Atlantic Crossing. Day 1

Day 1

So we had a great send off from the friends and family of the ARC vessels and hundreds of locals.

120 yachts squeezed through the start line over a staggered start of an hour. There were a couple of mishaps as people slipped their lines and “kissed’ their neighbour on the way out! It felt pretty manic out there, but we got through it unscathed.

As soon as we exited the harbour area, the winds picked up to 25 knots. We had 4/5 of our headsail out and 2/3 of our main sail. Some had more, some had less. Then we were overtaken by the big boys in the 60 ft boats. They left us quite quickly. We were on a port broad reach (wind at 7 o’clock when looking at 12) and so we kept our main sail locked in place with a preventer to stop it slamming around to 4 o’clock.

We met our friends Tony & Katy on Tam Lim just after the start line. They are in another HR44, identical to us. They took a more easterly route and after 24 hours were nearly 50 miles away, further east and slightly further south. It will be interesting to see how we both approach the passage. Tony is a pro skipper for the Tall Boat Challenge so I had thought I might shadow him, but not sure now. Maybe he knows the easterly trade winds will kick in on his track first and he will catch us up that way?

When we were a few hours out of Las Palmas we had about 50 boats in and around us, visible on the plotter, but we could only see 8 or 9.

At 18:00 the winds picked up and shifted to a more NNE and so we had to Gibe, (turn the boat so that the wind comes over the back but at the other side). The winds gusted to 35 knots and we had too much sail out. We easily brought the headsail in, but the main meant that first we had to drive the boat into the wind. The seas by now were about 3m high, short and choppy and one rogue wave forced us to Gybe earlier than we wanted and the preventer caught the rail and bent it slightly 😭.

We had a turbulent night. It was a beautiful clear sky, but too windy and wet to enjoy it. The boat was regularly getting a thorough soaking on all quarters.

At 21:00, the number of visible boats had decreased to 3. One, whose name we will keep, was on collision course for us, on a port tack, whist we were on a starboard tack. The rules of the road meant that we had priority and that he should have moved away, but he refused! Rule 1 of the Collision Regulations is …don’t collide, so I had to tack around him…. There are many sailors who have surprised me that this is their first long sailing experience. A bit of a baptism yesterday.

We had a lovely sunrise and the morning has been much calmer (relatively!)

We are all well, if not a little tired, but we will get into a groove soon.

And finally… supper!…. A lovely chicken green curry and coconut rice, followed by some fresh fruit. We have purposefully not provisioned any biscuits and no more custard. We have 1 packet of Rich Tea and 4 litres of custard for 3 weeks!👌