Lavrion, GRE  The brisk Meltemi which yesterday propelled the fleet off to a fast start has continued to persist into the second day of this 6th edition of the AEGEAN 600 organized by the Hellenic Offshore Racing Club (HORC) and Olympic Marine. The breeze has held at 15-20 knots throughout most of the race course, giving all teams fast reaching and downwind rides throughout the first half of the 605-mile race.

The race leaders in elapsed time – Claudio Demartis’s Reichel/Pugh 90 PROSECCO DOC SHOCKWAVE 3 (ITA) and George Procopiou’s Volvo 70 AIOLOS (GRE) – were match racing most of yesterday and into last night, including while transiting the spectacular caldera at Santorini. Yet SHOCKWAVE managed to take the lead and extend up until the notorious wind holes in the lee of the island of Rhodes, where AILOS fell back and Frederic Puzin’s Carkeek 54 DAGUET 5 (FRA) took the runner-up position. Two-thirds along the upwind leg towards the next turn at Kandelioussa, AIOLOS managed to take back second place.

Due to the quick pace of the race most of the fast boats went through the transit gate at Santorini in darkness, but in the early morning hours the back third of the fleet enjoyed the spectacular views on the volcanic structures of this world-famous collapsed caldera. There are few scenes like this in all of offshore sailing.

At the halfway point in the race at the north end of Rhodes, SHOCKWAVE’s average speed around the course was 12.6 knots, shy of the13.6 knot average pace that the Farr 100 LEOPARD 3 (MON) had while setting the monohull course record in 2023, but not insurmountable if the Meltemi holds in strength and direction for the remainder of their race. It will depend on the depth of any future wind holes that may arise in the lees of islands on the eastern half of the race course.

At the 30-hour mark since the start, the overall race leader on IRC corrected time is DAGUET 5, followed by another French team, the Mach 50 PALANAD 4, with Russ Whitworth’s TP 52 FINAL FINAL (USA) in third. In ORC scoring the overall leader was Paval Stole’s JPK 10.30 MARY S (CZE), who was just rounding the southern end of Karpathos, while Paris Kyriacopoulos’s XR 41 XIPHOS (GRE) was ahead headed for Rhodes and third-placed PNEUMA (POL), Andrzej Rozycki’s JPK 10.30, was behind just breaking away from Kasos.

Maica, Mowgli of Portsmouth (ESP)

JPK 39, PHILEAS FOGG (AUT)

JPK 1030, PNEUMA (POL)

Sailing with team mate Maciej Marczewski, Rozycki leads the ORC Double Handed division, while Massimo Juris and Pietro Luciani racing on their JPK 10.80 COLOMBRE (ITA) maintain their lead from yesterday in IRC scoring, as does Michalis Aftias and Stathis Balomenos’s Outrider 4x LYNX (ITA) in the Multihull division.

FIRST 36, ISERA (ITA)

In the first 24 hours of the race there were several teams that had to retire from the race with a range of issues but fortunately no serious injuries. These include Alexander Shehu’s Farr 40 ARMAGGEDON (GRE), Fabrizio Scime’s Oceanis 46.1 FELIX III, Andrea Ruckstuhl’s Pogo 36 VOYAGER (FRA), Armando Ortolano’s Solitaire 1740 AGERAS (GRE) and Arto Linnervuo’s Infinity 52 TULIKETTU (FIN). For the Finns this was particularly disappointing given the high speed potential of their DSS-equipped Infinity 52.

“We had to retire from the race after damaging our foil in order to avoid further damage to the yacht,” said Linnervuo. “We were really happy with our performance and felt that this was our race. We really enjoyed this magnificent race course and were sad when having to stop racing. We are looking forward to returning to AEGEAN 600 race in the future to finish the job!

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/pjBDL7-11E4.

SUN FAST 3300, Munjek RS (CRO)

FIRST 36, ISERA (ITA)

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