It took us all the best part of 3 days to get back to anything like a regular routine – and thankfully emerged half human to begin to enjoy the ARC party life here in Rodney Bay.  I guess we’d underestimated just how much effort we’d been putting in over the last days of the rally, and despite the obvious pleasures of arriving, I have to say we were all a bit snarly on the finish line - and crashed immediately we’d accepted the rum and fruit basket presented dockside by the tourist authorities.

Sue helmed us over the line with the camera boat doing rings around us clicking away, and the tiredness was first evident as we dropped our sails to motor up the dredged channel into the sheltered lagoon where Rodney Bay Marina is located.  It’s a nice set up – several bars and restaurants pumping 24/7 – lots of helpful ARC and marina staff – and of course on arrival, another 36 ARC crews all clapping and honking off on horns and sirens.

It would seem we blasted in the last 150 miles running before a worsening weather system itself created as the tail of a newly born hurricane doing its damage some 500 miles north of us.  The resultant winds have not lessened in the days since, and the steady stream of daily ARC arrivals recount tales of 60 knot squalls, huge following waves, and one even trailing warps to slow down!

Here, the same weather system has kept the skies grey, with heavy showers coming through at least each hour day and night.  ‘Welcome to the Sunny Caribbean’ is not an apt by-line right now!

Most of our sailing pals arrived in good order, although many other yachts suffered damage.  Seems there have been an unusual number of booms cracked, fractured or simply broken – and we have our own possible reason why there’s been this many.  

In the pre-ARC seminars they’ve banged on a lot about the need for preventers on the boom, and equally the importance of running such from the boom end to the bow of the boat.  They say this because pulling the boom forward from its end gives it most support if one rolls the boat and dips the boom end in the sea.

But whilst we would not argue with this general advice, I think the location of the preventer on the boom harks back from the days when most boom sheeting systems equally ran to the boom end also.  If this is so, the preventer and the boom sheet kinda  balance out the loads on the boom, so it makes good sense.

But today, when most sheeting systems go from cabin top to mid boom, we’re thinking if you run a preventer to the boom end, and then as one does, sheet in the main to tightened it all up and minimise movement, one is as a result applying forward forces from the end, and aft forces from the middle??????

Even our racer mate Anteater Blues who also realised on arrival they’d lost a section off the front of a spreader, had also put a light crease in his boom (right at main sheeting point!).  Our next door neighbours in Las Palmas – a Portuguese Jenneau 49 Faraway – actually broke theirs at the same point only 3 days into the event.

In addition to boom failures, lots (including us) suffered sail damage.  Ours was sewn up by Kenny the local sail maker within 48 hours of arrival – so we’re just now waiting for the squalls to ease for the hour needed to bend it back on the mast.

If you’ve followed the ARC site, you’ll have also learnt of other tragic incidents a lot more serious than minor boat damage.  The boarding of one competitor by some illegal immigrants closer to the African coast is a horror story when you hear all the detail.  This craft – faster than the yacht and with two dead bodies already on board – tried several times to close with the yacht despite being fought off with rocket flares being fired by the yacht directly at the craft.  Two young African guys did manage to get on board after a 12 jour siege, and were only restrained by the crew holding a flare gun to their heads………  Horrible that conditions force these kinds of actions.

There was also the tragic scalding of one of the Volvo 60’s young girl crew when they broached as she was boiling on the stove – and of course the even more tragic death of the skipper on Avocet who fell and hit his head on a winch half way over.  Both were lifted off by commercial traffic and got to hospital, but sadly the skipper never regained consciousness and passed away in hospital on Barbados on 13^th December.

We’ve wanted to find out on what scale this ARC could be rated, weather wise.  Are the conditions we experienced the norm, or better, or what?  Those who’ve been before say for them it has been one of the worst for them …………..but who’s to tell? 

We believe we had a steady trip mainly due to the speed of the boat plus our weather routing taking us round what bad stuff existed - and giving us for 80% of the time, the winds we needed to fly.  So we were one boat that never saw worse than the 40 knots experienced on that last day, and as you’ve read, actually valued that extra strength as it got us in quicker.  But I’ve no doubts others arriving 72 hours later did have altogether worse experiences as more severe conditions did develop in other parts. 

Still, I now know I’ll never contemplate a long ocean passage again without having professional weather routing info pre departure, and ensure we obtain updates on route.

What’s on from here?  We’ll stick in St Lucia at least until the wind up party on 21^st December.  Then it is looking likely it’s Bequia for Xmas day anchored off a palm waving beach, then up to Antigua for New Year.

Nice eh?

Here are a few shots from our crossing – but as usual – no camera can capture what a heavy sea actually looks like.

Heres what our course looked like on the plotter half way over, just as we were doing our big dive south to avoid the bad weather.  Our past days midday positions are the circular M marks - the skull and crossbones lower and behind us each day were our 462 rival Anteater Blues.  They got marginally closer as each passed.  The big crosses show the points we needed to reach to avoid the weaher convergence.  

Here's one of the many nice sunsets we saw before the weather closed in.

Heres what the noisy wake of a Hanse 461 looks like when you're doing 16 knots!

Heres the top of St Lucia as we approached early hours.  It may look calm, but we were doing 10+ knots.

And here's Sue helming us over the line!

Take care

JOHN