Cuvee - Day 1 to 4

4 days out in The Atlantic now and the dream has become a reality. Routines are pretty much in place and now there is time to fill in so our blog will have to start late and I will end endeavor to keep it going. There are the daily weather updates and fleet movements overnight to catch up on each morning and then daily running chores. The engineer in me can’t be held back and each day I put the CSV fleet update email file into a spreadsheet to analyse the data. Currently the fleet is spread out over 170Nm north-south and over 200 miles east-west!

The Canaries were a busy week of provisioning, sorting out the yacht (the chandleries must do a killing so many people buying little bits and pieces), and generally partying. It was very social with sundowner drinks (basically a happy 2 hour slot) each evening, a crew dinner which was at a very nice restaurant for all yacht crews together (split into those going to St Lucia one night, and those to St Vincent the other). We also had the fancy dress party where we were the 7 dwarfs. A catamaran family were the incredibles and looked fantastic in incredible suits (oldest family member 75 youngest was 7). We managed somehow to fit aboard food for 7 people for 28 days and are hoping will get us to St Vincent. We had a pizza & chips, movie night for Joseph’s 27th birthday. The last night before starting we were all tucked up in bed at 22:00 to be awoken by fireworks for a farewell for the ARC boats.

The start of the rally at Las Palmas went well, plenty of wind. We left the marina about an hour and half before the start and checked out the start line. The catamarans started 1/2 hour before us and it was quiet a spectacle seeing all the yachts getting their sails up and heading off. 93 in all. We started near the back of the line but caught up and sailed through the fleet to lead after the first night before sailing into a wind hole and by the end finished 6th on handicap which is prettty damned decent for a bunch of armatures. Had a couple of dolphins join us now and then, a few birds and lots of flying fish several landing on the deck even found a squid on the deck. No luck with the fishing though I’m not keen to deal with the mess of a 30kg fish in the cockpit!.

Unfortunately Tricia has succumbed to sea sickness on this leg and only saw the first day out from San Vincent as we left. That was spectacular, we were the first of 2 starts 1/2 hour apart which meant we looked back at the other 80 odd yacht sails on a spectacular rugged volcanic island backdrop. I had a plan to sail SW for 40 miles first as there is a notorious wind shadow behind the islands, well that didn’t work and we got pulled in behind the outermost island San Antonio. We had plenty of wind pressure so thought we would just go for it and head west. We did run into a sloppy patch with little wind so turned the motor on for 10 mins and then we were away under sail in 25 kts of steady NW wind. So for the first night we actually were the overall leader of the fleet! The second day out something gave way, probably the shackle and our headsail came away from the halyard and was in the water. Graham tried climbing the mast to retrieve the halyard and gave up 1/2 way so have left the halyard up there and using our spinnaker halyard. Since then the wind has steadily fallen and we are now under our big asymmetric sail in 10 kts of breeze trying to maintain a heading south of east.

We were in a group of 5 yachts which has dwindled to none as the fleet spread north and south looking for wind. This is good at night as there is not much to look out for but it makes it a little lonely during the day. The temperature is starting to rise with the sun having a lot more “zing”in it. We spent today rigging up shade tents around the deck and opening the hatches to help cool below deck. It’s only going to get hotter!