Slalom among the Greek Islands with a supertrimaran at the Aegean 600, by Aldo Fumagalli and Ugo Giordano, Giornale della Vela magazine, 22 July 2024.
Below is an edited extract from the original article which can be read in full by clicking here. For article in Italian, click here.
UPDATE See Rapido 53XS #01, Picomole, at Cannes Yachting Festival from 10-15 September 2024.
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Aldo Fumagalli, an Italian engineer and former owner of the home appliance brand Candy and the owner of Picomole, a Rapido 53XS which finished in third place, MOCRA class, of the Aegean 600 a 605-mile non-stop race between the islands of Greece.
What a sight the departure under the Temple of Poseidon!
On Sunday, July 7 2024… the race committee… kicked off one of the most beautiful long races in the Mediterranean. The course winds from north to south slaloming among the Aegean islands.
The spectacular start, under the Temple of Poseidon towering over Cape Sunio, saw five multihulls like ours darting under the blows of the Meltemi winds of the Aegean Sea, then 30 minutes later the fleet of about sixty monohulls took off…
After a brief disengagement to windward and a gangway buoy under the cape, we headed south to leave the island of Milos to port, and then hemming to port pass inside the volcano caldera of the island of Tyre, better known for the village of Santorini…
Picomole: Winds up to 45 knots, then a grueling lull.
All the way to Kassos the more or less intense Meltemi pushed us to great leeward, but during the afternoon of July 8, just south of Karpatos we were hit by a katabatic wind that reached peaks of 45 knots, maneuvering frantically to reduce the canvas that up to that point involved one hand and the whole big genoa…
(Later) perhaps shielded by the island which is very high and large, left us with absolute calm. Light breezes of varying direction ruled this stretch of the race…. (To sail 25 miles close to Rhodes) took us 14 hours and put a lot of our patience back into it. However, by the afternoon of the 9th, we got out of it and began our ascent.
The course is designed to drive the racers crazy…
The prevailing wind is dominant precisely in the sense that it decides when to be generous and when to be stingy, leaving you at the mercy of short waves and currents that often throw you back into reverse by putting a minus sign on the VMG…
“Picomole” third on the podium, but the real satisfaction is the boat
Finally we enter with Picomole the last stretch we leave the northern tip of Kea Island to the left and head for the finish placed between two buoys below the Temple of Poseidon.
It is 1:30 p.m. on July 11, our effort is over, the other two multihulls turn out to be retired, so we are third out of three finishers.
The two Mod 70s have crumbled the regatta record by putting in less than half the time it took us, but they are not comparable boats.
Ours is certainly fast, but above all it is a very comfortable cruising boat, with two bathrooms, three cabins, a large galley and a dining table that can comfortably seat 8 people.
During the regatta we confronted this new boat, ourselves and the Meltemi, sometimes I wished I had stayed home, as always happens when the wind is lacking and you really don’t know what to do to keep going.
But in the end when you think back, you know you want to be there again next time.
Thank you to our magnificent owner, Aldo Fumagalli, who is much more than an owner, and to the guys in the crew, Gaetano Mura, Antonio Macina, Diego Moreno the Brazilian, Sami Al Shakili of mixed origins (Oman and America) and me, Ugo Giordano, now a grown up Neapolitan boy.
Links
- Original and unabridged article, Slalom among the Greek islands with a supertrimaran at the Aegean 600, by Aldo Fumagalli and Ugo Giordano, Giornale della Vela magazine, 22 July 2024.
- Aegean 600, sailor falls overboard and dies (in Aegean 600). What happened, Giornale della Vela, 11 July 2024.
- Rapido 53XS
- Rapido 53XS, the new 16m globetrotter trimaran, by Aldo Fumagalli, Vela Magazine, 24 January 2024.
