12 noon Thursday: Our photos this noontime show only too well that at times the Aegean 600 has emphatically not been a matter of skelping along on the wings of the Meltemi. Yet we get some idea of what it was like when the going was good by realising that, this morning, the Volvo Open 70 Ailios finally found herself back sharing line honours with the hyper-fast and surreally-coloured Carkeek 54 Daguet 5, and the pair of them covered the final 40 miles to their finish (around 10:00 hrs local time) in three hours.
Showing good in chasing them to the finish was the American Cookson 50 Varuna (Chris Hemans) which now leads IRC and Class overall. But if the wind builds through the rest of the day, well-placed smaller craft are set to pounce for success, although the third Irish boat, the veteran X37 Chillax of Malta (Paul Sheahan) is unlikely to be among their number, as she's still off the coat of Kos.
For the time being, the Howth team on the chartered Xp44 Gazelle, skippered by Darren Wright, was showing best of the two Irish favourites, as she lies 4th in Class 2 and 14th overall, but Nicky Smyth's Ker 46 Searcher (RIYC) had a painful night as a high-rated becalmed boat, and has retired for reasons still to be clarified.
