An epic start to the 6th edition of AEGEAN 600 offshore race

A brisk Meltemi breeze of 25-30 knots prompted reefed mainsails and small jibs for this year s fleet at today s start of the 6th edition of the AEGEAN 600, organized by the Hellenic Offshore Racing Club (HORC) and Olympic Marine. After a short leg upwind towards the turning mark at the foot of the cliff below the Ancient Temple of Poseidon, all teams sped off at high speeds to the south under azure skies and clear water flecked with white caps…this was a spectacular scene for all.

This year the Meltemi had a slight easterly bend in direction, prompting a delay in deploying gennakers among the fast monohulls, but later as the breeze backed more to the north mainsails were unreefed and big sails deployed for the first 62-mile leg of the course to the island of Milos.

First off the start line was the Maxi class entries, led by the two fastest monohulls in the fleet: Claudio Demartis’s Reichel/Pugh 90 PROSECCO DOC SHOCKWAVE 3 (ITA) and George Procopiou’s Volvo 70 AIOLOS (GRE). After rounding the mark and heading south at boat speeds over 20 knots, their fight was on for who would be leader of the pack. 

One and a half hours into the race AIOLOS held a track slightly more to the east of rhumb line, but as she gybed just west of the island of Kythnos, SHOCKWAVE gybed to cover just 1.5 miles ahead. To preserve this lead SHOCKWAVE soon thereafter gybed back towards the rhumb line and over the next two and a half hours extended her lead to 4 miles at the southwestern tip of Milos for the start of the next 50-mile leg to Santorini. 

Here the fleet transits on a 9-mile leg through the island’s collapsed caldera structure, with the lights of the island’s cliff-top villages illuminating the route. At the present speeds the fastest boats will make this transit tonight while the slower boats will have a full view of this spectacular journey in the early morning light.

In corrected time at 1900 EEST AIOLOS held the overall lead in IRC and Maxi class scoring, while in overall ORC scoring Gregor Stimpfl’s Scuderia 65 HAGAR V (ITA) had the lead. 

Amongst the Multihull entries, Michalis Aftias and Stathis Balomenos’s Outrider 4x LYNX (ITA) had the lead in both elapsed and corrected time. 

Among the Double Handed teams Massimo Juris and Pietro Luciani racing on their JPK 10.80 COLOMBRE (ITA) had the lead in IRC scoring, while Periklis Livas and Simon Sweetman sailing their Dehler 30 OPTIMUM 4 (GRE) 2.5 miles ahead of COLOMBRE held the lead in ORC scoring.

This race can be followed using the YB tracker system available at https://pro.yb.tl/aegean6002026, and using this system and other resources a daily race analysis is being provided by veteran offshore race commentator Dobbs Davis of Seahorse Magazine. Today’s show can be found on the event’s YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/sVwnsHFWKQc, and the day's race video from Icarus is available at https://youtu.be/EaHNJ4ZkCYM.

Other media resources are available on the event website at https://aegean600.com/news and www.aegean600.com/media.

(Race report by Aegean 600 media team: press@aegean600.com)