The final preparations are now done. We had a trip to the market to make our final purchase of fruit and veg. This has all now been washed and stowed. Somehow all the food, water and extra diesel that we have taken on is all behind the scenes and the only thing you notice is Barracuda floating a bit lower in the water.

The skippers were given a thorough briefing by the ARC team on the start, the weather to expect on the first few days, communications, and the finish in St Lucia (amongst other things) - all very professional.

On another blog we will write about our experience with the ARC organisation but in summary it has been very well organised to date and great fun - thoroughly recommended at this point.

There has been much discussion in the fleet over the last two days about whether to head west or south. Looks like the racers will head west and the cruisers will head south.

It looks like we are going to have some fairly light winds for the first week as we push on down towards the Cape Verde Islands so we are expecting to have to motor through the very calm patches or when it is light and on the nose in order to reach the trade winds which we think will fill in about a week from now near the Vape Verde Islands. We are carrying quite a lot of diesel to help with the push south. As we are in the cruising division and not racing it is OK for us to motor if we need to.

We went to our last Sun Downers this evening and then enjoyed a very enjoyable supper at a local restaurant with our pontoon neighbours Nial and Jenny followed by fireworks to celebrate the start of the ARC 2017.

And now we will get our heads down for the last night before crossing the start line at 13:00 tomorrow (Sunday). Crew all excited and ready to do it.

Remember to follow us on the Yellow Brick Tracker.
http://yb.tl/arc2017

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