Date: 23/11/2009 14:39:46

Latitude: 26.26
Longitude: -18.04

Fantastic - we're off; after all the preparations and planning put in by the whole crew over the last year, our adventure has finally started. Our objective is to sail across the Atlantic from Las Palmas to St Lucia, using wind and muscle power alone. The key to the engine has been secured in a drawer down below to remove temptation in a calm, the autopilot will remain firmly in standby and our arrival time will be down to determination and old mother nature.

 
We are sailing as part of the Annual Rally for Cruisers, an event put together by the World Cruising Club in November each year, to take advantage of the end of hurricane season and the start of the build up of the easterly trade winds blowing from the West Coast of Africa towards the Caribbean Basin. Arrival in St Lucia is well before Christmas, allowing the rally participants to spend the Festive Season on white sandy beaches and amongst palm trees rustling in the Christmas Trade winds.
 
The ARC fleet each year is split into divisions and further into classes. Normally sailing with the Cruising Division and in our respective handicap class, Northern Child and myself have crossed the Atlantic in a westbound direction for the last 9 years. Spending the winter in the Caribbean, we make the annual pilgrimage eastbound again to Europe via the Azores in May. This year the ARC for Northern Child is slightly different: we have decided that we shall enter the racing division and specifically the IRC racing class. With properly calculated handicaps and in a class where racing is the name of the game, it will be interesting to see how we stack up against the rest of the RORC (Royal Ocean Racing Club) IRC class.
 
The crew of Northern Child this year comprise of 10 guests, myself as skipper and the new owners Christian and Lucy. Apart from myself on my 13th westbound ARC crossing, all of the crew are novice Atlantic sailors and the crossing is a long held ambition for them all. Split down into two watches led by Christian and Simon, with Lucy cooking and myself cursing the computers at the chart table, it is a real team event where individuals will become tired and challenged by conditions and a good attitude from all will be imperative to a successful crossing.
 
With the boat prepared for the crossing by late Wednesday with the exception of the generator which was subject to a warranty repair, the crew flew in and we started 3 days of briefings and practical demonstrations to familiarise the crew both with the boat and more importantly with each other. Titled 'How to get across the Atlantic without killing each other', most of what I try to get across is about safety, but there is also a fair bit of time spent discussing how not to block the toilet.... self interest at work, I believe!
 
How has our first 24 hours been? Well, mixed! Sunday afternoon at 1240 saw the start of IRC Racing and we magnificently drifted over the start line in no wind at all! With our asymmetric up and starting to pull, our first couple of hours were then spent in building winds from astern and so we enjoyed a really good run down the east coast of Gran Canaria until the wind settled at 25 knots. Gybing (turning the boat with our stern going across the wind) well south of the Island to avoid the wind shadow, we set our biggest headsail on our pole and shot off directly towards St Lucia at a fair old lick, well pleased with ourselves!
 
But it wasn't to last - a small hole appeared, which quickly became a long rip and in a lumpy sea in the pitch dark of night we had to remove our lovely headsail and replace it with our heavy weather jib, a lot smaller and therefore less powerful. In the light of day this morning, the damage is worse than thought so at the moment I am trying to come up with a cunning plan to repair it - one thing is for sure, we need the sail in the next two weeks, so repaired it will be. Morale was massively improved however when we heard the sad story of one of our fellow IRC class boats, Auliana, which last night lost its rudder and is currently on the way back under tow to Las Palmas - at least we are still heading towards St Lucia.
 
We haven't had a lot of sleep, there are some bleary eyes around, but the sun is shining down out of a massive blue sky, the winds are consistent and in the right direction so where would we rather be? The sail repair operation is under way and lunch is smelling good. We have had an amazing first day's run and have sailed 202 miles over the ground since Las Palmas, a daily run that we will find difficult to achieve on any day.
 
A bientot
Julian
Northern Child