May 22nd – It’s RACE DAY but there’s no wind!!!The forecast is for little to no wind – or as the sailing forecaster Chris Tibbs said: “negligent wind”. This means at least 2 days of motoring…. Ugh. On the bright side, we’ll have a smooth start and plenty of power to make water….
We did however, get a parade!
As start time approached the boats moved away from the dock, into the bay, and starting “sharking around” to get into position for the noon start.
Anthony’s account: It was a drifter start inside the harbor and we were the only ones brave enough to try to sail across the startline. The rest had their motors in idle and floored it after the gun went off. Felt like we were a bicycle crossing right before a Lemans start. We have very light winds for the next two days, so we will be motoring at 6kts or so. We could motor faster, but the weather models are predicting 5-9 days of motoring. We can do 7 days at 2000 rpm, so have to be a bit conservative.
Description on the ARC Europe website – BTW: we did not “motor up to the start line”
“First over the line and quite near to the committee vessel was Ville Tikkanen and his crew on Hanse 531, White Night. They were closely followed by Wolfgang and his family on Gian who were hovering at the outer distance mark. It was the USA flagged Outremer 51, Moxie, next skippered by Anthony Thorpe who motored up to the line and then sailed across, so they gain brownie points for sailing over the start.”
And now…. we go “puff-hunting” – looking for wind anywhere we can find it. In the meantime, we put the fishing lines out and hope to have fish for dinner. Alas, it was not to be, so Plan B was Beef Stroganoff. At least we’ll eat well.
