Watching The Ocean Race Europe leg 5 from Genoa to Boka Bay in Montenegro, Sam Davies reaches for the right word and settles on “relentless.”

The Mediterranean is never less than a challenge, but this 2,000-nautical mile leg, currently being led by Team Malizia just ahead of Allagrande MAPEI Racing, with the leading boats now mid-way between Corsica and Sicily, has been a huge and continuous challenge.

After a very light wind start, there followed some of the fastest and most violent sailing of the race so far on the way to the scoring gate northwest of Sardinia, and since then there have been continuous changes in conditions, testing skippers and navigators to the full.

“The ride has been relentless,”said Davies, the skipper of Initiatives Coeur and four-time Vendée Globe competitor who has been catching up on the action using the PredictWind tracker. “The crews can never relax because they are just going through transition zone after transition zone. For a while they were able to make massive gains and keep their average at 30 knots, but then they saw all that disappearing when they sailed into the next parking lot.”

And the next looming challenge is the island of Sicily, with a turning gate to go through to the north and then a passage along the south coast towards the Adriatic Sea. Davies says, like all islands in the Med, Sicily is going to throw some curve balls in the way of exhausted crews who will go upwind to start with, then downwind, and then into a big light patch that could see the race order turned on its head once again. 

 

“The thing to remember is that every time you go past an island in the Med, you get either 40 or 50 knots or zero knots and potentially both in the space of about two hours. The transition zones around the islands are really hard moments to deal with and getting past Sicily could be a real lottery,”said Davies.

Right now, the race is still very tight between the top-four boats with Team Maliazia skippered by Boris Herrmann only a couple of miles ahead of Allagrande MAPEI Racing skippered by Ambrogio Beccaria of Italy. Race leader and heavy favourite for overall honours, Biotherm skippered by Paul Meilhat, is holding third place, 11 miles behind the leader, with Yoann Richomme’s crew on Paprec Arkéa another couple of miles back in fourth. 

After that there is a big gap to fifth-placed Holcim-PRB (+150nm) skippered by Rosalin Kuiper that got left behind in a transition west of Sardinia, with the crew on Be Water Positive led by Britain’s Pip Hare in sixth position (+256nm), and Team Amaala, skippered by Alan Roura of Switzerland, a long way back in seventh place (+333nm).

In the overall standings Allagrande MAPEI Racing is locked in a tight battle with Team Malizia for fourth place, with Beccaria delighted to have taken his first Bonus Point at the Santo Stefano Gate earlier in this leg. But there is all to play for between the two crews this morning as they battle it out at the front of the fleet.

 

Davies has been impressed with the way Beccaria, a skipper she has trained with in Lorient, has come into the Class. She described him as an “amazing” sailor with an impressive record in Class 40s. “For sure everyone acknowledges that he is an upcoming force in the Class, and you couldn’t do much better than the way he’s doing it – buying one of the best boats in the fleet, and doing that transition to IMOCA over a whole year, getting to know the boat with its previous owners,”she said. 

Davies sailed on board Biotherm with Meilhat during the long Southern Ocean leg in the last Ocean Race and she says the experience of doing that race has clearly paid off for Meilhat. “Paul has definitely learnt a lot about how to do this race well,”she said. “When the Biotherm team did the round the world race, it was a battle against the clock the whole time and the boat had been finished a bit late and the budget was a bit tight. I guess it was like doing weight training or going running with a weight jacket on. But that experience has made that team very, very strong now.

“And it's great to see them on top at last,” she continued, “and see that boat performing. It’s obviously the right conditions for that design and it’s definitely an opportunity for Paul and his crew to win because a lot of the time they have been sailing on flat water and in light winds that suit his boat. But it’s not just the boat, it’s also the sailors – and he’s got a great team with him.”

As this leg continues with its ever changing sea and wind conditions to contend with on the way past Sicily, and then north into the Adriatic Sea towards the finish at Boka Bay, Davies says managing crew morale and energy levels is going to be critical to the outcome.

 

“Rest is essential on a race like this and sometimes – especially if you are really competitive – everyone wants to be there for everything,” said the 51-year-old IMOCA veteran who will race in the Transat Café L’Or next month alongside Violette Dorange on board Initiatives Coeur. 

“I think maybe the skipper’s job will be to manage that, and kind of force people to rest and accept that you can do a manoeuvre a tiny bit slower, but it’s going to make the whole crew survive at a higher level of performance for a longer duration,” she added. 

Ed Gorman