The 6th edition of the Aegean 600 got underway from Lavrion, Greece, in a brisk Meltemi breeze of 25-30 knots. Reefed mainsails and small jibs were the order of the day as the fleet rounded a turning mark at the foot of the cliff below the Ancient Temple of Poseidon, then headed south under blue skies and whitecap-flecked water.
The Meltemi carried a slight easterly bent, delaying the deployment of gennakers among the faster monohulls. As the breeze backed further north, mainsails were shaken out and big sails set for the first 62-mile leg to the island of Milos.
The race is organised by the Hellenic Offshore Racing Club (HORC) and Olympic Marine.
Before the start, Julia Stelzl, skipper of the all-women’s Austrian crew aboard the JPK 39 PHILEAS FOGG (GRE), was ready for the conditions. “The start this year will be windy, wet and exciting, we are super super excited, it will be an epic day!” she said. “We were here last year, but this will be completely different for us: we now know the boat, we know the course, unlike last year there will be windy conditions, and we have trained a lot for this race.”
Russ Whitworth, skipper of the TP 52 FINAL FINAL (USA), was making his first Aegean 600 start and had a measured outlook. “It looks pretty windy all the way to the eastern end of the course,” he said, “so we’re preparing all of our heavy weather sails and make sure we have all out big breeze maneuvers down. Our goal is to protect the boat and make sure we get to the east side of the race course in one piece.”
The Maxi class led the fleet away. Claudio Demartis’s Reichel/Pugh 90 PROSECCO DOC SHOCKWAVE 3 (ITA) and George Procopiou’s Volvo 70 AIOLOS (GRE) were the two fastest monohulls and immediately set up a battle for the lead.
One and a half hours in, AIOLOS held a track slightly east of the rhumb line. After she gybed just west of Kythnos, SHOCKWAVE gybed to cover, sitting 1.5 miles ahead. SHOCKWAVE then gybed back towards the rhumb line and extended her lead to 4 miles at the southwestern tip of Milos, the start of the next 50-mile leg to Santorini.
The course takes the fleet through a 9-mile transit of Santorini’s collapsed caldera, with the lights of the island’s cliff-top villages marking the route. At racing speeds, the leading boats were expected to make the transit overnight, with slower competitors passing through in early morning light.
At 1900 EEST, the corrected time standings were as follows:
Overall IRC and Maxi class: AIOLOS (GRE) led.
Overall ORC: Gregor Stimpfl’s Scuderia 65 HAGAR V (ITA) led.
Multihull, elapsed and corrected time: Michalis Aftias and Stathis Balomenos’s Outrider 4x LYNX (ITA) led.
Double Handed IRC: Massimo Juris and Pietro Luciani, JPK 10.80 COLOMBRE (ITA) led.
Double Handed ORC: Periklis Livas and Simon Sweetman, Dehler 30 OPTIMUM 4 (GRE), led, sitting 2.5 miles ahead of COLOMBRE.
The race can be tracked via the YB tracker at https://pro.yb.tl/aegean6002026. Daily race analysis is provided by offshore race commentator Dobbs Davis of Seahorse Magazine, with video available on the event’s YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/sVwnsHFWKQc.
Further media resources are available at https://aegean600.com/news and www.aegean600.com/media.
Originally published by Aegean 600.
