Kiwi sailor Andrew Hall and Greek co-skipper Evi Delidou are into the closing miles of the Aegean 600, with the fleet now 3 days, 20 hours and a touch over 5 minutes into a race that Hall describes as a battle against the calms as much as the course itself.
In an update sent through on the evening of Wednesday 8 July local time, Hall reflected on the contrast between the race’s scenery and its difficulty.
“So this land looks so beautiful, but you see that patch of light through the land over there? Well, it’s everywhere out there, and we just came out of there. So we’re learning a lot. It looks magnificent, but, oh my god, it’s a battle,” Hall said.
An overnight update from the team painted a picture of a crew caught between the beauty of the Greek islands and the frustration of a course littered with wind holes. None of the routing models have been accurate, with the breeze, or lack of it, entirely localised from one patch of water to the next. With Aether well into the second half of the course, the focus onboard has shifted almost entirely to hole avoidance. Lack of sleep, relentless heat and the mental grind of going nowhere fast have taken their toll, and the team has also worked through a handful of repairs along the way, including a small leak, some splicing to fix a ring in the tackline, and sail repairs. All part of the usual business of offshore racing, but Hall reckons this race, more than most, is made harder by the breeze patterns and the sheer number of corners in the course.
Despite the grind, spirits onboard remain high. In a lighter moment shared to the team’s Facebook page, Hall and Delidou traded banter about losing voices to singing through the night, and about the correct pronunciation of the islands sliding past.
The fleet is well into its finishing stretch. 17 monohulls on line honours have now crossed, with Alemaro, a Neo 430 Roma, just 4 nautical miles from home. Fastest monohull Prosecco Doc Shockwave 3 completed its 660-nautical-mile course in 2 days, 0 hours and 8 minutes, just outside the record of 1 day, 21 hours and 5 minutes set by Leopard 3 in 2023. Only four monohulls had retired from the fleet, while the three remaining multihulls are still racing, with the fastest set to finish in 58 nautical miles, well outside record pace.
For Aether, the smallest boat in the fleet alongside fellow Dehler 30 Optimum 4, the numbers make for solid reading:
- 4th in IRC Double-Handed, now just over an hour ahead of Optimum 4, co-skippered by Periklis Livas and Simon Sweetman, who has now slipped a place behind Aether
- 4th in IRC Two, an hour behind Libertine (a JPK 11.80), and an hour ahead of Renoir (a Grand Soleil 40)
- 6th in ORC Double-Handed, with Optimum 4 two places ahead and just over an hour separating the two on corrected elapsed time, although Optimum 4 is closer to finishing
- 9th in ORC Three
- 21st in ORC Overall
- 27th in IRC Overall
- 56th in Line Honours, having slipped a place in the past hour or two
With the finish line drawing closer, Hall and Delidou will be hoping to keep pushing carefully over the remaining miles and bring Aether home under their personal goal of 100 hours. Aether’s estimated finishing elapsed time sits at 4 days, 3 hours and 32 minutes, which would see them cross with roughly 99 hours and 30 minutes on the clock.
