What does it take to sail a yacht non-stop for 606 miles starting from Malta, round Sicily, by Pantelleria and Lampedusa and back?

Joining a team of sailors aboard their boat while they prepare for tomorrow’s Rolex Middle Sea Race, I discover that a successful sailor needs physical strength and speed to manoeuvre the ropes, the ability to work in a team, steely determination... and a good stomach to keep any food down.

I joined skipper Jonathan Gambin and his seven-man crew aboard his 44-foot sailing boat Ton Ton for a two-hour trial ahead of tomorrow’s race – which can take between two to five days to complete.

“Don’t take any notice of my shouting – you have to take it with a pinch of salt,” he says, setting the ground rules before the start.

But isn’t the shouting and ordering about the fun of it? Mr Gambin grins.

The 51-year-old is a yacht charter and restaurant owner and prides himself on catering well for his crew. He took up racing in 2005 – tomorrow’s race will be his seventh.

With a total of 10 sailors on board, Mr Gambin’s crew is one of the larger ones among the 12 Maltese teams competing.

He steers the boat out of Marsamxett Harbour, where the crew prepare for the starting sequence of the timed trial race.

Another five Maltese sailing boats also manoeuvre towards the invisible starting line to join the training session.

Meanwhile, three of the men are pulling vigorously at the halyard (the rope used for hoisting the sails).

“If I have three mast men during the actual race, I’ll kill myself,” Mr Gambin says animatedly, referring to the fact that one man should be able to do the job.

He hastily adds: “But that won’t be the case because the mainsail would already be set up.”

There is a low Force 2 wind on the day. Mr Gambin explains that the ideal wind strength would be a Force 4. “Don’t tighten the halyards – there is no wind,” he bellows to the men, as they dash around the sailing boat, each absorbed in his own task.

The horn blows, indicating the start of the race. Mr Gambin explains that the crew need to practise two important manoeuvres known as tacking and jibing.

Tacking is when the vessel turns its bow through the wind so that the direction from which the wind blows changes from one side to another. Jibing is the opposite of tacking, when a vessel turns away from the wind.

Both manoeuvres carry a very palpable danger – as one of the sailors, Gabriel Galea, finds out.

During the tacking and jibing manoeuvres, the boom (the horizontal pole that extends from the bottom of the mast) swings precariously from one side of the boat to another, often missing their heads by millimetres.

Mr Gambin warns his crew to be careful: “I’m not going to have any mercy on you.”

Yet at one point, the boom swings with a particular force and catches Mr Galea squarely on the back of his head with a loud bang.

“I warned you,” Mr Gambin shouts, as Mr Galea carries on with his task.

Barely has a minute passed when Mr Gambin worriedly turns to him again, ensuring he is not hurt. After that, the crew fall into a rhythm and, two hours later, the Ton Ton sails smoothly into Marsamxett, leaving the rest of the sailing boats at least 20 minutes behind.

“It’s not quite fair though – the other sailing boats had smaller crews. If we were racing people our standard, we’d be the last to finish with all the confusion,” he says self-deprecatingly.

And with that, the Ton Ton sails out again for more practising, before joining the 116 yachts tomorrow for Malta’s biggest sporting event.

Speaking to Times of Malta, Commodore Godwin Zammit from the Royal Malta Yacht Club explains that with yachts varying in length from 33 to 100 feet, the overall winner of the Rolex Middle Sea Race is decided by a handicap system.

Each yacht’s elapsed time is corrected by a handicap determined by the yacht’s potential speed. Mr Zammit adds that this year’s hot favourite is Igor Simcic’s 100-foot Esimit Europa 2. The team, led by Olympic Gold medallist Jochen Schumann, will be attempting to take line honours for an unprecedented fourth consecutive occasion.

The favourite from the Maltese yachts is Lee Satariano’s Artie-RTFX, which was the first Maltese yacht to finish the race in 2011.

After time correction, the all-Maltese crew won the race overall.