Yesterday around noon, Keep It Simple, Joe Reed's J/42, motored into Back Creek in Annapolis, Q flag flying, competing the last couple hundred yards of their passage from Bermuda.
"It was great!" Joe shouted from the cockpit. Yellowshirts Andy and Mia just happened to be on the dock at Port Annapolis Marina, World Cruising Club USA's sponsoring marina in Annapolis watching local hero Mat Rutherford get ready to depart on his maiden voyage with the Ocean Research Project. Keep It Simple slowly motored by, with that, completing their Caribbean circuit that began with last year's Caribbean 1500 (which they won overall).
Lone Star and Kia Orana have also made landfall in the USA, in North Carolina and Portsmouth, VA respectively. Kia Orana was welcomed at Ocean Marine Yacht Center in Portsmouth, the new home of the ARC Caribbean 1500. Meanwhile, Southern Cross, Tati, Traveling Light and Oystermist remain at sea, and are due in over the next few days. Tati, one of two foreign-flagged yachts (CAN) is bound for New York City before heading north and home to Canada, while the other, Oystermist (GBR) is bound for the Chesapeake. Oystermist had participated in the ARC in 2012, and is making a jaunt north to the US Mainland for the first time.