Maltese boat wins Middle Sea Race

The J/122 Artie, co-skippered by Lee Satariano and Christian Ripard, was today named the overall winner of the 2011 Rolex Middle Sea Race.

Artie completed the 606-nautical mile course in an elapsed time of four days, four hours, 22 minutes, 54 seconds.

The last time a local boat won this ocean classic was in 2002 when the 35-footer, Market Wizard took top honours.

This year's race once again proved it could be a small boat affair with the top three boats – Artie, AOC Rockall (the German Corby 36), and Otra Vez (another Maltese J/122) – all under 40 feet.

Since 2002 half of the overall winners have been drawn from the most competitive maxi and mini-maxis around including Rambler, Morning Glory, Nokia, Alegre, and Atalanta II, all ranging in size from 65 to 90 feet in length and suggesting a big boat bias. Artie has redressed the balance a little.

After finishing second overall in 2006 and 2010, owner Lee Satariano was clearly pleased with his first overall win, "It's a moment to enjoy – it is a dream come true. Since 2002 the fleet has grown bigger, the competition is tremendous. The Rolex Middle Sea Race is a beautiful track. The race is one you can never forget –every year something challenges you to go back out and enjoy the race."

Satariano credited Ripard and the rest of his crew and said, "They have been preparing the boat the whole year and have been dedicated to the local races. The preparation for this race was even more and more intense - a lot of effort went into optimizing the boat and sails. During the race the crew worked round the clock, sometimes there were 5-7 sail changes in ten minutes; they worked fast, and in any conditions. It was very nice for them to do so well in such a race."

As to what made this year's race unique, aside from the obvious winning, he added, "Every corner had something we weren't expecting – you were expecting one thing and then obviously facing different winds, rain, different directions, but it was totally exciting."

The only misstep the crew of Artie experienced was during the first night off the southeast coast of Sicily, when they realized there was a problem in accessing the race tracker, a glitch they never resolved. Ripard said, "But psychologically it let us get on with the job and I think it helped. We could (visually) see our closest rivals, so we had motivation to keep the boat moving."

Artie 's crew followed the pre-race forecast, but the boats that were inshore of them sailed through and Artie ended up towards the back of the fleet. The crew knew they were doing badly when they found themselves with boats they knew they should be in front of. Satariano said, "From there we worked even harder to regain that loss on the first night."

Co-skipper and helmsman Christian Ripard recounting their overall race, said, "It was tough mentally. There were a lot of tactical decisions constantly, and you had to make the right decisions. We were close to up to 30 yachts, racing among a big fleet, so it was a very tactical race. The first night was very difficult as there were patches of no wind. The next morning we came out of it badly, so we had the whole rest of the race on catch-up mode. But that gave us fuel not to slip up. Looking back, I think we did quite well. We pushed the boat as hard as she'd go."