ARC Log - Day 1
Global Yacht Racing's P42
Global Yacht Racing
Mon 24 Nov 2008 16:37
Author: mostly Ric
After a week of intense preparation, it's a relief to finally start ARC 2008. I guess preparaing for the ARC should be no different to any other long passage, but as soon as you feel like you might make any progress someone drags you off to another happy hour or party of some kind. The last week has been a little bit fuzzy, but hopefully we've left with enough food, water and fuel on board to get us to St Lucia.
The last 24 hours have been a mixture of extremes. Conditions at the start were glorious, and we were fast off the line, broad-reaching in about 15 knots of breeze. After a settled afternoon under full main and our largest running kite, we started to approach the acceleration zone around the south of Gran Canaria and saw the wind increase to gusts around 30 knots. We flew through it, easily extending our lead over the cruising division who quickly disappeared over the horizon behind us, but not without a few sketchy moments - a few broaches and a chinese gybe. No damage done though, other than a few soggy members of crew!
Yesterday evening saw everyone's first reaction to Wayfarer food. We're a small, wet, cramped race boat and our galley facilities are very basic, so most of our food comes in sealed foil bags - 5 minutes in boiling water, rip the top off and eat straight from the bag. It's actually not as bad as it sounds, and went down with surprisingly few complaints last night with a bit of pasta to add a fews carbs.
The wind had died to about 7 knots by dawn, and had veered to the E. It's continued to veer all day, and we're now close reaching under our AP kite in up to 10 knots of breeze from the SE. While the rhum line (shortest route) to St Lucia is about 270 degrees (M), we're opting to head SW towards the Cape Verde islands. There's a low pressure system forming mid atlantic next week, and we need to get south of it to find the easterly trade winds that will take us towards the Caribbean. Whether it's the fastest way there is difficult to say, especially as so far the weather forecasts haven't been particularly accurate, but time will tell.
Anyway, all is well on board as we prepare for our second evening at sea, 205 NM from Las Palmas and 2559 NM from St Lucia. Not much to see - the odd passing ship and one unidentified yacht still visible far off to starboard.
Some members of crew are going to be contributing to this blog. Here's a few thoughts from Sebastian (his English is way better than my German):
"Everybody on board is excited as we swiftly drift out of the harbour amidst a concert that ARC has arranged to accompany all the leaving yachts. And as the start gun blows all the perfect preparation that Ric and Paul had us do pays off - we are the second boat to cross the line, the spinnaker went up smoothly and quickly and we maintain our position. We're all concentrated, we speak little since everyone knows what's going on - again thanks to the perfect step-by-step introduction we enjoyed during this week of preparation. To all of us it's a great thing that we do and for most of us a 'once on a lifetime'. So even if it's been a small step for mankind, it was a big step for all of us as we went on board in order to SAIL to the Caribbean."