The issue with syncing appears to be timeout-related. I'm adding block-sync-size which addressed the issue in Monero but meanwhile if you are compiling your own and want to try a workaround you can edit the file src/cryptonote_config.h and change this:
#define BLOCKS_SYNCHRONIZING_DEFAULT_COUNT 200 //by default, blocks count in blocks downloading
to this
#define BLOCKS_SYNCHRONIZING_DEFAULT_COUNT 20 //by default, blocks count in blocks downloading
Recompile and restart.
EDIT: I see that contributor stoffu has already added --blocks-sync-size. Thanks! Not in a release yet but if you pull from master, you can try adding --block-sync-size 20 to your aeond command line.