A nine-man sailing crew is making history as the first entirely Gozitan team to enter the world-renowned Rolex Middle Sea race.
Competing in a recently renovated boat, they will be underdogs in the international competition, which launches from Valletta’s Grand Harbour in October.
The race, named after its long-standing sponsor, involves completing a course of 606 nautical miles, anti-clockwise around Sicily. Founded in 1968 as the result of a historic rivalry between two pairs of British and Maltese yachtsmen, it has become a bucket-list challenge for most competitive sailors.
The Gozo Dream, a 23-year-old vessel bought and renovated by Gozitans earlier this year, measures in at only 12 metres, and will be among the smaller yachts that make up the majority of the fleet.
Last year’s event attracted 118 yachts, but this autumn, organisers from the RMYC are hoping to beat the record number of entries, 130, set in 2018.
Noel Grech, a resident of Għarb and member of the inaugural Gozo crew, has raced three times since 1996, but always as part of a wider Malta group. He told Times of Malta it has always been an ambition of his to form a team from Gozo alone.
“From a numbers perspective, to get a whole team together was extremely difficult. Up until a few years ago the perception of the deep sea was fear.”
Drawing on the resources of the Gozo Sailing Club, Grech eventually gathered enough willing participants, with ages ranging from 74 to 30. Six of these sailors will be racing the course for the first time.
The next step was to find a vessel to race in.
“I spent the whole winter looking, and I had basically given up when this boat came up for sale,” Grech said. “But enthusiasm was through the roof once we had it.”
Along with four others, Grech sailed Gozo Dream back from Italy in early June, tracing the second half of the Middle Sea course in what ended up as a kind of “dress rehearsal”.
Unlike the other vessels registered to compete, many of which are relatively new, the boat required many hours of restoration to be race-ready. Outside working hours, the crew treated the hull, replaced the rigging, and checked each system was working as it should. Their budget ran out before they were able to change the sails.
“Being from Gozo, not Malta, sponsors were never forthcoming. We were hoping to receive more support than we did. We will certainly be the underdogs.”
According to Grech, the reliability of the boat will be the primary challenge, unlike other competitors who can focus solely on the changing weather conditions.
Locally, the team will be up against Simon Xuereb’s Maltese crew, on a Dufour 40 vessel named Spirt of the Winds. However, this is a friendly rivalry. The goal for the Gozitan crew is just to represent the island and its residents.
“Every mile of the race will be a victory. We want to start and finish it. Anything else would be over and above what we’re expecting.”
“And maybe not come last,” he adds.