely gone, it flogged for 10 minutes until we ended up dropping it,” Stead continued. “The boat still had 30 degrees of heel on it with the mainsail flogging. So we then filled the tanks and we still had 20 degrees of heel with the tanks and the main flogging. We weren’t going to be able to bear away and the guys wrestled the main down, but in the process we lost three of the five battens and the leach fell off it. So we spent the rest of the night with trisail and storm jib up. And when it went down to five knots, shifting around in a choppy sea it was pretty nasty. We went through all but one of our sail inventory last night. It was quite an experience.”

Owner Neville Crichton added his perspective: “In the crash we destroyed the mainsail which was Aus$150,000 and two spinnakers, so it was a $200,000 fall over.”

The incident happened half way between Lampedusa and Malta. They only rehoisted the mainsail as they closed on Valletta. “We were nervous it would blow out before the finish,” said Crichton.

In the end Alfa Romeo crossed the finish line within Valletta’s Marsamxett Harbour at 10:01:49 local time this morning. “It was the worse race I’d ever had in my life,” confided a haggard looking Crichton. “We had a shocking night last night. Thank God we didn’t lose a crewmember - that was our biggest concern.” And all this following three days of near constant calms.

The Kiwi maxi arrived in Valletta just 30 minutes ahead of Black Dragon who finished at 10:32:25. The German-owned Reichel-Pugh sled had been more fortunate in the storm. Rounding the island of Lampedusa, the final turning mark of the Rolex Middle Sea Race, they broke the top batten in their mainsail and pulled into the lee of the island to drop the mainsail and replace it. “Just as we did that all hell broke lost,” described racing skipper Jesper Radich. “Hail, 46 knots of wind and we were doing 20 knots of speed downwind under jib. Fortunately it wasn’t chaos on the boat. We had Magnus [Woxen] on the helm and we continued with only the jib on for two and half hours averaging 12 knots.”

Earlier Black Dragon had also experienced a full wipe-out. They had been ‘playing’ the cold front and had their 370sqm heavy spinnaker up in 32 knots, screaming dead downwind at 24-25 knots. They dropped the kite but were laid over in a 40 knot gust blowing up the spinnaker staysail in the process. In a typically Doldrums-like way the wind then dropped to just six knots.

En route back towards Malta and the finish line the breeze picked up to 25-28 knots and Radich said they had experienced near perfect blast reaching conditions, boat speed hovering around the 23 knot mark. This was in stark contrast to the leg up to Strombini where Radich says they covered just 38 miles in 20 hours. However with their boat largely intact they had been able to eat up the five hour lead Alfa Romeo had pulled out yesterday after rounding Capo San Vito near Palermo.



The ever smiling Italian Vasco Vascotto tactician on Damiani Our Dream was over the moon that their 11 year old IMS boat had led the two “almost brand new boats” for the first 200 miles. Later rounding Capo San Vito Damiani and Black Dragon had been left becalmed as Alfa Romeo kept the wind and had pulled out an 80 mile lead over them. Aside from the problems on Alfa Romeo, Vascotto said they had regained ground as the wind built by holding sails for longer - at one point they were holding the kite in 40 knots.

Vascotto also reported the wind behaving in a Doldrum-like way. “There was a lot of lightning and whenever I said ‘ready to drop’ and the wind goes down. And after three hours of thinking about it, we immediately have 55 knots and it was too late.” They attempted to drop the mainsail in 55 knots but doing so caused 3m of the leech to come away and a T-shaped rip in the body of the sail.

The crew took the mainsail down below where they spent five hours repairing it and they were able to rehoist it for the final run into the finish. In the big conditions they also broke the fore-guy on three occasions.

“Our forecast was for 30 knots, not for 55 knots, which is what we saw. 55 knots you cannot control, it is the sea that controls you,” said Vascotto. “When we realised it was 55 knots – it is nice to say now it was exciting, but at the time it was not exciting at all - it was quite tough.

Damiani Our Dream crossed the finish line off Valletta at 14:07:36. The Greek Farr 52 Optimum 3 of Nikos Lavos and Pericles Livas arrived at 16.25.01 and currently leads overall on IRC handicap.

Elsewhere in the fleet eight boats have retired having suffered damage in the windy conditions of the last 24 hours.