During the night Maserati Multi 70 enters the Strait of Messina and the Team decides to follow an Eastern route, in order to avoid slowing down too much with the light winds near the coasts of Sicily. This strategy works and this morning at 05.50 (03.50 UTC) the Italian trimaran doubles Capo Peloro, out of the Strait of Messina sailing at 7 knots with 5 miles of advantage over the English MOD 70 PowerPlay.
From that point Maserati Multi 70 starts sailing towards Stromboli with a speed between 8 and 10 knots, reaching the island at around 10.30 (08.30 UTC) with an advantage of 19 miles over PowerPlay.
“The passage of the Strait of Messina went really well, we made a good choice by sailing more at Est” says Giovanni Soldini. “With light winds the missing rudder doesn’t penalize us too much, it will become more challenging when we will have to sail port tack with strong winds: we will have to slow down and be very careful”.
Following the damage, the Italian trimaran’s crew unhooked the fuse system of the right-side rudder, rising it above the water: this way, while sailing port tack, only the central rudder is in use. This solution is effective with light winds, but the central hull needs to stay in the water or there will be no rudder in use.
Maserati Multi 70‘s Team started working right away to find the causes of the damage with designer Guillaume Verdier: “It’s hard to understand why the rudder’s fitting broke while sailing close-hauled, and not while flying downwind. It’s unlucky that this happened in this moment, during this summer we sailed about 2.000 miles and we never had this kind of problems”.
The new rudders’ fitting are made with a rigid carbon fiber and they have proved to be lighter in the section that transfers the torsion between the two bearings.
