Andrew Bishop always said it would grow. So it has. This
year, there were 68 yachts in the ARC+.
It has developed its own atmosphere. The yachts are
generally family crews not intent on racing and in no
special hurry, and there are few big boats or charter yachts
on a schedule. As one ARC+ sailor put it to me: “ARC+
crews have a plan. ARC crews have a plane.”
The stop at Mindelo allows people to meet each other
and get to know one another better, so crews on this
element of the rally enjoy a particular closeness.
Another advantage of this rally is that some of the
knottier weather and routeing dilemmas don’t even arise.
On the ARC+ you are going to be taking the southerly
route. From the Cape Verdes westwards, you will be in
the Trades.
The Cape Verde archipelago is fascinating too; it is
where Europe and Africa meet, culturally and
economically. The landscape, food, music and people
make this a place apart, but the islands are conspicuously
poor, too.
This year, Philip Scott and his crew on the Oyster 575
Helen invited ARC+ to raise money for the SOS Children’s
Village charity, which helps get orphaned and abandoned
children off the streets and supports young people by
teaching them skills that can earn them a living. The
Scotts guaranteed to make whatever sum was raised by
the fleet up to a £10,000 donation.Many crews use the crossing to raise money for charity
or have another purpose besides the crossing itself. On
board Clipper 60 Hummingbird, cruising instructor
Nicky Marsh wanted to master celestial navigation; she
had brought along the sextant her father had given her
as a present.
“I really enjoyed that and it really makes you look at and
appreciate the sky and the stars,” she commented.
Skipper Rachael Sprot, who runs the adventure charter
company Rubicon 3 with partner Bruce Jacobs, taught
crew any practical skills they wanted to learn, such as
meteorology and forecasting or navigation.
For Rubicon 3, the ARC+ via the Cape Verdes is the
adventure route, and Hummingbird’s photos and video
look as if they’ve come straight from a brochure. In almostevery one, the high-spirited crew are
dancing to music in the cockpit while
the yacht sways westwards across a
blue-violet sea.
“It was a perfect crossing,” says Marie
Graven Nielsen when I ask her and husband Kim about
their crossing with ARC+. It was their first ocean crossing;
the longest they had been at sea prior to this was a six-day
passage. They said that they had found the whole
experience ‘very pleasant’.
“I had really expected a little bit bigger waves and more
weather,” says Marie. “At times it was very calm. We had
high tea every afternoon. We caught three dorado and a
2.5m, 40kg blue marlin, but [it got away when] the line
caught on the propeller.”
North Star, a Hallberg-Rassy 48, is their third HR, and
they have packed things up at home in London to go off
on a five- or six-year cruise. They did the rally with their
two daughters, aged 26 and 23, and a family friend.
Some thousand miles to the south of the strong seasHalfway presents ready to open on board the smallest yacht,
Pete and Jan Dearden’s 10m motorsailer Twe nt y Twe nt yAbove: lunch with
the Gamenius
family from
Norway aboard
Tintomara
Right: how big?
Sizing up freshly
caught fish on the
ARC+ yacht
Twe nt y Twe nt y‘we had high tea every
afternoon and caught fish’
ARC TRANSATLANTIC RALLY
42 February 2018