Swimming with whales and blown-up spinnakers

It's been a windy and rainy few days at the ARC rally office in Rodney Bay Marina. But while its wet on the docks here in St. Lucia, the conditions are proving fast offshore, and boats are flying across the finish line.

And that sometimes despite breakages.

Northern Child, the Swan 51 that's become an annual entry in the ARC, blew up their second spinnaker about three days before making landfall.

"The first one went up, the fitting broke, and it came right back down," said the crew on the dock this morning. "The second one was just old, like me!" joked one of them, "and came apart at the seams."

But they still managed to beat their own record.

"We were still 13 hours faster than our previous best time!" they explained. They had to be towed into the marina as well thanks to water in the fuel tank, but they arrived in good spirits nonetheless.

Free Spirit, a Norwegian-flagged Bruce King one-off, and one of the family boats in this year's ARC (which counts both a one-year-old and a 67-year-old as crew) had no such problems and enjoyed their crossing to the fullest.

"We had a great trip," exclaimed the crew. "Lots of changing weather, day and night. We sailed the boat pretty easy because of the small children on the boat."

In other 'family boat' news, the ARC's first ship's cat has arrived into Rodney Bay aboard Caryali, and the Simpson family on Intrepid Bear spoke of swimming with whales mid-Atlantic, with their three kids Milly (9), Thea (7) and Harry (5).

"We hit a bit of a lull about ten days in," explained skipper (and dad) James.

"It was scary swimming out in the ocean," said Milly, "because you didn't know what was out there."

"We weren't moving anywhere at all," added Sara. "It was a lovely day and the sea was calm, so we decided to take advantage and we went swimming in the sea. We were in for quite a long time. James had a snorkel and was looking for fish," she continued. "All of sudden, he said 'Everybody out! Everybody out! Get on the boat!' So, okay, we got onto the boat, and there was this big whale went straight past us and under the boat. We were so shocked! There was actually two of them, and they were just kind of going around the boat, following us."

For Intrepid Bear at least, the ocean was friendly.

The ARC programme continues tonight with the Welcome Cocktail at the Bay Gardens Beach resort, hosted by the St. Lucia Tourism Board.