“Slalom among the Greek islands with a supertrimaran at the Aegean 600.” The story

Deployed on the starting line of the 605-mile non-stop race between the islands of Greece there was also the innovative sailing multihull “Rapido 53 XS”
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“Picomole” by Aldo Fumagalli.
In his fine account the other side of the regatta. Among the Italians competing in the latest edition of the Aegean 600, a 605-mile nonstop race among the islands of Greece that started last July 7, was the innovative sailing multihull “Rapido 53 XS”
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“Picomole” of Aldo Fumagalli, an Italian engineer and former owner of the home appliance brand Candy, which finished in third place in the MOCRA class.
As is well known, the competition was marred by a serious accident.
In fact, a sailor who was part of the crew of the Pogo 44 “Heaven” died as a result of an outboard fall, and we at the Giornale della Vela, as well as many other newspapers and websites, reported on the tragedy.
What follows instead is the other side of this regatta that remains a unique event in the world, full of emotions in a wonderful and challenging sea as the Aegean can be in the summer season.
Here, then, is the regatta as it was experienced aboard Aldo Fumagalli’s “Picomole” in this impassioned account written in sharing by Aldo Fumagalli himself and a member of his crew Ugo Giordano.

What a sight the departure under the Temple of Poseidon!

On Sunday, July 7, at 2 p.m. precisely, the race committee, as scheduled, 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, then 30 minutes later the fleet of about sixty monohulls took off.
We showed up on the start line, slightly favorable at the buoy, right on time and were literally overtaken by one of the two MOD 70s in the race, although upwind we were making more than 10 knots, the MOD 70 was perhaps already making 20 knots and after a short while she and her crew disappeared over the horizon.
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.
A spectacular landscape that we passed on the first night of the regatta.
Basically we turn clockwise around the small island inside the bay and then down again to leave the two islands of Kassos and Karpatos to the left and head for the halfway mark represented by the large island of Rhodes.

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.
The boat was almost out of control with peaks in excess of 20 knots, but fortunately our talented crew maneuvered well and everything was back under control.
Orzando again we headed for Rhodes and here the Meltemi, perhaps shielded by the island which is very high and large, left us: absolute calm and slight breezes of varying direction ruled this stretch of the race.
To get through the 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.
In fact past the cape east of Rhodes begins the giant slalom between the islands, more or less upwind you go west and pass between two islands and leave Kandelusa on the right which is a rock marked by a lighthouse.
We had to do this on the night of the 9th and 10th with lots of “stop and go” that tested our patience.
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.

The news of the tragedy: stop or continue?

After this rock with the lighthouse, by now the morning of the 10th, we passed between Kos and the Turkish coast, leaving Kos on the left and then heading toward Agatonissi leaving Patmos and Kalolimnos on the left.
At this point we got tragic news through the chat that brings together all the crew members of all the boats.
A Croatian boat, a Pogo 44, lost two men at sea and one, a 40-year-old French woman lost her life when she was hit by one of the boat’s two rudder blades sustaining serious injuries.
We are astonished and wonder if it makes sense to continue or if perhaps it is not better as a sign of solidarity to interrupt, but like everyone else, or rather almost everyone else because some for one reason or another a good 30 percent of the fleet has withdrawn, we continue, but with a mood that is certainly not serene.
From Agatonissi we leave Mikonos on the right and Delos on the left, and then off to the finish line again under the temple of Poseidon.
In this stretch we have time to stand twice more at the mercy of the current and the waves, watching the Meltemi blowing at 20 knots a few hundred meters from us.

“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.