After a fitful 24 hours of frustrating fluky wind, the Meltemi has come back (mostly) for another 16 teams to finish by sunset today at the AEGEAN 600. Organizers from the Hellenic Offshore Racing Club (HORC) and Olympic Marine will still have another 22 teams to finish tonight through tomorrow morning as the remaining boats on the course make their way west to the finish at the Ancient Temple of Poseidon.
A weak wave of low pressure in the course area yesterday and last night made the going tough with headwinds and light air for teams approaching the transit gate at Mykonos and thereafter towards the southward turn at the island of Kea. As the morning progressed, however, the northerly Meltemi did return, and while not at high speed it was enough to get many teams west and then south to the finish. The breeze is projected to help also along those who are coming in tonight.
Even with these late stage speed bumps in the road to the finish, once back to their berths at Olympic Marine the spirits were high and everyone was pleased with their experience on this race.
“We are extremely happy to be here, and not just to be here but also happy to have done well in ORC 2, we did not expect that,” said Maks Vrecko whose Elan 450 KARPO IDRIJA (SLO) was among today’s finishers. “I think this race is the most difficult of all 600 races because the Meltemi is so unpredictable, it has its own temperament.”
The Aegean Sea is obviously a very interesting sea,” said Paris Kyriacopoulos who also finished today on his XR 41 XIPHOS (GRE). “It can deliver high wind speeds - we saw up to 43 knots at the crossing at Kasos - and then after Mykonos where we were stuck last night with 0 knots. Yet this is the nature of offshore racing, where not all boats face the same conditions all the time. We were quite unlucky to sail into that Low.
"Nevertheless this was an amazing race, we enjoyed it very much, and as a tactical challenge this was one of the highest ones we have ever faced and it was a fun race.”
Besides thanking the organizers, the XIPHOS team also made a very magnanimous gesture to donate their unused food from the race to the Holy Metropolis of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki Spiritual Center of Saint Apostle Andrew in Lavrion to help this church feed people in need, and urged other finishing teams to do the same.
Even with the new wave of finishers the overall corrected time standings in IRC, ORC and MOCRA have not changed much since this time yesterday, but the class standings are starting to take shape. Overall standings in IRC scoring are the same 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 - these three teams are on top in the IRC Zero class too.
In ORC scoring the top three are spread out a bit more, with Jon Desmond’s TP52 FINAL FINAL (USA) and Claudio Demartis’s Reichel/Pugh 90 PROSECCO DOC SHOCKWAVE 3 (ITA) in first and second, respectively, both overall and in ORC Zero. With their late afternoon finish today Paval Stolba’s JPK 10.30 MARY S (CZE) looks good for third place overall and holding the lead in ORC Three.
In the Double Handed division there are no changes: 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) continue to lead in ORC scoring. With only one remaining boat still on the course, Stuart Austin’s Outremer 4x QUICK DECISION (GBR) nonetheless maintains their lead of the Multihull division.