Anne-Laure and I flew back to Tenerife a week ago to collect Offbeat. Fortunately the batteries had been replaced and the missing 24-12v chargers installed. These will keep the starter batteries topped up when on shore power if we leave the boat for a while and the also have a Bluetooth connection so we can now monitor the voltage. Hopefully the very last of the “new boat” snags fixed. There will, of course, be lots of “boat in use” issues to come!

We had an uneventful 50nm sail over to Gran Canaria ready for the start, although it was great to have dolphins playing with the boat as soon as we set off. On arrival we had the normal checkin formalities and were met by our friends Rachel and Rob on Ægle, a Bestavaer 53, who helped us into our berth. The marina is full of ARC+ Cape Verde boats but also has the first boats taking part in the ARC rally which leaves direct to St Lucia a few weeks after us.

Lyn, Adrian and Lucy arrived on Sunday and the rest of the week has been filled with “boat bimbling” …. the leisurely pursuit of tweaking necessary and unnecessary bits on the boat); lectures …. on safety, weather forecasting, handling emergencies at sea, the delights to be seen on arrival in Grenada and also the delights to be seen on the way including fishing and the night sky; and of course partying. The very highest light of the preparation was of course the rig-check. After a lot of discussion Adrian refused to let me go up the mast ;-), as he loves the view. Fortunately the rig is perfect and the cameras have had a good clean!

Most evenings there has either been an informal sun-downer drinks do or a more formal dinner or party. A great opportunity to start to get to know the other participants. We are on a pontoon with a mix of catamarans and mono-hulls. The pontoon next to us is the family pontoon, there are probably 30+ children taking part, ranging from teenagers down to babies. Our previous Offbeat (now called Pinnacle) is owned by Richard and Stef from Jersey who are sailing with a very young baby who has just started crawling and a toddler who is being potty trained.. brave souls!!

We’ve spent a lot of the time with the Ægle team, Rob and Rachel were going to do the ARC+ with us last year, until our boat was delayed. They are doing it this year on their own boat together with Mills and Simon.

As the end of the week approached it was time for the check out formalities with the immigration police and customs and of course provisioning. We needed to provision for nearly a month as produce was very difficult to find in Mindelo when we did the ARC+ last time in 2018. Fortunately the supermarket is well set up for the rally, we could order food online and they would deliver to the boat. The butcher was similarly experienced at helping yachts. The meat was vacuum packed, frozen and delivered to the boat and straight into our double drawer freezer. The last element was the fresh food, a trip to the market for these. We then washed all the fruit (to avoid bringing cockroach eggs onboard) and they’re now hanging in a net in the cockpit. We’ve bought these at different stages of ripening… last time we bought lots of green bananas which we watched halfway across the Atlantic until they all went yellow on the same day!

It’s now Saturday, we had the final leaving party last night and woke with slightly sore heads, but with a well prepared boat and crew and no last minute items to worry about. We did the ARC checkout this morning… confirming our crew lists as they will clear us into Cape Verde and then onto the skippers briefing for the start tomorrow.

The forecast is looking good for a quick passage down the coast and nothing too excessive in the wind or sea state to deal with. We are all excited for the event to start and if you have the YB Races app on your phone you can add the free ARC+ 2023 event and keep track of our progress and comment on our performance…. positions are updated every 4 hours, just remember it’s a Ra…Ra…Rally (not a race!)

Warning signal for the multihulls start is 1235 tomorrow, Sunday 5th November!