Into The Mystic - And so it begins

And they are off !

The pontoons at Las Palmas Marina were a veritable hive of activity on Sunday morning as every worked feverishly to get everything shipshape for the off.

I had woken at 5am is a state of high dudgeon. Sleep was hard to come by. The adventure was about to commence and I found myself experiencing that weird combination of massive excitement tempered with no small degree of caution and fear - these had been my constant travelling companions for a while now. The difference was in the degree. I felt very emotional and reading the messages from friends both at home and abroad managed to elicit the odd tear for two.

As the crew began ascending from their cabins we busied ourselves with the last remaining jobs : hanging out the washing, filling the water tanks, checking the engines - the mundane realities of boat life.

Jodi had prepared a pre-departure checklist which we ran through, crossing out the jobs as they were done: close all hatches, latch all cupboards, close the washing machine seacock, change the toilets from, freshwater to saltwater flush, lay out the charts, disconnect shoprepower etc etc.

The start of the ‘race’ - its officially a rally and not a race but everyone knows its really a race - was scheduled for 12:30pm. The race, sorry rally, was to be administered by the World Cruising Club who have organised the ARC for the last 36 years.

We had been closely following then weather forecasts for several days and all the chatter on the docks and in the bars had been about how there would be very light winds (probably from the wrong direction) and that there was a significant low pressure system to the west of Las Palmas which would make the more northerly route, favoured by there serious racers, a more difficult and challenging course. We had already elected to take a more conservative route towards the Cape Verde archipelago in the hope that the Tradewinds would fill in as we sortied south. We were following the old Atlantic Crossing adage off ‘head south until the butter melts and then turn to the Westt.


The big day dawned with bright sunshine, clear blue skies and somewhat more wind than had been anticipated. It was from the wrong direction but would at least enable the fleet to sail across right start line with a modicum of wind in their sails.

Around 11am the first boats, the largest monohull and the catamarans (including us) began dropping their lines and moving off the pontoons. Each passing boats was greeted with a cacophony of claxons being sounded and applause emanating from fellow Crossers who knew it would be their turn shortly.

Our time ewers soon upon us and Brad (our native St Lucian and indeed the only St L:ucian amongst the 600 or so crew participating) was given the honour go helming us out of the marina. As the crew took up their positions for departure our neighbouring boats began offering us up those ancient phrases beloved by all long distance mariners ;

‘Fair winds and following seas’

‘Stay safe’

‘See you on the other side’

‘Have a great crossing, be safe out there’

We shook hands with our nearest neighbours - a German flagged boat called (Monty very aptly ‘GO EAST’, the order to drop the lines was issued and Brad skilfully took us away from the dock.


We joined the procession of boats exiting the marina in single file. Race numbers proudly displayed - applause rang out from all the boats patiently waiting to join us and from the mass of spectators who thronged the marina walls -

‘Good luck’

‘See you in St Lucia’

‘Godspeed’

‘Buy me a rum punch if you get there before us’

And suddenly we were out of the marina and into clear water. Kind of. Surrounded by a veritable flotilla of other ARC boats all waiting for the signal to cross the start line. All kinds of boats and sailors participate in the ARC from 100ft schooners down to 36ft production boats. Millionaitres rub shoulders with relative paupers and they all know that the joy of watching the sun rise over an ocean is the same regardless of wealth. Crew from 36 countries are represented this year. The concept is awesome.

Just before the start, Tony had the misfortune if tripping over one of the lines on the foredeck and badly twisted his ankle - we were oner crew member down. Before the race had even started - thankfully he hadn’t broken his ankle which was his own initial diagnosis. Our travails were immediately put into perspective when we heard an exchange over the VHF radio which went along the following lines:

‘Race Control, Race Control, we are in immediate need if medical assistance ad request permission to return to the marina, Over’

’This is Race Control - please confirm this is really a medical emergency requiring immediate assistance ? Over’

‘Yes it is, one if our crew got their finger trapped in a winch and she has lost the top part of her finger……'

Poor woman. An immediate reminder to us too put safety first,

After a few hours of sailing into winds that were absolutely from the wrong direction and realising that we were rapidly sliding down the leaderboard we decided to turn our engines and make as much progress south as rapidly as we could. The purists in the Racing Division of the ARC are expressly forbidden from using their engines. We, however, are in the Cruising Division and no such rules apply so we opened the throttles and away we went. Within the space of a few hours we saw that we were now in the vanguard of the fleet - a lofty 7th place overall ! OK, it felt like we were kind of cheating but everyone else (other than the racers) seemed to be doing the same thing. We grabbed a quick screenshot of our 7th place ranking from the Yellow Brick tracker before the failing mobile signal could rob us of recording the event. We all knew thats we were highly unlikely to maintain that position once the serious business of proper sailing began.

The forecast is for light winds until possibly as late as Tuesday afternoon and we will continue to motor as necessary and keep hoping for fair winds.

We are now about 100nm south of Gran Canaria and have 800nm of ocean between us and Cape Verde. We lost mobile signal late last night so we will be without our phones for the duration.
Before we left Las Palmas we held a little sweepstake based upon our expected crossing time and the results are as follows in ascending order of time -

Brad - 17 days 0 hours and 30mins

Jodi - 18 days 7 hours and 33mins

Simon - 18 days 7 hours and 43mins

Tony - 18 days 12 hours and 44mins

Henry - 18 days 20 hours and 10mins

The winner will be excused from all cleaning duties after our arrival in St
Lucia - a fantastic prize to win !

It is 0752 hours on 22nd November and the sun has just come up.

Stop Press !! - we just caught our first fish saw our first dolphins and a pod of whales. Not bad fir a first morning.

Stop Stop Press - it's now a little later in the day and we have now landed 2 Mahi Mahi and one tuna but also lost several Tuna.

Henry, Brad, Tony, Jodi and Simon