After five full days of racing in this year’s edition of the AEGEAN 600 nearly all teams still on the race course have made it back to Cape Sounio to the finish line. Most will have to settle for results in their classes that are somewhat deep, except for one team: Jerry Petratos and Evi Delidou racing their Dehler 30 OD AETHER (GRE). Despite sailing the smallest boat in the fleet, this Double Handed team persevered throughout all the Aegean Sea threw at them and everyone else this week: from gale force winds to dead flat calms over a complex 605-mile race course.
The achievement has paid off: they are the only team among four in the Double Handed division to complete the course, and are therefore will be crowned at tomorrow evening’s awards ceremony with the Overall trophies in Double Handed IRC and ORC scoring.
Jerry and Evi are not new to this boat nor new to Double Handed racing. In fact, they are passionate and committed to this challenging facet of offshore sailing, having competed in the previous three editions of the AEGEAN 600, last year’s Rolex Middle Sea Race in Malta and the ORC Double Handed World Championship in Barcelona. They have been chosen to represent Greece at the World Sailing Offshore Double Handed World Championship in late September in Lorient, France.
They said this year’s race was especially tough.
“It was somewhat predictable on the first half of the race, although Kassos was incredible with over 50 knots of wind,” Jerry said. “After that there were so many changes you never felt completely prepared,” even after three previous sailings of this race course. They did say that last night’s relatively constant conditions sailing west from Tilos towards the finish allowed them to catch up on some needed sleep.
However, Evi said what hit them both particularly hard during this race was the news about Ganna Konontchouk on HEAVEN. “As a double-handed sailor you already feel vulnerable out there,” she said, “and this news just reinforced for us the importance of being extremely careful. We are both incredibly sad about this terrible accident.”
The remaining teams who arrived today – both finishers and retirees – all had similar tales to tell: the incredible challenges they faced in this race and the decisions they made to either stay with it or drop out. A total of 30 entries retired in this edition with problems ranging from the structural – a broken mast and a broken rudder – to some serious injuries to being worried that the persistent light air on the east side of the course would keep them trapped for days and unable to get back by week’s end.
All teams are now drying out, resting and preparing for tomorrow evening’s Closing Ceremony which will feature awards, tributes and an audio visual chronicle of this fourth edition of the “perfect 600 mile race.”
