My last chance to chicken out.
Within a few more days the ARC+ boats left with great fanfare for Cabo Verde, and we were able to move into the marina proper to our berth on L dock, right in front of the ARC office. It was starting to feel like we were part of something bigger. More boats arrived every day with their excited crew, and preparations hummed the docks to life. Monique arrived from Holland, and we all slipped into the remarkably pleasant process of getting to know each other. Axel arrived several days later, seamlessly joining our little group, and within days Peter and I felt certain we’d done the right thing when we chose these two crew. We KNEW they were right, and they really were, all the way from preparation in Las Palmas to celebrations in St. Lucia.
Within a few days of Monique’s arrival, she and I joined a group of 20 or so other ARC crew on a tree-planting excursion to the mountains. A Canarian non-profit organization hosts groups of volunteers who want to learn about the island’s history and its impacts on the environment, learn how to plant tree saplings properly, and then spend a couple of hours digging holes and planting those saplings. It was heavy, hot, dirty, impossibly satisfying work, and our group added over 150 trees to the mountainside around us. My inability to walk the following day did not diminish my sense of accomplishment.
ARC seminars started that first week also, highlighted by talks on emergency safety prep and procedures, weather and routing, provisioning, rig checking, and comms. We went to demonstrations of using a sextant for navigation, and of using emergency flares, which are essentially roman candles you hold up in a gloved hand and hope the shower of sparks doesn’t melt your life raft. We also attended a life raft demonstration, including how to launch it, flip it right sides if it opens upside down, haul your body up into it from the water, and what to do once inside. We really did learn something new every day and added To Dos to our list after every seminar and demonstration.
In fact, the To Dos were becoming overwhelming. Having spent a large part of the previous two years preparing for this crossing, it was a bit of a shock to find that there were still things we hadn’t thought of or read about, and of course there were still things to pay for. (That never ends.) Peter had a separate boat prep list that Axel jumped in on, and they were spending every free minute trying to tick all of that off. So, one night Monique and I sat down with all of the lists and a couple of post-it pads, and taped off columns on the salon windows for each of the days remaining before we left. We then transferred each task onto its own post-it and assigned each post-it to a day on the windows. We added errands, social events, appointments, seminars and provisioning runs. It was a sea of little yellow notes that added up to a picture of how we were all going to spend almost every hour of every day prior to departure. Ah! I see it now! “Frantic” was kicking in.
The ARC social calendar built on the community of sailors already growing organically on the docks, and included nightly sundowners, a welcome party, a costume party, and a couple of weeks later, a farewell party. We met many, got to know a few, and enjoyed meeting the many friends Monique made every day. After attending every sundowner during the first week, Peter and I became more judicious about our socializing. We couldn’t keep up, and there was too much to do.
The ARC costume party was a highlight of the last two weeks of preparation. We were in awe of the creativity and preparation crew put into their costumes, and the competition was fierce. Despite the four of us being in identical costumes, Monique and Axel won “Best Couple,” a nod, I think to our team efforts. But the crew of Gentoo absolutely nailed “Best Team” with their beautifully executed, whimsically simple and incredibly effective gentoo penguin costumes. We took the “Best Couple” compliment as a team – and had a lovely dinner together on the gift certificate they won!
Eventually we were just a few days out from departure. So many little details to wind up, and still so many yellow post-its to complete and throw ceremoniously into the bin. While Peter and Axel scurried to complete the boat prep, I spent most of my time provisioning, then working with Monique to organize and stow all our food on board. We vacuum packed meats and cheeses for the freezer, and I made a couple of dozen breakfast burritos to stash there too. We cut up a larger net to sew smaller individual nets to hang in the cockpit, and they were heavy with the weight of green bananas, apples, oranges, mangoes, lemons, kiwis, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and finally carrots, individually wrapped in tin foil. This little bit of wisdom came from the provisioning seminar, and to our disappointment, did not work at all. Within a week we had only rotten carrots. The potatoes didn’t do as well as they should have either, but we had more than enough food. I also laid in a case of Spanish wines to hold us for a bit in the Caribbean, where experience told us wine was ridiculously expensive. And for the crossing I ensured we had a bottle of cava for the halfway point, and a couple of bottles of Möet for the finish. I was counting on getting there.
The day finally came, and it was time to just get on with it. We had put away all the food and tools, we tied down anything that might move, and the boat was as ready as she would ever be. So we hauled in the mooring lines and off we went, into the wild blue yonder.
Up next: The Crossing