Lavrion, GRE  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.

Before leaving Olympic Marine for the start, every team was energized and excited for the fast starting conditions for this race.

“The start this year will be windy, wet and exciting, we are super super excited, it will be an epic day!” gushed an exuberant Julia Stelzl, skipper of the all-women’s team from Austria racing on the JPK 39 PHILEAS FOGG (GRE). “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.”

About to set off on their first AEGEAN 600, skipper Russ Whitworth of the TP 52 FINAL FINAL (USA) seemed to have a clear view of what’s ahead.

“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.”

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.

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