This is a strange experience. I have been coming to Malta every year in October for 9 years now; each time to cover the Rolex Middle Sea Race for the sponsor and organiser. This year is different. This year I am still here for work, but I am sailing the race. I have a full team around me in the media centre taking responsibility for all the things I have had a finger in during previous years. Watching and relying on others to do the work is proving difficult. They know and I know that I have a special regard for this event. In the office it is mine. Touch it and muck it up at your peril. I have no real fear, of course, other than I will prove superfluous in the future.
As for my steed in the 606-nm race, the mighty Steinlager, it is completely different. I am the total newcomer. The passenger. It was 1995 when I last went sailing seriously offshore. The Marblehead - Halifax Race on Cygnette, my former employer's Swan 441. I might have felt at home on that. Still, this is an experience with a large dose of history attached.
Steinlager 2 was designed by Bruce Farr and built by Southern Pacific in New Zealand. She was commissioned by Peter Blake for the 1989/90 Whitbread Round the World Race, which she went onto win in some style. The only boat ever to win Line Honours (first home) and on Corrected Time (handicap) on all six legs of the race. Steinlager is 84-feet long (my ride in this year's Giraglia Rolex Cup was 90-feet - standards must be adhered to). She weighs 35 tonnes and is constructed from carbon, Kevlar and Nomex.
Peter Blake went onto be knighted, to win the America's Cup win Team New Zealand in 1995 & 2000, and, to win the Jules Verne Trophy (fastest none stop around around the world) in 2000. Poignantly, Blake lost the biggest race of them all - life - when he was shot by river pirates on an expedition up the Amazon in 2001.
According to sirpeterblaketrust.org, the Steinlager 2 Whitbread campaign: "was to be a campaign where nothing was left to chance and Steinlager 2 very quickly proved to be an exceptional yacht. Blake and his close lieutenants poured their experience and expertise into the design brief to Farr Yacht Design, providing a mass of detail on exactly how they wanted the boat to be. The result was a 25.6m (84ft) scarlet ketch with a fractional rig, an entirely new beast in the contemporary world of maxi racing."
Steinlager 2 remains a striking sight. She is still bright red and whilst she looks decidedly outdated, outmoded, narrow and small alongside contemporary maxi yachts of 75-feet and above, she has an aura. She is without doubt a piece of history. So, as much as I would prefer to be on a carbon flyer that has all the tricks (and a proper galley), there is a large part of me that is immensely proud to have this opportunity to see for four (hopefully not five) days what life was like on a Whitbread boat of a previous era.
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