Race Day dawned with blue skies, light winds and lots of anticipation. We were ready to get on with it!
We left the dock at 10:30 and headed out so Paul could learn more about the sail configuration before the 12:30 start. He has lots of experience, especially with catamarans, but each boat is different so this was his “crash course” for Outremers.
As the start time approached, the boats began to hover near the starting line waiting for the gun from the nearby Spanish Navy warship. Anthony, ever the racer, had strategically positioned us for a quick start. However, not everyone has racing experience, or knows the “rules”, so Anthony had to shout at a cat who was trying cut between us the and race buoy at the last second. “No barging” is the rule and Anthony let him know it!
The previous blog post shows the actual start including me nearly dropping the phone when the signal sounded.
The video (above) shows a montage of the 1st few minutes of the race start.
We tried flying Bertha (named after the Driver used in golf) for the first time – boy is it a BIG sail. At 2,200 sqft, it would cover the living room, dining room, two bathrooms, kitchen, and 3 bedrooms in most homes – BIG! The highlight was a visit from a pod of dolphins. We got 10-15 seconds of underwater video with them swimming under the boat. Fantastic imagery.
We had some decent wind to begin with, but it soon died out and we motored south-west towards the Cape Verde Islands for the 1st 36 hours. Most of the other boats were doing the same. With such light winds, we flew the drone a couple of times and got some good video.
Day 3 (11/23), the winds started to pick up, but we motored as well to keep making headway.
Day 4 – The wind arrived- even more than forecast: 18-22 kts from the east – so to quote Paul and Anthony – “Staple your shorts to your seat!” (Paul) cause we are haulin a**!!!” (Anthony).
We used our “Gennaker” (aka Jenny) and were careening up and down waves! We set a new Vmax for the boat: 18 knots! (“Holy Shit!” Janice). It’s a bit nerve racking sometimes, but overall, Moxie felt rock solid and tracked and carved down the waves beautifully! We got some great shots of the water rushing between the hulls and under the bows.
We averaged 10kts for about 6 hours and 8.5 kts beyond that and were “hanging” with the big monohulls, like Drifter Cube, a Swan 98. However, the winds lightened shortly thereafter and we were back to motoring until the normal trade winds showed up.
Day 5 – Great sailing conditions (for which we are always grateful). Whereas Day 3 was thrilling, Day 5 was smooth and fast – 11-14kts on the beam (fastest point of sail) with Kobe (aka the Black Mamba hence the name “Kobe”, aka Code 0 ) and averaged 9 kts, in smooth water. In this video, Paul is deploying Kobe and you can see our “quarry” just ahead.
We were also making a more direct course for St Lucia, which helped us gain position in the race. This kind of sailing is so much easier to deal with than the Med: no constant barrage of all-ships calls on the VHF, no fishing boats, and very few cargo ships.
We did celebrate Thanksgiving and counted our many blessings!
Day 6 – We began to settle into our routine with 2000 nm to go – on watch for 3 hours, nap, read, boat chores, bake/cook, repeat…. We still have a leaky hatch where water seeps into the bilge when we get slammed by a wave. The builder tried to fix this before we left France, but it still leaks…. We’ll get it sorted once we get to Florida (April), but for now…. Anthony sponges water out every day… (sigh).
Conditions continued to be good and helped us move up a few positions. Boats in the racing division – who were not allowed to use their engines, went north for more wind (headwinds of 30-35 kts, gusting 40kts). No thanks!! 20Kts is enough.
Day 7 was another day of great trade wind sailing (200+ nm during the previous 24 hours). We had to switch out Jenny (the Gennaker) to Bertha. So instead of a nice broad reach at a TWA (true wind angle) of 120 degrees, we were downwind with a TWA of 170 degrees, and winds at 14-18kts. Unfortunately, our speed dropped by 1.5 knots or so, but this is one of the drawbacks of sailing catamarans – they prefer sailing across the wind than with the wind.
We still averaged close to 8 kts, but every minute or so, as we surfed down a wave at 10+kts, Bertha drooped, collapsed, rustled, and then filled again with a loud bang which makes it very hard to sleep at night.
On a very sad note, we were notified by ARC Rally control that a sailor on a race boat called called Agecanonix died (one of the race boats that went north for more wind, with horrible conditions). We don’t know the details at this point, but know that the remaining crew (father and son) were rescued by cruise liner (along with the body) and the boat was abandoned. This must have been devastating for the crew (and will be for a long time) and it was a sobering moment for us. Sailing carries certain risks and this was a reminder for us that when things go wrong out here, consequences can be severe. Our thoughts are with the remaining crew and his family.
Day 8 Pretty uneventful. Flying fish began to find their way into the cockpit and making a mess of things and Anthony hailed a cargo ship on VHF to ask them to alter course to increase the crossing distance, which they were quite happy to do. Since we were flying a spinnaker, it was easier for them them to alter course than us.
We flew big Bertha all night and got within about 5 miles of Cuordisole, a Swan 65, We were hauling them in quickly, until they were shamed into raising their chute and then proceeded to pull away. We could just imagine the conversation with the paid crew aboard, “you know how much I paid for this boat for you to crew it!? Get that spinnaker up now!”
The winds built into the high teens a little later so we swapped Bertha for Drummer (named after the Badass Belter from the Expanse series). Bertha’s take down in 20 knots, was textbook! Release the guy (that’s an actual sailing term) with the trigger shackle, haul on the sock with the down haul using a ratchet block (Paul and Anthony together) and voila, 2200 sqft of sail tamed! High fives!
Almost halfway there … I was counting down the number of sleeps till we arrived, like a kid counting the days till Christmas.
Day 9 marked the ½ way point and we celebrated with brownies. We had to use olive oil since we didn’t have any vegetable oil, but they still tasted great!
Day 9, (new Vmax for boat: 18.4 kts!)
Another trade wind day in the middle of the Atlantic, with winds of 18-23 kts from the East. We got hit by a squall (29 kts of peak wind) and had to get the chute (Drummer) down pronto, which is always fun when surfing at 13 kts down waves in pitch dark. In doing so, we did discover a important problem, though, a badly chafed spinnaker halyard – not good – likely was caused by raising the halyard too high (halyard shackle grinding on a low-friction ring at the top of the mast). Luckily we caught it in time.
In the morning, in the dark, with a headlamp, Anthony added a double sleeve of anti-chafe webbing (usually used for dock lines), to hopefully get us to St Lucia. Probably won’t be able to fly Bertha though. We moved the halyard up/down an inch or two with every shift change and took Drummer down every day to make sure the chafe gear is working.
Day 10: Another new Vmax for the boat – 19kts. We continued to make good progress toward St Lucia, with Drummer up and winds in the low twenties, we surfed regularly. This is fun during the day when you can see what’s going on. Sometimes it’s effortless and quiet, like a skier schussing on powder. Other times, its noisy with the hull slamming, Moxie turning to hold her course, and all sorts of accelerations: up, down, forward, backward, and side to side. It sometimes feels like we are going over washboard as the bridge deck and salon table bump enough to knock a computer mouse off the table. When the surfing feels out of control, it really wears on the nerves. So, we take it down at night so we can rest.
We were still getting lots of chafe on the spinnaker halyard, so, we took a sharpie and marked the halyard at the winch every 2cm. When Drummer was up, we eased or raised the halyard by 1 cm every hour to move the chafe spot which seemed like the right schedule based on regular spot checks.
On a more domestic note: Anthony made fresh sourdough bread!
Day 11: Holy sH`+! Another new Vmax – 20kts. Drummer was flying in about 22 kts of wind and we had just hit a Vmax of 19.5 kts early in the morning with a single reefed main and jib in 33 kts of wind. We thought that would stand for a while, but nope.
Day 11 also brought new of another ARC boat being abandoned – Charlotte Jane III – a Hanse 588. All 5 crew were transferred to another ARC boat. Found out later that they had some catastrophic steering failure. We can imagine how heartbreaking that must be and the dreams that were abandoned along with the boat…
Day 12: Another new Vmax – 21.9 Kts Unbelievable (that’s enough now). We were caught out at the edge of a squall with winds up to 30 kts and Drummer was flying! Too much excitement!!!
We have a pretty good schedule in place. Each person had 2 3-hour watches and a 2 hour spot in the afternoon. This gives the offwatch crew a 6 hour period for sleeping every night – only possible because Paul is with us. The extra sleep is wonderful, and his extensive sailing experienced is so helpful. In fact, it’s likely we wouldn’t’ even be able to use Bertha and Drummer with just the two of us onboard. And the spinnakers have been the key to our speed and consistent mileage each day. We are currently in 11th overall (out of ~ 130+) and 8th in our division (multihulls) – which is fantastic. BTW: Notice we are ahead of Courdisole – the Swan 65. Te he…! Below is the spreadsheet we used to manually track Moxie’s progress relative to other boats, since, without Internet, we couldn’t see the ARC tracker.
In one of the more boring tasks, Anthony had to bail ~50 gallons of water out of the dinghy. no use carrying around that extra weight. Waves splashed up between the aft edge of the bridge deck and the dinghy, and unfortunately it doesn’t drain out of the back of the dinghy very well. The dinghy is tilted side-to-side so water sloshes around on one side and doesn’t make it the drain hole in the middle of its transform.
We had to run the engines to charge the battery about 3 hours per day. Normally, the solar panels do a great job of keeping up with our electrical needs, but on this trip it is not able to because we have less than 12 hours of daylight, we often have clouds, and the panels are mostly shaded by sails in the afternoon. We also use a lot of power at night to run the instruments and the auto-pilot.
Day 13/14/15: We’re on the home stretch so there’s not much new to report. Good trade winds, some squalls at night…. It’s getting hotter (and stickier) each day. Nightly squalls are frequent. Winds seem to peak at around 30 kts around the squalls, but so hard to tell when they are going to hit at night. These squalls travel in the general wind direction at about 25 kts, and cells often form in a line as they march down on us. They also mess with wind direction, with wind shifts of up to 40 degrees for 30 minutes after they pass through.
We did prepare a “message in a bottle” with our boat card, and Paul’s business card (he owns the Carousel Lounge in Anchorage, Alaska and tossed it into the ocean. Who knows…. in 5 years or so, maybe someone will find it.
We keep ourselves entertained by watching the 2nd season of Expanse, playing chess, baking sourdough bread, washing dishes, swabbing out the port bilge, charging the batteries, letting out the spinnaker halyard 1cm/hour, taking naps, cranking the tunes, etc., and of course, doing watches every 5-6 hours.
Day 16 – We’re here!!! Across the finish line in Rodney Bay Marina, St. Lucia. We came in 12th overall (~130 boats), 7th in our division, and the 1st US registered boat to cross! We did really well! For what it’s worth – the boats that came in front of us were designed to be racing boats and typically professionally crewed. The World Cruising Club website has lots more info if you’re interested. Below is a short clip of when we crossed the line. Now it’s time to celebrate…. and then a good, looong sleep!
Thanks to all of you who’ve followed along with us on this fantastic journey! We appreciate knowing you’re out there watching!
Now we’re headed home to celebrate Christmas with our families and watch some bowl games – Go VOLS! We will be back on the boat in early January. Happy Holidays to all of you!
What an amazing rally and finish! Very proud of you guys! I enjoyed tracking you guys daily… Get some rest!!
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!What a fantastic Rookie Race for Moxie! Merry Christmas You all 🥰😍😘🍾
“I’m here all week!” 😉
What an experience, highly recommend!
Great write up and so much fun to “re-live” while enjoying a BIG cup of coffee poolside! Thank you again for the opportunity! You guys are the best! The funniest line? “8 more sleeps,” Classic 😉
It was wonderful to have you with us!
So glad to see you’re back in the Western Hemisphere. Congratulations on a fantastic journey. Send us your itinerary so we can catch up with you sometime in the Caribbean.
Have a wonderful holiday season!
Dan & Ellen
We had a great time! We’ll be in touch in the New Year when we have a better idea of our schedule!
Happy New Year!