At T-2 (2 days to departure!), Team HADA –
Capt. Stuart Starkey, along with Anton Webre, Ed Tobin, Terence (TJ) O’Malley, plus
myself, André Wolper, have been here for a couple of days and are busily
prepping for the big adventure.
HADA is a brand new Hanse 505, and started her journey in Greifswald,
Germany on Wednesday, Oct 9th. Captain Tim Heinrichs piloted her
down for us, and arrived here in Las Palmas, Gran Canary Island, on Tuesday,
November 19th, at 00:20.
Because the journey from the Baltic Sea down
to Las Palmas took 41 days - longer than expected due to some stops along the
way - our preparation days have been crunched to an absolute minimum. To make up for it, Team Hada is working 15 hr
days since with everyone doing their very best to get ready for race start on
Sunday, 12:30pm local time!
We have not been out on the water yet but some
legs are already sore from the scurrying about the boat back and forth.
It will get a lot worse, that much is sure, before it will get better
again. We plan to go out for a few hours today to practice coordination –
we want to have coordinated hands to keep us moving, safe, and hopefully fast,
as we have entered the Class B race division.
Yes, we are racing! Most of the >200 boats are crusing but
HADA is part of a field of 18 vessels seeking to compete for the fastest
crossing. The competition is very
serious, with some amazing sailboats in the field. We are probably the only one carrying a
dishwasher and a washing machine aboard! So surely we’ll win at least one
price: Fastest appliance delivery
boat! Ha!
You can check out the complete boat list
including the Class B subset at http://www.worldcruising.com/arc/eventfleetviewer.aspx
- hit the “fleet tracker” button, select “ARC 2013 (Las Palmas to St. Lucia),
and you will see all boats listed that have entered the crossing in crusing,
racing, and so on. This will also be a
great place to watch how the field of boats disperses and where Team HADA will
be every day both on the ocean, as well as relative to all the other boats as
we collectively make forward progress!
While we are still scrambling to get ready, a
sense of anticipation is building today.
We all are very much looking forward to get out on Sunday. We will
critically depend on each other in the weeks to come, and we all know it.
The depth of the collective experience, discipline, and commitment really is
awesome.
Food! Today is provisioning day! Of course we plan to complement with LOTS of
fish, BIG fish, such as Tuna. Both Stu and Anton have BIG reels J. We will (of course) have Ginger, Wasabi, and
short grain rice aboard and will filet the fishes on the back transom so you
can imagine what we intent to prepare! :-). In addition, we will carry 10kg of other
meat, plus untold amounts of fruits and vegetables.
Most of team HADA loves food and several are
great cooks so we will have good fun going through our stocks in the coming
weeks! The first week will be heavy on
veggies while they last and we’ll end the journey with dry goods such as pasta,
potatoes, and MORE FISH J.
We worry that the winds from Sunday on will be too
weak, and may add days to the expected crossing time. We will have to see
what the weather gods have in store as we get closer to departure.
In any event, the washer just beeped - laundry
done!
André