Mississauga sailor leaves competition in his wake

Give Rossi Milev a boat, tell him to go race, and the chances are he’ll finish at or near the top more often than not.
Like this past weekend for example.
The Mississaugan, sailing out of the Port Credit Yacht Club, borrowed a 40-foot Spinnaker from a friend, put together a crew and ended up being the first boat in the 19th annual 300 nautical mile Solmar race to cross the finish line last night.
“It was tough all around,” Milev said moments after docking Defiant. “But it was a great race, very challenging.”
Milev covered the circumnavigation of Lake Ontario in just under 58 hours and well ahead of any other boat that competed in the event at the 300 nautical mile distance. There were races covering a shorter distance that ended sooner than Monday night.
“We started out not too bad (Saturday morning), but then the wind died around Toronto and we drifted for about half an hour,” said Milev, who builds and repairs boats for a living.
“We got a little breeze after that, but the first night was very, very hard. We got about 12 straight hours of rain and I’d say we made 50 sail changes. But we got a good jump and our boat was easy to handle.”
More than 125 yachts competed in the Solmar, leaving from the PCYC Saturday morning, heading east to Main Duck and Yorkshire Island, south to Oswego, N.Y., east along the American side to the western tip of Lake Ontario before heading east past Oakville and back to the finish line at the PCYC.
Milev, who turns 37 on Wednesday, made incredible time until the wind died as he approached Oakville Monday afternoon. He estimated it took more than three hours to cover the distance between Oakville and Port Credit.
“I thought we were going to be here a lot earlier,” said the skipper as he and his crew docked Defiant shortly before 9 o’clock Monday night. “It was tricky but exciting.”
Milev, who studied engineering in his native Bulgaria and began sailing at the age of seven, has had a successful career internationally.
Two years ago, he became the first Canadian skipper to win the J24 class at the North American Championships, he was third at the Pan American Games last year and finished second in the World Championships earlier this year in the J24 division.
He’s headed for Rochester next month to compete in the J22 World Championships and he also plans to compete in the J24 class in Chicago at the North American Championships in September.
onlinenews@mississauga.net