So as we were preparing to leave Las Palmas for the ARC 2018 (#arc2018) one of our crew stated “there is a start time, a start line and a finish line also a handicap system in place to provide a finishing order on corrected time. Therefore we must be racing?”
As mobile signal started to fade on the first evening the first and last views of the yellow brick tracker showing the spread of the ARC fleet in the early stages. The first morning saw updates of positions of the boats from family members saying well done on our third place, hang on a minute this is a rally?
The mid day internet connection saw the first email position sched land in the inbox a rather antiquated list of positions. It is rather like reading stories from the old Whitbread races where the daily radio sched would be read out and positions plotted on a paper chart. I remember the weekly BBC shows showing a leader board with lat and long and distance to the finish. So with a little help from a spreadsheet we can quickly plot all the positions and see that we are in mid fleet.
This morning came news of our fellow rally participants (2nd place in the rally) had lost both head sails overboard during the night and had spent two hours recovering them. At the time we had lost a few places to seventh confirmed by text message through the yellow brick tracker. However a good pace was set through Thursday which saw us climb back up to 2nd in our group following the places we lost due to our later than ideal gybe all though we are not racing so this does not matter too much.
When I say later than ideal this was based on our weather routing information supplied by Libby via email. Later due to the redbox Comms box failing to connect the evening before. Oh Libby has just come back from the Volvo Ocean Race 2017/8 edition as navigator for team Scallywag so knows a thing or two about ocean weather routing. Gybe angle limitations have been set to ensure us a good run into St Lucia and remain in the good breeze. A Rally with lay lines all sounds a bit racey to me.
Doodle Ventures 