24:34.4N 16:26.5W

Monday 22nd November 2010

The ARC started at 13.00 on Sunday and it was truly amazing as 239 boats crossed the start line just as the sun came out.

We spent Sunday morning having final showers and doing last minute boat preparation as the atmosphere heated up.  We even had a brass band and dancers on stilts marching up and down each pontoon.  Everyone was wishing everyone good luck and saying goodbye as we finally left the marina.

Despite deciding to hold back to avoid any carnage we actually had a really good start and managed to keep up with many of the bigger boats for the first few miles.  We passed lots of our friends and took some great photos of them with their spinnakers up so hopefully there will be much trading of shots when we get to the other side.

We have had a really good sail since then although we are having to head a long way south to pick up the trade winds and avoid a no wind zone south west of the Canaries.  We are still in VHF range of quite a few boats and have been chatting away comparing notes and tactics.

Alan has been really ill with what we think is a bug as some people on another boat were ill earlier in the week.  He is never ill so when he is he always assumes it must be serious but he is now starting to feel better so it looks like he will live!  Unfortunately it now looks like Roger may have the same thing.

As mentioned before, you can track our position on the ARC website www.worldcruising.com/ARC .  We can’t access this but can get the raw data via email so we have had our own ‘Off Shore Development Centre’ writing programmes to analyse everyone’s position.  True to form Mary’s quick and dirty analysis produced a summary in about 5 minutes and a graph in a few more mainly slowed by the new fangled Excel 2007 graphs.  Roger is halfway through a more complex solution and Toby and Alan are still conceptualising an even more complicated solution which may be completed just as we arrive!

There is apparently a photo of us on the ARC website at the fancy dress party.  The theme was ‘The Sea’ and we decided to go as cardinal marks.  And no we are not bumble bees, the yellow stripes denote N,S E & W and the black things on our heads are the N, S, E & W cones. 

We have lots of photos but will have to post them when we get to St Lucia.  We may post a few low res photos en route once Alan is back on form.

We should be ‘blogging’ more frequently now, so do keep checking for updates.....