Arrival at St Lucia - photos by Tim Wright

Some photos of our arrival at Rodney Bay, St Lucia on December 10, 2009 by the official ARC photographer Tim Wright.

Skylark's crew - Ed, Steve and Francois - glad to make landfall, St Lucia.

The Crossing

November 22, 2009 -  the day is finally here.  The 24^th Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) starts today.  I am writing off-line and won’t be posting on the blog until we arrive at St Lucia which lies among the Windward Islands in the Lesser Antilles.  This is a sea diary of sorts that is being kept because some highlights of the journey may be lost to occasional waves of senior moments as Skylark meanders along on her longest passage yet. 

The racing yachts in the ARC have set off  from the bay outside the marina at Las Palmas.  There are frenzied tacking duels at the start line.  With 2800 miles to go, the struggle to be first across the line must no doubt be a manifestation of pure testosterone induced machismo of the racing skippers.  No such thing with Skylark’s crew of senior citizens  -- we are content to slip by the Committee boat at our own pace.

Some of the boats starting out from Las Palmas, November 22, 2209.  We wonder for how long those spinnakers will keep flying.

The provisioning onboard has a heavy French influence.  Chef de Bateau, Francois, found the French Auchan supermarket in Las Palmas and after some massive purchases, declared it the best store on the island.

Crossing an ocean is not for the faint-hearted.  The ARC however has spawned a party/picnic atmosphere in which families with small children take to the seas aboard sailboats small and large.  Some are better prepared than others but the seaworthiness of a vessel seems mostly dictated by economics within basic safety standards set by the World Cruising Club, organizers of the ARC.

Once clear of Gran Canaria and the wind acceleration zone between the islands, the fleet settles in on a southerly course in the Atlantic swell.  It is constant motion and time is required to find one’s sea legs. Meals and watch schedules have to be settled into – the process is not instantaneous, the best laid plans notwithstanding. There is a moon out from the first night which is strangely comforting as the fleet disperses, each boat to pursue carefully conceived routing plans, some prepared by professional meteorologists and others of the similar professional persuasions.  Some of these services are available gratis off the internet, others are paid for.

Each ARC yacht is required to make a daily noon position report to Rally Control in Cowes on the Isle of Wight.  We do ours using a single sideband  radio (SSB) based email system called ‘Sailmail”.  The rig comprises a high frequency or SSB radio transceiver, a specialized modem interface and a notebook computer.  Email is slow and highly dependent on signal propagation of the radios stations situated around the world, so we are uncharacteristically economical with words. 

After just 2 days at sea, a number of boats have had to retire with gear failure or crew injuries.  They divert to the Cape Verde islands or retreat to Las Palmas. We get a fleet update on November 23 – a yacht in the Racing division, Auliana II has had rudder failure and has been abandoned with search and rescue taking the crew back to Las Palmas.  There are other reports of an abandoned fishing vessel which was posing a navigational hazard.  These are not the last of the incidents (on December 1, another yacht, Pelican, suffers rigging and engine failure and makes a Mayday call.  It too is abandoned after the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre at Falmouth directs a merchant ship to its aid.  The boat is not scuttled but is located a couple of hundred miles north of Skylark.

Food provided by divine providence,  Francois and Ed land a big one.

Sailing across the Atlantic on the trade winds route entails a mostly downwind course.  Setting up the optimum sail combinations requires some experimentation as Skylark has never been tested in such conditions – the wind from behind blowing 15 to 25 knots in constant swell and waves. 

This is a photo of our headsail (the Genoa) which has been set up for downwind sailing.  The large aluminium  pole swivels from the base of the main mast and keeps the sail in a more or less constant position relative to the wind.  It is not a piece of equipment entirely without risk in its use.  If a large wave should tip the boat sufficiently to the side on which the pole is set, it could make contact with the sea at great force and cause major damage to the fitting or worse (such as a dismasting).  We are judicious in using it and are happy to reduce the head sail when wind speeds begin to be worrisome.

Our routine settles in and we are a happy crew spending time reading the few books we were able to lug on the airplane with us.  The last of Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogies is finished with great regret. Paul Theroux’s Elephanta  Suite is read with relish.  We can relate to the characters, having met a few in our own lives.  John Caldwell’s Desperate Voyage was a truly enjoyable read.  Thank you, Susan Mackay for lending it to us, along with the other books. In desperation, we start on Joseph Conrad,  but he's too depressing to read at sea -- perhaps we'll get to him when we are safe in port.

               A hard day at sea......

                                                  

Other aspects of life at sea are even more pedestrian.  There are constant checks on the battery monitor for remaining power and voltage levels.  Skylark consumes a lot of electricity while under way to maintain some semblance of normal life.  “Larry”, our trusty Furuno auto pilot and watch captain, runs 24/7 and is a glutton for power.  The navigation equipment also draws a few amps as do the electric motors that run the sail controls.  We develop a routine to run the generator three times a day, during which the battery bank gets charged, the desalinator makes water for the tank, the clothes washer is run and most important of all, the coffee machine is in operation.  Each day, at a time of his own choosing, Ed “the Engineer” Flint does a rigging check and removes the dead flying fish from around the deck .  Here’s a picture of him at work .  It’s hard to believe someone could look so happy doing such menial work after an apparently successful corporate career...

Then, there’s the very important aspect of our existence as hunter gatherers of the high seas – the search for protein to sustain life.  Francois has three strikes by apparently large fish but they got away.  The fishing lures he bought at Las Palmas were of poor quality and came apart when the fish bit. In any event, we did not starve.  The subsequent fish was of moderate size, perhaps 15 pounds, which was good for a couple of sashimi meals and some fried fish dinners. 

Ed and Francois at Skylark’s transom - the fish is clearly visible near the water's surface. 

Francois lands a fishy meal but has to work hard gutting the animal.

The days click on and we read the ARC email reports, noting positions of some boats we’d met at Las Palmas.  We are content to sail along as gentlemen, not too fast…..It seems like we are middle of the pack before adjusting for the ARC handicapping adjustment for elapsed time.  Skylark unfortunately has a handicap rating that would penalize her against the majority of boats in the fleet.  With about 5 days to go (based on course and assumed average speeds), we hear from “Fandango” who have communications problems with their Iridium email system.  We are able to talk on the VHF radio and relay their position to Rally Control in Cowes.  Apparently, they then developed a subsequent problem with their VHF antenna and could only manage very short range radio coms using a handheld radio.  Another ARC boat, Shania, shadowed them at close range and relayed messages for them.

500 miles to go with no land in sight, we get a visit from a feathered friend (believed to be an Egret headed south for the winter) who decides to stay for the night.  Offers of bits of fish are ignored.  He preferred to shelter from the wind and to rest for the onward flight to who knows where...The next morning, he flies off without so much as a thank you, other than leaving some bird poop on the cabin roof.

As St Lucia looms on the chart, it begins to feel like an anticlimax.  Was it going to be over so soon, just as we were getting used to life as permanent nomads of the oceans?  The wind came up on the final night before landfall, and we had to reduce sail to slow down so we would arrive in daylight.  Some boats that were behind us went by but we did not care too much.  St Lucia is GMT minus 4 hours.  We’d begun progressively adjusting the time towards this time zone as we made our way past mid-Atlantic.  The time was referred to as time zone ST (for Skylark Time).  The adjustment played havoc on one of the crew’s body clock (at this time, he has not been named but is believed to hail from Corpus Christi, Texas.

As dawn came, we had St Lucia on our port side.  Rounding Pigeon Island at around 7 am, Thursday, December 10, 2009, we headed for the finish line at Rodney Bay and received the appropriate congratulations from the ARC Finish Line at around 7:15 am.  We also congratulated ourselves on not having killed anyone during the 18 days at sea…Our elapsed time for the passage from Las Palmas to St Lucia totaled 17 days, 22 hours -- not bad for Skylark's first ocean crossing.  We head slowly under engine to the narrow channel leading to the Rodney Bay marina and are snug and safe at berth J10 in a small rain storm.

Now to find a decent internet café to post the blog.  More in a few days after we have had the chance to explore St Lucia.