Almost ready!
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Tue 22 Jan 2008 18:20
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14:04.597N 60:56.954W
The rally officially starts tomorrow (1/23) at
noon. At that time, we will cross the start line with 37 other boats, and
head west for Panama, which is about 1,180 miles away. Don estimates
the trip will take us about eight days (we'll see how accurate he is again this
time without the use of GCS...). Once in Panama, we will probably have to
wait a few days before transiting the canal. We are both anxious to get
the canal behind us, and I'm sure we will have a few, hopefully good, stories to
tell when we get to Balboa, which is on the pacific side of Panama.
Of the 37 boats that will be leaving St. Lucia with
us, only 2 are American, 2 are Canadian, 15 are British, and the
rest are a mix of Italian, German, French, Irish, Danish, Russian, Portuguese,
Spanish, Swiss and Australian. Quite an international bunch. Some of
the rally boats are shown in picture 1 (mixed in with other non-rally
boats). The rally boats are those that are flying multiple pennants and
signal flags). If you are interested in learning more about the other
rally boats, or about the rally itself, this link will take you
there:
One of the stories featured on the World ARC
website the other day quoted Don (although they didn't name him) as saying, 'We
are tired of preparing! We just want to get going!' What a surprise
that he would say something like that.
Also, if you go to the World ARC website, you will
see a link called 'Fleet Viewer' in the upper right-hand corner. After the
rally starts, you will be able to see all the boats' positions on a daily basis
on the Fleet Viewer. We are required to report our position to rally
headquarters every day at 2pm local time. Shortly thereafter, the Fleet
Viewer should be updated with our new position. So, if we happen to
get lackadaisical about our blog updates, you can at least see that we are
alive and well and making progress by taking a look at the Fleet Viewer.
Harmonie is rally boat number 38.
Speaking of blog updates, we think we have ironed
out our satellite phone issues. The problem appears to be the USB to RS232
cable we were using to connect the computer to the phone. We purchased two
new cables here in St. Lucia and should be in good shape to send blog updates
and emails during the trip to Panama. We'll see.
Our time in St. Lucia will be done soon, and
we unfortunately have not done any sightseeing. Rally preparations and
general associated hullabaloo have taken priority. Sometimes, however, the
sights come to us. Picture two is 'The Fruit Man'. His name is
Gregory and he putters around the marina every day selling fruit from
his flag flying boat. We have used his services a couple of
times and have been quite pleased.
The general rally hullabaloo so far has included
check-in, a sundowner party on one of the rally boats, a welcome
cocktail party sponsored by the rally folks, a Sunday barbeque, a weather
seminar and a general rally briefing. The sundowner party was Friday night
on one of the larger rally boats, a 72 foot Oyster. Quite
impressive. Makes our boat look small and quite unimpressive. There
is probably a picture of this boat somewhere on the World ARC website, it's name
is Kealoha 8. We met quite a few of the rally participants there and spent
a fair bit of time talking to a Polish German French Canadian and his
wife. He really is a Polish, German, French Canadian. His story
is too long to tell here, but let's just say he, Michael, and his wife,
Barbara, are extremely entertaining. I'm sure we'll have more stories to
tell about them and their catamaran named Basia (Polish version of the name
Barbara) as time goes on.
Saturday at the cocktail party, we met more of the
rally participants and ended up having dinner with the British crew
of Andante of Mersey (picture 3 - shown are Ron, Ann, Bob, Keith and
Dave). The captain, Bob, was pleased to tell us that the average age of
his crew is 70. They had a rough ride across the Atlantic (as did most of
the European boats), but all survived just fine and are ready for more.
Bob is a dentist and said he wasn't sure whether he was retired or not. He
left his practice in the hands of his associates and he thinks the practice
might have sold, but wasn't sure. He just laughed and said if there
was 'a bit more money in my account the next time I check it, I'll know
that I'm retired'. So funny.
We have met other sailboat cruisers along the
way, but Don and I both feel that this rally group is different. The
energy level is higher, the general tolerance for risk higher, the drive and
desire to achieve a goal higher. Does this sound like anyone we
know? Don, perhaps? I think we will fit in well, Don
especially.
The one surprise we've had is that very few of the
boats are crewed by only two people. When we tell other participants
that it is just the two of us on our boat, they look at us with wide eyes and
say, 'Really! Just the two of you?'. Then, when we tell them
that our boat is an Amel, their attitude changes a little bit and they say,
'Well then, an Amel, no wonder.' Hurray for the boat with multiple
electric winches.
That's it for now, we are off to purchase more food
and complete the final tasks before we take off (fill the water tank, finish the
laundry, stow everything remotely breakable,etc.). Our next entry will be from somewhere in the middle of the
Caribbean Sea.
Anne
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