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ARC Europe Fleet Preparing in Portsmouth



The Rally Office officially opened this morning at Ocean Marine Yacht Center in historic Portsmouth, Virginia. The local forecast is offering gorgeous late spring weather, with cool mornings and evenings and warm, sunny days. But with a potential tropical system brewing off the coast of Florida, weather, as usual, is on everyone's mind.

Six boats are set to take part in the USA start of ARC Europe this year, one less than 2014. For now, it's a mellow few days in Portsmouth, but in a week or so in Bermuda, it's going to get decidedly busier! 2015 is a bumper year for entries in the combined ARC Europe/USA events. Over 50 boats are expected to make landfall in St. Georges Bermuda, and another several in the USA fleet will be bound directly for Ft. Lauderdale via the Old Bahamas Channel.

Here in Portsmouth, four of the six boats are new to the World Cruising Club family - Unconditional, White Wave III, Zoom & Blea Tarn - while Euphoria and Agua Dulce are old hands. The Swedish crew of Euphoria sailed in last fall's ARC rally after purchasing the X-Yachts new from Denmark, and are now headed back home to Sweden.

The early morning sunshine and cool temperatures offered a great chance for skippers and crews to keep preparing their boats. Lyndsey on White Wave was up bright and early organizing the foredeck of the Catalina Morgan 440, while Len on Euphoria hoisted a crew member to the top of the rig for some preventive maintenance. Tom and his gang on Unconditional, a big Oyster, had some heavy lifting to do today, literally. As we wrapped up the initial safety check onboard, the maintenance crew from the yard here at Ocean Marine were in the process of loading new batteries onto the boat.

The safety inspections have been very reassuring, with most folks having arrived here at Ocean Marine very well-prepared. In fact, thanks to a few pre-checks we started yesterday, only two yachts remain. Agua Dulce, thanks to their early arrival into the marina, are the first to actually complete their safety check thank to the Caribbean 1500's head safety inspector Peter Burch, who caught up with them last Saturday. Pete will be sailing in the ARC USA fleet from Tortola to Florida on the Tayana 55 Karina.


Photo shows the crew ofWhite Wave III doing their safety check.

Festivities start tonight with the first happy hour, an informal BYO affair on the docks where crews will get a chance to meet and greet for the first time, and show each other around their boats. We'll follow that up with a group dinner at the Bier Garden in town, a German-themed bar & restaurant that boasts hundreds of beers in bottles and array of German lagers on tap, not to mention a wonderfully European atmosphere and a great place for the folks to get to know one another.

Tomorrow's program continues with a happy hour at Skipjack Nautical, featuring a live fiddle player (more on him later) on the waterfront, and the flare demo gets underway tomorrow afternoon!

Follow the rally, including news, feature stories, weather, at-sea logs & photos and GPS fleet tracking on www.worldcruising.com/arc_europe

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