Safely across, friends arrive and perhaps a party or two!

It’s now a week since we finished and our wonderful team of Lucy, Lyn and Adrian have flown home to chilly England. We are left basking in the Caribbean sun and setting off north into the Grenadines, the jewels of the Windward Isles.

In our last blog we had just dealt with the converging cargo ships in the middle of the squall and only had just over a day to go to Grenada. Thursday was a day of further squalls as we sailed in relatively close company with Nuvem Magica and Blue Wonder. At one point another monster squall appeared and all three boats shared photos of it from different angles. Blue Wonder gybed south to avoid it but both Nuvem Magica and ourselves were swallowed up by it. Fortunately whilst it was very wet, the wind didn’t get over 28 kts.

After the next set of squalls appeared a few hours later Ryan and Audrey on Blue Wonder, exhausted by sailing across the Atlantic with their two young children, decided that they had had enough of sail and course changes and decided to motor the remaining few miles to the finish. We had dropped our Code 65 sail for the first time in 11.5 days for the squall and after a couple of hours decided none of them looked too bad so we re-hoisted to sail as fast as possible to Grenada. David and Inẽs on Nuvem Magica had also dropped a little way further behind so it was a fairly straightforward run to the island. We approached to within 10 miles of the island, gybed twice round the south of the island then ran into a flat calm in the lee just on the approach to the finish. It took 45 minutes for the last 2.5 miles to cross the line but, at 0320 on Friday, we had finished. Atlantic crossed safely once again.

We dropped sails, and motored into Port Louis marina, as the marina was closed overnight, the ARC organisers had arranged for the night arrivals to come alongside the super-yacht docks in the harbour entrance. By 0400 we were alongside, greeted by the Yellow Shirts who took our lines and handed us our first rum punches. We then stayed up to welcome first Blue Wonder and then Nuvem Magica into the port just around dawn. Having Starlink and WhatsApp has made all the fleet feel very close this year and most boats have struck up friendships with those who were sailing nearby.

It was great to arrive, 10th across the line and 7th catamaran. I don’t think practically we could have finished any earlier without getting into full on racing mode. About half the boats ahead had pro-skippers on board and there was definitely a racing brief on some boats, quite a bit of hand-steering and very few reefs in sails. We didn’t ever really push the boat or the crew too hard and we achieved our goal of a relatively quick but safe crossing.

We recovered over the weekend, attended the first welcome drinks with the initially small group which expanded each evening as the fleet arrived. Port Louis Marina is just across the harbour from the main town of St Georges so we took the tender over to the fishing dock to explore the town and investigate chocolate!!

Our thoughts were also with all the rest of the fleet and our friends on Ægle still had hundreds of miles to go when we arrived. Finally on Sunday afternoon we could see that they were rounding Point Salines by the airport so we motored out on the rib to welcome them across the line. Over 1000 miles of motoring, they were very relieved to switch that off when safely in the dock!

With a few days to go until the end of rally prizegiving and party we had time to chill on the Grande Anse beach, a short dinghy ride from the Marina. We could also check our rig again and also to investigate Clarke’s Court Marina in Woburn Bay on the south of the island where we will leave Offbeat for the hurricane season.

We asked Turbulence Rigging to come round and remove the main halliard in the marina, fortunately although the dyneema sheath had worn there was no real damage to the core of the rope but we asked them to end for end the line (so we use the fresh unworn end) anyway.

We then sailed round and anchored in Woburn Bay. We had a lovely dinner in the Little Dipper restaurant above their accurately named “Dodgy Dock” and watched yet another squall come through.

In the morning we went ashore at Clarkes’s Court which looks like a great place to leave Offbeat. They are very well set up to secure the boats for the hurricane season with a massive boat Travelift and hundreds of spaces with concrete blocks to lash the boats down.

The end of the week was an endless set of parties and late nights in the bar as the fleet arrived but then also realised we will all be parting ways. Many of the crew who had joined for the crossing were returning home, the boat owners were then planning their own cruises. It was a shame that Lucy had to fly home early to look after her mother who’d been hospitalised briefly.

The ARC prize-giving party was really well run with awards for the competitive elements but the biggest cheers being reserved for the double handed sailors (mostly couples) and of course for the Double Handers with Kids group and amazing performance. We also joined the party thrown by David and Inẽs on Nuvem Magica who were berthed next to us. They have the biggest cat at 60′ (an Outremer 5X) which catered easily for the 50 people on board!

With the parties over the weekend was the time to say goodbye. We took Offbeat round to Prickly Bay so the Ægle team could have a sail and a swim. It was then time for us to take Adrian, Lyn and Mills ashore to catch the short cab ride to the airport. Simon and Libby were flying home the following day.

It’s time to close the ARC+ 2003 section of the blog. We’ve loved having the feedback on the crossing from this and the Instagram posts.

We’ve now left Grenada are heading north. We left sailing on a glorious reach up the west side of the island… we’ll keep you posted on what comes next!