Esimit Europa 2 has taken line honours in the 2014 Rolex Middle Sea Race.

Igor Simcic’s impressive blue boat crossed the finish line outside the Royal Malta Yacht Club at Marsamxett Harbour at 22.45 last night to cover the 608-nautical mile distance in an elapsed time of three days 10hrs, 42mins and five seconds.

The 100ft carbon fibre canting keel Maxi had to stave off a determined challenge from Ran V, the second-placed boat on the water, to make it home first.

Line Honours is the fourth time for Slovenia’s Esimit Europa 2 which has never been accomplished before in this offshore race.

Jochen Schumann, the experienced Esimit skipper, had contacted the media team in the afternoon, some 100 miles from the finish line.

“We have just gybe set at Lampedusa within 100 metres of the cliffs, which was spectacular,” confirmed Schumann.

“We have only 6.7 knots of wind at the moment and that has been a typical day time wind speed in this race and we have had even less at night. We expect to finish the race between 10pm and midnight.

“We are expecting building breeze and if that happens we expect to finish before midnight and we are looking forward to arriving at the Royal Malta Yacht Club for some pasta and a glass or two of wine.

“Ran V is very close behind us, we can see them on the horizon with binoculars. They made a big jump at Pantelleria. We stopped for a while there but Ran went straight through at 10 knots of speed, so that made them very close to us but we have pulled away again.”

The first four days of the Rolex Middle Sea Race had been beset by light winds but that changed last night with the arrival of a frontal system from the northwest.

Today, the wind speed is expected to increase significantly.