We made it! Crossed the finish the at 5:49m local time here in Saint Lucia :)
It was quite a special moment, we were in regular radio contact with the finish line from about 5 miles out but despite our best efforts to arrive in light it was still pitch black (hard to estimate time of sunrise when it changes each day!). A photographer was sent out in a RIB to capture the moment and we have some great photos. Upon berthing in Rodney Bay there was a welcome party of ARC staff, a local from the Saint Lucia Tourist board bearing gifts of beer, rum punch and fruit baskets. Other boats were cheering and we felt pretty chuffed all round. We did see later in the day that if you manage to arrive in daylight you also get a steel drum player on the dock drumming you local tunes.
What a great feeling to have crossed an ocean and now be half a world away. And Saint Lucia does truly feel a world away from Europe, the heat and humidity here are intense (aircon is getting a workout). The architecture, people, accents, landscapes, smells are all so different and we regularly hear reggae music. There's a real carnival atmosphere here as more boats arrive and there is a little village of sponsor tents and other various businesses.
We met up with Ali and Phillip stayed with her at their hotel last night though their moving back aboard today. It's fun the hotel is on the water in the bay so they've just borrowed our dingy and can take themselves back and forth.
We have a few jobs to do here now, get our battery charging sorted, clean the boat and a other small things. Dad, Phillip and Ali are off on the 14th and we hope to cruise down to the area of the Pitons before they leave.
Mike:
I had the last full watch from 4-7am (minus the two hour time change although we thought it should of only being one) so really it was the 2-5am watch. It was exciting during those hours in anticipation. I dressed the boat with 4 flags: St Lucia, a second large Australian one, ARC flag and of course my new bigger Irish flag and manned the radio for our 5-mile, 2-mile and sight the finish line approaches. The arrival like Hugh says above was extremely well organised. They have volunteers stationed at the finish line in a boat 24/7 to welcome you across the line and record your official time, our being 5:49:44 seconds. We travelled 2721nm which meant that we took a very straight route across.
As mentioned during our journey we were recording every watch in a log which will be a really nice document to look back on later. We recorded the miles, speed, GPS position, heading, barometer reading and wrote a little update at the end of the watch. We also had a little competition to see who had the fastest watch (just to keep everyone on their toes :)) To prove the great team that we were the four of us were all within 0.02 knots of each other.
Yesterday was a busy day of re organising the boat so that it felt like a home again mixed with sporadic drinking of rum, beer and whiskey while chatting with other crew who had already arrived. Everyone is certainly in a jovial mood and the party atmosphere is great. To our surprise during the crossing a lot of boats experienced a night of winds of up to 50 knots which damaged a number of sails and poles. Fortunately (or unfortunately) we only experienced 31 knots. I guess we should be thankful that we didn't rip sails.
After speaking with the marina manager and reading a little about Rodney Bay marina we decided to go to the well recommended 'Big Chef steakhouse' for dinner last night. While seated a lovely lady came up and asked if we knew Lane Cipriani. Knowing that my best friend in Sydney is of the same name I replied yes. He had pre-organised to pick up the tab for the five of us - wow wow wow. Thank you from all on Whippersnapper, you are a great mate.
arc11-1958