North Aegean Cup 2024 - Porto Carras

Every summer, the Toroneos Gulf in Halkidiki hosts the North Aegean Cup. It is an international ORC and IRC regatta organised by the Nautical Club of Thessaloniki, with its base at the Porto Carras marina. 🏁

I have raced in plenty of regattas, but none like this one. Five days of non-stop sailing, race after race, made the 2024 edition the most demanding racing I have ever done. This is the story behind the video.

👥 The crew

I raced on Hakuna Matata, the Comet 41S, with Dimitris Sofitsis as skipper. It's the same boat I sail in the Friendship Regatta, so this was the "Hakuna Matata edition" of the North Aegean Cup.

We raced in the performance group with a crew of eight, and a ninth sailor joined for one or two races. It was a Greek team plus two Bulgarians: me and my friend Buddy. 🇬🇷🇧🇬 Most of the Greeks were familiar faces. I had sailed with them before at the Friendship Regatta, the Aegean Regatta 2023 and a few smaller events. Over five days of hard racing, that trust paid off: we already knew each other's habits, calls and timing.

My place on board was the mainsail, and only the mainsail. On short windward-leeward courses that means constant trimming, a hand on the traveller and endless talk with the helm on every tack and gybe.

🧭 The races

Unlike the Friendship Regatta, which moves the fleet from port to port, the North Aegean Cup stays in one place. Every race starts and finishes in the Toroneos Gulf. The programme mixes inshore windward-leeward and triangle courses with longer coastal races along the Sithonia shore.

The 2024 edition ran from 4 to 9 August, held together with the Panhellenic Sportboat Cup. Around 30 boats raced across three groups. We sailed in ORC Performance A against 7 other boats: 9 races in 5 racing days, about 95 nautical miles in all.

The three-race day on 6 August meant almost six hours of back-to-back starts, from early afternoon until after 8 p.m.

🌊 The challenges

The Friendship Regatta is about travelling together. The North Aegean Cup is about racing, and nothing else. 💪

• Five days, no breaks. Every morning a new start, every day a full programme. There was no rest day and no passage leg to recover on. The body gets tired, and the mind has to stay sharp anyway.
• Manoeuvre after manoeuvre. Short inshore courses mean a constant run of tacks, gybes, hoists and drops. A small mistake costs places, and on the next lap you do it all again.
• Strong wind, every day. No light-air days to rest on: a solid 16–20 knots all week, with gusts of 30+ knots now and then. 💨 Great for boat speed, hard on the body, especially on the mainsheet, where every gust has to be eased and trimmed back in, race after race.
• Recovery. Food, sleep, stretching and fixing the boat in the evening all became part of the race, not a break from it.
• Racing at the limit. Every race was exhausting, and one of them was even extended with an extra lap when we already felt we had nothing left. Against professional crews, every mistake is punished hard: a slow tack or a late hoist and the boats around you are gone.

Our result: 7th of 8 in ORC Performance A, with our best finishes, two 3rds, in the windward-leeward on 6 August and the 30 nm coastal race. On paper that's near the bottom. In context, I'm really proud of it. 💪

Performance A is the top level of Greek offshore racing. We were up against professional teams on highly customised, optimised boats with carbon components. They rotated crews between races, so they had fresh people every day, and a sail wardrobe to match each race. They also arrived with specialised trailers, pickup trucks and even full-size trucks carrying everything they needed. 🚛

We were the same eight or nine people every day, with a minimal set of sails and no trailer. Holding our own in that fleet, and taking two 3rds along the way, felt like a real achievement.

🏝️ Off the boat

With racing every day, we hardly left the Porto Carras resort, and honestly there was no need to. 🏨 It is an extremely luxurious complex, with pool after pool outside, good restaurants and proper facilities for sailors. Even the small things worked: a public laundry at 3 euros a cycle was a real gift after a day of salt and sweat. 🧺 The opening events around the start of the regatta were massive, a reminder of how big this event is.

The one time we did leave the complex was worth it. Just off the coast sits Kelyfos, better known as Turtle Island 🐢 for its shell-like shape. The short tactical windward-leeward races were held around it, so we saw it from every angle, lap after lap. One evening we went to a restaurant on the shore facing it and watched the sun set behind the island. 🌅 After a long day on the water, that view was the perfect reward.

Not everything went to plan, though. Around the second or third day, our ninth crew member arrived sick. He slept on deck right above my cabin, next to my open hatch, and the next day I went down with it badly. 🤒 For the rest of the week I had to step down from the mainsail. After all the hard racing, being knocked out by a bug was the toughest part of the whole event.

🎬 Watch the video

Five days of racing, condensed: North Aegean Cup 2024 – Hakuna Matata Edition on YouTube.

The North Aegean Cup showed me another side of the sport. Not the island-hopping, travel-together side, but pure, demanding, repeated racing, where fitness and focus matter as much as boat speed. Hard as it was, I'd do it again. ⛵

Fair winds!

Race results: Κύπελο Βορείου Αιγαίου & Πανελλήνιο Κύπελο Sportboat 2024