ARC Arrives - Caribbean Compass

JANUARY 2008 CARIBBEAN COMPASS PAGE 22
Well done, the ARC 2007 boats and
crew! By now some will have moved
on from St. Lucia, some will have
returned to their home countries.
There are those that have made
some serious cruising plans and
crossing the Atlantic to St. Lucia is just the beginning
of their adventure.
The ARC is something that is scoffed at by some of
the more shall we say professional or long-term
sailors. I heard many say, “I wouldn’t want to cross
an ocean with a bunch of amateurs”, or “It’s all very
well, but I prefer to cross when I want to, not when
some organizer, who is not making the trip, tells me
to”. Well, there is some truth in all of this — I speak
from experience, or lack of, one might say!
You see, many are inexperienced: some only cross as
crew to fly back, purely for the buzz. Others plan a year
out, and a few, like us, plan to make this their new life,
a cruising life for the next few years at least. With regard
to leaving when you want because of bad weather, it’s
not obligatory to actually leave on the official start date.
If you would prefer to leave later, the ARC people suggest
you cross the starting line with the rest of the fleet and
then return to Las Palmas and wait for your window.
ARCers
2006
One Year
On!
by Phil Chapman
Nevertheless crossing an ocean, especially singleor
double-handed, is something to be proud of. After
all, how many people do this? Some friends of mine
explained it this way: “When 200 ARC boats leave
Las Palmas with an average of five crew per boat,
totaling 1,000 people, and maybe another 1,000 crew
leave before or after the ARC boats, that totals 2,000
people making the crossing. Over a period of ten
years, that amounts to 20,000 people who have
sailed across the Atlantic in small boats. That’s less
than an average Saturday afternoon’s crowd at
Manchester United’s football ground!”
Yvonne and I crossed the Atlantic with the ARC
2006 aboard our Hunter 44DS, Chaser II, as relatively
novice sailors, which is precisely why we came
with an organized group, hoping to have some backup
if things went bad. We weren’t so naïve as to think
we would all be traveling in convoy; in fact, I believe
we only saw two other boats during the trip, apart
from when we diverted to answer a Mayday.
I can briefly tell some of our experiences, having left
our home country Spain in August 2006. After winding
up our business, we decided to take off and cruise
the Mediterranean. We bought all the charts …
—Continued on next page
Above left: Phil and Yvonne celebrating, halfway across
the Atlantic
Above: In December 2006, the ARC fleet packed the
Rodney Bay docks as tightly as ever