Doyle-powered Black Pearl claims overall winners at the 2024 Aegean 600. The Aegean 600, organized by the Hellenic Offshore Racing Club (HORC) with support from Olympic Marine, has seen over three days of intense racing in its 4th edition. The 605-mile course consists of 13 legs and is especially challenging due to the varying Meltemi winds, which can range from 0 to 40 knots depending on the location along the course.
The fastest boats in the fleet finished yesterday, with the next fastest tier finishing throughout today. Some boats have finished with enough of a time margin to claim overall victory in the three rating systems used in this event: IRC and ORC for Monohulls and MOCRA for the Multihulls.
In the IRC scoring, First Overall has been claimed by BLACK PEARL (GER), Stefan Jentzsch’s Botin 56. This is a remarkable achievement considering they raced without their racing sails.
Crew boss Paul Standbridge noted that despite the chaotic conditions with wild changes in wind speed and direction, using their second-string headsails, spinnakers, and a delivery mainsail turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Unfortunately their race sails didn’t make it to Greece in time from their last event in Italy, so they had to make do with what they had on hand, delivery sails!
Doyle Sails expert and veteran offshore sailor Justin Ferris was onboard for the teams victorious race, adding another fantastic result to Ferris’ string of successful events.Doyle people are at the heart of our business, Justin has made major contributions towards the development and refinement of products, designs and technologies within Doyle Sails over the years, recently working very closely on our latest Doyle Sails Structured Luff Downwind product.
“Make the most of every opportunity and exhaust all options before giving in”. says Ferris “Starting the race with the odds stacked heavily against finishing with a good result, I think we were all surprised at how well the boat sailed the first upwind leg to set us up in a good position for the long downwind legs. From the time the starting gun fired until the end of the race it was a 12 person effort to push the boat as hard as we could in some very testing conditions with a very reduced sail inventory . We were extremely lucky the race was sailed in wind speeds mostly exceeding 20tws which suited our much reduced upwind sail area. Stefan needs to be congratulated for making the tough call to continue with the race when it would have been much easier to withdraw with the odds that were stacked against the team.”
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