Rolex Middle Sea Race

The 60-boat entry list — the 606nm Sicily circuit from Valletta.

Valletta, Malta 606 nm island circuit
60 boats 1 race 606 nm 19 countries International event fleet · as of 2026-08-20
Kinship

The Malta start, the Sicilian loop.

Valletta’s midnight cannon, Messina, Stromboli, Pantelleria, Lampedusa — find the circuit’s waters.

 Hidden Shape

The hidden shape of the fleet.
The kinds of boat that keep appearing when every hull is measured the same way.

How the Rolex Middle Sea Race fleet races, before the results arrive.
Photo: Nsm Photography (CC BY 3.0)
Character

Six hundred and six miles. Valletta, the Messina Strait, Stromboli, the Egadi, and home.

The Rolex Middle Sea Race is the annual Mediterranean offshore classic organized by the Royal Malta Yacht Club — a 606-nautical-mile circumnavigation of Sicily that starts and finishes in Grand Harbour, Valletta. The course leaves Malta northbound to the Strait of Messina, rounds Stromboli at the tip of the Aeolian arc, cuts west across the Tyrrhenian Sea, threads the Egadi Islands off western Sicily, drops south to round Pantelleria and Lampedusa, and returns east-northeast to Valletta. The race is a Mediterranean signature event — sea-breeze geography, mountainous wind-shadow effects in the Sicilian lee, Scirocco and Mistral pressure patterns through the Sicilian Channel, and a tactical island-rounding sequence that rewards no single hull family in isolation.

FleetEdge tracks the 60-boat entry list — ORC-rated hulls and mapped-IRC hulls together on one results surface. Fifty-two of the 60 carry full ORC measurement certificates (35 ORC International and 17 ORC Club); the other eight are IRC entries mapped into FleetEdge’s comparable ORC-based physics view, matched to their ORC design-family equivalents by hull dimensions and transparently labeled as class-sibling projections. Both rating populations share the standings and off-median results surface, while the archetype classification at the published 2025-vintage view covers the 52 fully ORC-measured hulls.

The fleet signature is large-platform almost throughout: AEROSTREAM carries 46.2% of the classified fleet (24 of 52 classified boats), and the two leading families together take 84.6%. AEROSTREAM is the towering platform — a level posture over a stiff righting reserve, beamy and forgiving to steer, and an upwind bias in the strongest tier of the families on this entry list. AEROCORE follows at 38.5% (20 boats) — large and upright over a tender reserve — with LEANRUN third at 7.7% (4 boats). The geographic backbone is Italian, British, and Maltese — 10 ITA with 6 GBR and 6 MLT hulls among the 52 classified — with Germany and Greece at four apiece and Malta’s host contingent led by the winner of IRC Zero, across 19 countries on the full entry list. The entry list reads as the Mediterranean offshore-circuit calendar — 14 of the boats FleetEdge tracks here also ran the Rolex Fastnet 2025, a sign that the Middle Sea Race draws the offshore-campaigning end of the European IRC and ORC fleets.

Event cohort view · 60 boats · as of 2026-08-20

Selected Race Result

Rolex Middle Sea Race 2025 — IRC divisions.

All 60 boats on the entry list raced and all 60 finished. 606 nautical miles, Grand Harbour out and Grand Harbour back, around Sicily via the Strait of Messina, Stromboli, the Egadi, Pantelleria, and Lampedusa. One race, scored in IRC divisions. October 18, 2025. The fleet mixes hulls carrying full ORC measurement with mapped IRC entries projected on the same comparative-time axis.

Headlines

Dimension leaders — the 60-boat Middle Sea Race fleet.

Cohort-relative leaders across the structural, entry-list, and comparative-time dimensions FleetEdge surfaces on every fleet. The 60-boat entry list spans ORC and IRC ratings; the composition boards below run over the classified fleet at the published 2025-vintage view. The off-median delta shows each boat’s delta from its own ORC median allowance over the 606nm course — negative means faster than the median allowance expects, positive means slower, and at this running every measured boat finished positive. It is a single-race, low-confidence signal, not the corrected race result.

Designer Concentration

1. Frers G · 6
=2. Jeppesen-Nielsen · 4
=2. Johnstone R · 4
Cohort 3 boards tied at 4 · 52 classified

Archetype Lead

1. AEROSTREAM · 24
2. AEROCORE · 10
3. AEROCORE · 10
Cohort 52 classified · measured slots

Nation Concentration

1. ITA · 10
=2. GBR / MLT · 6
=4. GER / GRE · 4
Cohort 52 classified · 19 countries

Class Concentration

=1. Elan 450 · 2
=1. Neo-430 Roma · 2
=1. Pogo 36 · 2
Cohort 6 classes tied at 2 · 52 classified

Rating Mix

1. ORCi · 35
2. ORC Club · 17
3. Mapped IRC · 8
Cohort 60 boats

Off-Median Delta

1. BALTHASAR · +61.3 s/nm
2. BLACK JACK 100 · +67.8 s/nm
3. FINAL FINAL · +80.3 s/nm
Cohort 40 boats measured
Stories

What the Middle Sea Race 2025 result tells us.

Championship Citation

BALTHASAR — Rolex Middle Sea Race 2025 Champion, IRC Zero

The Maltese Maxi 72 BALTHASAR won IRC Zero at the Rolex Middle Sea Race 2025, finishing first in that division on corrected time. The race is scored in IRC divisions rather than as one overall classification, and the home fleet’s flagship took IRC Zero at the host club’s own classic. The division win is mirrored on the physics surface: BALTHASAR also posted the smallest off-median delta of any boat with an admitted comparative row (+61.3 sec/nm against its own ORC median allowance), the closest conversion to a physics envelope in the fleet. A boat that leads its division on corrected time and the off-median ladder across every division is the cleanest result-to-physics agreement this race produced.

  • Final standing: 1st · IRC Zero, corrected time
  • Off-median delta: +61.3 sec/nm · smallest of 40 measured
  • Source: published Rolex Middle Sea Race 2025 standings
Complete data Rolex Middle Sea Race 2025
Magnitude Gap

BALTHASAR sails 100 sec/nm inside the cohort median.

The Maltese Maxi 72 BALTHASAR posted the smallest off-median delta of the 40 measured boats at this running of the race: +61.3 sec/nm against its own ORC median allowance over the 606nm course. That is 6.5 sec/nm clear of the runner-up, the Super Maxi BLACK JACK 100 (+67.8), and a full 100.3 sec/nm inside the cohort median of +161.5 — in a race where every measured boat finished above its ORC median prediction, the home-fleet maxi converted closest to its physics envelope. The front of the off-median-delta ladder is a maxi story: BALTHASAR, BLACK JACK 100, the Pac-52 FINAL FINAL (+80.3), and WHISPER (+80.9) sit at grand-prix LOA at the front of a classified fleet whose archetype signature is AEROSTREAM-led. Single-race deltas carry low statistical confidence by definition; the ordering, not the absolute magnitude, is the signal.

  • BALTHASAR delta: +61.3 sec/nm vs ORC median
  • Gap to runner-up: 6.5 sec/nm (BLACK JACK 100, +67.8)
  • Cohort median delta: +161.5 sec/nm (40 measured)
Limited sample FleetEdge Off-Median Delta
Multi-Dimension Presence

BLACK JACK 100: three structural ceilings, one hull.

The Super Maxi 100 BLACK JACK 100 tops three structural dimension families across the Middle Sea Race entry list simultaneously — beat VMG at 12 knots (8.84 kt), run VMG at 12 knots (11.55 kt), and rated pace, carrying the fastest rating of any hull on this page. It then carried that structural ceiling into the result surface, posting the second-smallest off-median delta of the measured fleet (+67.8 sec/nm, behind only BALTHASAR). A boat that leads the entry list on paper across the rig-power and rated-pace families and converts to the front of the off-median-delta ladder on the water is the cleanest physics-to-result chain on this page — the 100-footer’s standing is structural, not narrative.

  • Beat / run VMG @12kt: 8.84 / 11.55 kt · entry-list leader in both
  • Rated pace: fastest-rated hull · 60 boats
  • Off-median delta: +67.8 sec/nm · 2nd of 40 measured
Complete data FleetEdge Dimension Leaderboards
Fleet DNA

How the Middle Sea Race fleet is built.

60 boats entered the Rolex Middle Sea Race 2025 — ORC-rated and mapped-IRC hulls together on one results surface, with the 52 fully ORC-measured entries classified across six of the eight archetypes in the 2026 census at the published 2025-vintage view.

The Rolex Middle Sea Race Fleet Signature

The Middle Sea Race cohort is built around scale: AEROSTREAM leads at 46.2% (24 of 52 classified boats), and the two leading archetypes together take 84.6%. AEROSTREAM is the towering platform — a level posture over a stiff righting reserve, beamy and forgiving to steer, with an upwind bias in the strongest tier of the families here. AEROCORE follows at 38.5% (20 boats) — large and upright over a tender reserve, a profile that builds with the breeze — and LEANRUN takes the third slot at 7.7% (4 boats). HEFTLINE adds a compact, level, stiff-reserve pair (2 boats, 3.8%), with AEROFORCE and LEANFORCE at one apiece (1.9%) closing the list. Six of the eight archetypes in the 2026 census appear on this entry list; KEELRUN and SPARKFLEX are absent from the cohort entirely. The grid below resolves the same 52 boats across the eight measured slots that carry boats at this vintage — which is why AEROCORE and LEANRUN each occupy two rows (how the measured slots resolve into the census →).

  • AEROSTREAM 46.2% · 24 boats
  • AEROCORE 19.2% · 10 boats
  • AEROCORE 19.2% · 10 boats

Dimension emphasis: Comparative Time · Crew Residual · Sail Drive · Upwind VMG

Frers G leads the drawing-board signature at 11.5% (6 boats), the most-common single design board in a field that no architect leads outright — three more boards tie at four boats each, and the fleet spans Italian, German, American, and French lines in a flat distribution typical of Mediterranean offshore entry lists. The class field is flatter still: no class fields three or more classified hulls, and six classes tie at two boats each — the signature of an international handicap fleet rather than a one-design circuit. The whole fleet participated in Rolex Middle Sea Race 2025; 14 of the boats FleetEdge tracks here also ran the Rolex Fastnet in the same offshore season.

Complete data Latest published view

The full distribution across eight measured slots.

Archetype assignments dated 2026-08-20 — the FleetEdge analysis nearest this event.

AEROSTREAM

Towering scale · level posture · stiff reserve — measured downwind advantage in banked race evidence.

Boats 24
Share 46.2%

AEROCORE

Large scale · upright posture · tender reserve — measured downwind advantage in banked race evidence.

Boats 20
Share 38.5%

LEANRUN

Large scale · upright posture — downwind-neutral in banked race evidence.

Boats 4
Share 7.7%

HEFTLINE

Compact scale · level posture · stiff reserve — reaching-neutral in banked race evidence.

Boats 2
Share 3.8%

AEROFORCE

Large scale · level posture · neutral reserve — reaching-constrained in banked race evidence.

Boats 1
Share 1.9%

LEANFORCE

Compact scale — downwind-neutral in banked race evidence.

Boats 1
Share 1.9%

AEROSTREAM’s 46.2% share is the marquee structural signature of the page — just under half the classified boats on the Valletta start line carry the towering, level platform with the stiffest righting reserve of the leading families. AEROSTREAM and AEROCORE together carry 44 boats, 84.6% of the classified fleet, and both belong to the large-platform family. KEELRUN and SPARKFLEX are absent from this cohort entirely — the Sicily circuit did not draw those families in any number at the 2025 running. The fleet identity is scale and righting reserve, with a thin, mixed tail of eight boats spread across five smaller slots behind the three largest.

International event fleet · 52 classified · as of 2026-08-20

Fleet Stories

Middle Sea Race fleet signature.

Archetype Density

AEROSTREAM leads the Valletta start line at 46.2%.

AEROSTREAM carries 46.2% of the classified Middle Sea Race fleet — 24 of 52 classified boats, the largest single share on the entry list. AEROSTREAM is the towering platform: a level posture over a stiff righting reserve, beamy and forgiving to steer, and an upwind bias in the strongest tier of the families racing here. The remaining 53.8% of the classified fleet spreads across five more archetypes, with AEROCORE (38.5%) the only other family above the 15% lead threshold and LEANRUN (7.7%) and HEFTLINE (3.8%) behind it. The shape of this fleet is a large-platform ridge in archetype space — two leading families of the same lineage, and a thin, mixed tail.

  • AEROSTREAM: 24 boats · 46.2%
  • AEROCORE: 20 boats · 38.5%
  • Top two combined: 44 boats · 84.6%
Complete data FleetEdge fleet-wide data
Designer Density

Frers G — the Middle Sea Race’s most-common drawing board.

In a fleet split across Italian, German, American, and French design boards, Frers G carries the largest single share at 11.5% (6 boats). No single designer leads the Middle Sea Race entry list outright — Frers heads a flat distribution rather than commanding it, with Jeppesen-Nielsen, Johnstone R, and Judel Vrolijk tied next at four boats apiece and the rest of the field spread across a wide set of design boards. The drawing-board distribution mirrors the Mediterranean offshore reality: an international racing field with no single naval-architecture lineage controlling the start line.

  • Frers G: 6 boats · 11.5%
  • Classified fleet: 52 boats
  • Band: most-common (no leading board)
Complete data FleetEdge fleet-wide data
At a glance

Middle Sea Race — structural profile.

Scope
60 boats
ORC-rated · mapped-IRC · 52 classified
Top 3 archetypes
  1. AEROSTREAM — 24 boats (46.2%)
  2. AEROCORE — 20 boats (38.5%)
  3. LEANRUN — 4 boats (7.7%)
Eight canonical performance archetypes cluster the fleet by dimensional signature. See the full map →
Top designer cluster
Frers G
The most-represented design voice in this fleet.

Counts and archetype assignments above are measured from the published view nearest this event. Commentary below is interpretive.

International event fleet · as of 2026-08-20

Classified fleet view · 52 classified · as of 2026-08-20

Popular Classes

The boats that define Middle Sea Race racing.

No single class has 3 or more boats among the 52 classified Middle Sea Race entries — the Popular Classes signal is too thin to surface reliably. Six classes field two hulls each; the rest of the classified list is single-boat classes, the signature of an international offshore handicap fleet rather than a one-design circuit.

Continue

Go deeper.

ORC World Fleet

The international championship-circuit fleet — the parent context for FleetEdge’s cross-fleet comparative analytics.

Rolex Fastnet Race

The Atlantic RORC peer — 14 of the Middle Sea Race boats FleetEdge tracks also ran the 695-nm Solent-to-Cherbourg course in the same offshore season.

RORC Caribbean 600

The winter Caribbean RORC classic — 6 Middle Sea Race boats also ran the Antigua-based 600-nm offshore loop in 2025.

Italy Racing

The joint-largest national contingent — 10 of the 60 Middle Sea Race boats fly ITA sail numbers, level with Great Britain on the entry list and the deepest single-country share of the 52 classified.

Mediterranean Championship

The ORC Mediterranean event series — the wider Mediterranean offshore context inside which the Middle Sea Race sits.

Fleet Archetypes

The FleetEdge archetype framework — the eight performance archetypes of the 2026 census.

Analyze the Middle Sea Race.

606 nautical miles around Sicily from Valletta. The 60-boat fleet, dissected on the same comparative axis.

Explore FleetEdge Explore Italy Racing