The boats on ARC Plus 2022 continue to make good progress on their way to Mindelo with updates and photos from the fleet coming in on the daily logs sent to the World Cruising Club website for friends and family following their adventures from home.
Reports of the first fish landed came in from Fly the Coop with a small bonito caught providing Sashimi for dinner and a tuna reeled in on Amokura on day 2. Food has been a popular topic for many of the boats with reports of pasta aglio olio e pepperoncino and pre-prepared gulasch on board Xenial, egg and bacon rolls and aubergine and sweet potato tagine on Bolero and high praise for the chefs on Lomvi. Amokura have been battling the combination of a front-opening fridge and the boat rolling, avoiding escaping yoghurts shooting out horizontally everytime they venture in for lunch.
The wind has picked up with a 25 knot gust recorded on Helia2 and reports of top speed records being reached from a few boats. Disa and Falcon set their own records of 11.1 knots and 12.7 respectively, eXite has reported a top speed of 13.6 and Xenial has reached 12 knots.
A few boats have dealt with issues, with reports of rigging fixes from Falcon, navigation light replacement on Lomvi, and a short lived power outage on Ida after an induction plate clashed with the inverter. All happily resolved quickly and boats in high spirits. A couple of fixes will be sorted when the boats reach Mindelo with eXite’s autopilot playing up, Disa discovering a 90 degree bend in their pole in the morning and small watermaker and spinnaker pole fixes for Amokura. Xenial has already sent an empty sail bag, favourite cap and French press overboard, hopefully nothing else will follow!
Lots of dolphin sightings have been reported; eXite, Bolero, Disa and Amokura have all been visited by playful pods along with sightings of storm petrels, flying fish, and an adventurous squid who hopped onboard Falcon!
Spirits are high with music, singalongs and plenty of reading, sleeping, audiobooks and plenty of eating keeping crews occupied alongside their sailing and watch rotations. As Disa said “It’s truly awe-inspiring and exhilarating.”
