The World ARC fleet had a great restart from the Galapagos Island of Santa Cruz at noon today, to begin the longest trip of the Rally to the French Polynesian island of Hiva Oa. The 2,980 nautical mile journey is expected to take 2-3 weeks for most of the yachts. The journey is likely to begin slowly for most boats, owing to some lighter winds around the Galapagos Islands. Some yachts will inevitable choose to motor out of this area in a south easterly direction to get into a healthy belt of trade wind conditions currently sitting about 7 degrees south.
Several local boats and water taxis came out to watch the start which was an impressive sight. It was especially so because of the number of yachts and that several of the yachts flew colourful asymmetric sails. The first yacht across the line was the British registered yacht Firefly at the northern end of the line. The wind was about 10 knots from south south east which helpfully powered the fleet in a south westerly direction between the other islands of Floreana and Isabela.
Unfortunately some boats were unable to take the start or had to turn back shortly afterwards. Celebrate continue to wait for their autopilot part to be couriered to them and Ko-Ko returned from the starting area when they realised their autopilot was not functioning correctly too. With such a long journey ahead it would be very useful to have these pieces of equipment fully functioning. Sweet Pearl was also slightly delayed at the start with a mainsail problem but were on their way soon enough.
Follow the fleet by clicking on the Fleet Tracker button.