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31st October – 21st November 2004
was not too hard to find out where the party was happening…. always look for the Irish. The
Guinness was flowing quickly when we experienced a fantastic small-world story with a lovely
local called Marta Moralo. She had noticed that Mark was wearing a t-shirt from Pacha
nightclub in Ibiza, and when she heard that we were sailing, she asked “Do you know Elena &
Inma?” Now we only know a handful of people in Spain, so what are the chances that someone
in a small town in Southern Spain would know two people from Madrid whom we had met in
Palma, let alone make the connection? Fortunately for us, Marta seemed to be the unofficial
ambassador for Sotogrande, and was a gracious tour-guide for some of our remaining days.
The rest of our last week in Spain we rented a car, ostensibly to get Tristan to the airport, but also
to let us do a bit of our own touring. We visited Gibraltar in the hopes of doing some proper
sightseeing for once i.e. spotting the monkeys and climbing “The Rock”, but were stymied yet
again because the cable car had closed down for the day. On this, our third and final trip, it
became apparent that we were never meant to see Gibraltar properly.
We had far better luck the following day when we drove to Seville so that Tristan could catch his
plane. We had all wanted to visit Seville for a while, and it did not disappoint. With only a half day
to look around we were suitably impressed: gorgeous classical architecture, tiny winding streets
with open-air tapas bars strewn liberally around the city, very beautiful people all fashionably
dressed, and wonderful food. Seville is definitely a city worth a second, and third visit. We were
sad to see Tristan leave – especially as he missed out on any sailing – but knew that he would
be back onboard again at Christmas.
Meanwhile, during all our various sidetrips, the mechanics in Sotogrande had finally managed to
fix and reassemble our engine. We took it out for a test-run to ensure everything was okay, and
it was very strange not to have a cloud of black smoke trailing behind us the whole way.
However, the real shock came when we received the bill. Sadly, the figure with all the zeroes
was not in pesetas. Serious thought was given to setting Quintin up as a street portrait-sketcher
in Seville to pay for the bill, but in the end we just had to bite the bullet.
With our engine fixed, and the worst of our bad luck behind us, it was now time to make up for
lost time, wave goodbye to Europe, and head straight for the Canaries to prepare for our Atlantic
crossing…
Departure to the Canaries
“Your not leaving in that are you?” A violent storm front had been passing through the Straights
of Gibraltar for the last few days, and on the day we finally chose to leave a solid Force 7 (near
gale) was forecast. Waves were dashing over the 15ft harbour walls, and it soon became clear
that we would be the first yacht to brave the elements that day. Calculating that we could safely
catch the tail end of the front, we shot out through the Straights at great speed. Looking down the
fronts of large waves every few minutes, we surfed to our top speed of 10.1 knots! We were
making good headway, but it soon became time to tackle the famous shipping lanes. There are
two lanes, 25 miles long, one heading East, the other West, and the ships are spaced about a
mile apart as they are stacked up into the distance. This is complicated enough at the best of
times, however we soon found that crossing the Straights at night in a yacht is like crossing
Piccadilly Circus, blindfolded, in a wheelchair… with the brakes on. Throw in the large seas and
30knot winds, and it becomes a little more challenging. After studying the radar and the various
lights in the distance there would be cries of “I think we can squeeze in between that cruiseship
and the tanker” or “is that one heading for us?”. Slowly, we wriggled our way across the
Straights and finally turned left to skirt down the coast of Africa. The only strange incident that
occurred that night was the appearance of a French warship cruising down the coast of
Morocco picking out boats on radar and then asking them to identify themselves over the VHF,
sometimes from over 20 miles away. What were the French doing policing international waters?
As predicted the front passed on day two, and the seas soon became so gentle you could easily
forget you were at sea. We passed the time attempting to catch fish, but after “Jaws” took our
lure, and we missed an opportunity to pull a small mahi-mahi on board, we soon became
familiar with the joys of scrambled eggs for dinner. The calm was notable for another reason;
after 3 months onboard Quintin finally learned how to use the oven!
A few days into the passage the wind started picking up again, and we were reintroduced to our
old friend “the large Atlantic swell”. We could also put the eggs away as we had a bit more luck
with the fishing, finally pulling in the elusive “Gina”, a 9lb mahi-mahi. That very same afternoon
we sighted land for the first time: the islands of Lanzarote and its smaller neighbour Graciosa.
The desolate volcanic landscape certainly wasn’t helped by the bleak weather, so we were'nt too
disappointed that we didn't have time to linger here as originally planned.
Flying along at 8knots in the building wind we had to make a conscious effort to slow down so that
we could arrive in Las Palmas in daylight the following morning. After being alone for so long, it
was strange to find ourselves doing donuts in the marina as we waited for 5 other yachts to leave
the fuel dock so that we could officially check in with the ARC organizers. Because we had
arrived a few days late, we were placed on a quieter dock between “Elandra of Hamble”, a
skipper-chartered yacht, and “Glad”, crewed by a young Norwegian/Swedish couple, and at 30’
the smallest yacht in the ARC. Strangely, although we didn’t have time to talk to Glad while we
were in Las Palmas, we would get to know them quite well in the Caribbean.
ARC Pre-Race Week
The ARC puts on a full week of activities to keep people busy, but they needn’t have worried
about us. Due to the engine work in Sotogrande, we had not left ourselves much time to
complete all the preparations we would need before our big ocean crossing, so we were
constantly busy. After we had caught up on some much needed sleep we did our best to join in
most of the festivities which ranged from seminars, happy hours and flag ceremonies to dinghy
races and ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ themed parties. There was not a moment to rest on board.
Martin Scivier, our third musketeer on the crossing, arrived as planned and it was great to have
an extra set of hands on board, especially one that knew the boat so well. He had given up his
one-man business for 6 weeks in order to take part in the experience, and we were grateful to
have such a great crewmate aboard. Before we knew it, we were quickly crossing items off of
our ridiculously long to-do list: safety equipment check, rigging checks, sails amended for
tradewind sailing (a new sail configuration for us), attempting unsuccessfully to get much needed
parts through customs, buying more fishing gear (a rod for Freddie, an additional reel, a gaff-
hook and loads of extra lures), getting onboard email working, and finally provisioning the yacht
with enough food for 4 people for 4 weeks. This last task required going to 4 different places: a
large supermarket for dry goods, a fancier super market for meats, cheeses etc., the open
market for fresh produce, and a specialty Chinese store for Asian goods. It was tight, but with a
bit of chasing up, it all arrived on the morning of our departure.
Throughout the week, we had time to meet a few other boats; some new, and others which we
had met along our travels: Blitz, Northern Star, Pendulum, Destination Anywhere, Water Music
etc. With hindsight, this was the best aspect of the ARC, and because of our late arrival in Las
Palmas we didn’t really get to do enough mingling. However, we did have time, albeit briefly, to
introduce ourselves to “Io”, one of the other two Oceanlord’s in the ARC, which sparked a
wonderful friendship over the radio waves in the weeks to come.
We mentioned that we were buying food for 3-4 people for the trip; this was because we were not
sure whether we would have an 11th hour arrival of an additional crewmate: Matt Stoudt. Race
day was finally upon us, and having not heard anything from Matt for one and a half days, and
since he said he was going to try to make it, we wrongly assumed he was on his way to make a
spectacular last minute entrance. While waiting for him, we conducted the ritual head shaving
that we had been talking about for months, and enjoyed our last decent shower for 3 weeks.
There was still no sign of Matt 30 minutes before the start, so with the marina quickly emptying
out, we slipped our mooring and headed out to the start line.
