The thrills and spills of the first three days of racing in the AEGEAN 600 is starting to shift towards intense concentration and focus as light air descends on the race course, especially at its western end near the finish.

Organizers from the Hellenic Offshore Racing Club (HORC) and Olympic Marine have finished 14 teams thus far, with 51 remaining on the course before the sun set today.

Their challenge is the result of a weakening Meltemi in the western Aegean that has caused some rare light southerly breezes in the area south of the rhumb line between the transit gate at Mykonos and the northern end of Kea and where the fleet turns south towards the finish at Cape Sounio.

Given the light air conditions at the finish, the view this morning of the 12th finisher – Chris Hemans’s Cookson 50 VARUNA (USA) – drifting across the line with a double-reefed main would seem puzzling.

“We were having a fantastic race having a close battle with our sistership FOREVER K (ITA) until yesterday dawn south of Kos we noticed significant damage to the mainsail track about 3 meters from the top of the mast,” he said. “After going aloft twice we determined we should not try to continue to race without reefed the main down below where the track was mangled.”

This obviously slowed down the team significantly for the remainder of the race, but Hemans was still upbeat.

“We did this race last year for the first time, and this was much better – we had much more wind and much more fun.”

No doubt seeing the lead boats among those still on the course slow down on the YB tracker system, some teams have opted to take some bold moves to avoid the road blocks that lie ahead at the western end of the course. One of these is to head south from Mykonos rather than northwest along the rhumb line in search of the forecasted light southerly breeze in this region.

One team that has tried this is Richard Fromentin’s JPK 10.80 COCODY (FRA) who has been doing well in IRC Class 2. While deviating over 12 miles away from the rhumb line south of the island of Syros, this strategy seems to be paying off since they appear to be getting ahead of a pack of other boats struggling on the rhumb line near the island of Gyaros.

Another team also seems to be trying this move: Michael O’Donnell’s J121 DARKWOOD (IRL). Time will tell if they can make the same gains as these teams fight through the night ahead.

With all this uncertainty in mind and the positions in the current leaderboard are certainly subject to change, the dying breeze suggests some bias towards the faster boats doing well in both elapsed and corrected time in this race.

Accordingly, the overall standings in IRC scoring are the same as yesterday, with Antoine Magre’s Mach 50 PALANAD 4 (FRA) on top, followed by Frederic Puzin’s Carkeek 54 DAGUET 5 (FRA) and George Procopiou’s Volvo 70 AIOLOS (GRE) in third. In ORC scoring the overall leaders have changed to faster entries: Jon Desmond’s TP52 FINAL FINAL (USA) is now on top, with Claudio Demartis’s Reichel/Pugh 90 PROSECCO DOC SHOCKWAVE (ITA) in second and Claudio BERNONI’s Cookson 50 FOREVER K (ITA) in third.

In the Double Handed division Massimo Juris and Pietro Luciani racing on their JPK 10.80 COLOMBRE (ITA) maintain their lead from yesterday in IRC scoring while Andrezej Rozycki and Maciej Marczewski in their JPK 10.30 PNEUMA (POL) are leading again in ORC scoring and Stuart Austin’s Outremer 4x QUICK DECISION (GBR) maintains the lead in the MOCRA division.

This race can be followed using the YB tracker system available at 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 here.

Learn more about this year’s race and all previous editions of the AEGEAN 600 at aegean600.com.

by Hellenic Offshore Racing Club