I have just been reading the February 2013 issue of Yachting World and the article "We Stormed the Arc." One section within the article is headed "Advice for the Arc" that particularly interested me given our own experiences as the winning boat (line and handicap) in Class A and the fact we had followed the northerly route.

This article comments that the Great Circle or northerly route has the potential to be a race winning one but goes on to say there is a risk and for most ARC crews an unnecessary one. The Great Circle route is shorter by around 150 miles but it is stated that climatalogical records show that the steadiest winds will be found by heading towards the Cape Verde islands and then flattening the route to St Lucia. The article also says that in the last 10 years there have been 3 or 4 years where following the Great Circle route headwinds and/or strong wind arose. In particular it reports that in the 2005 ARC a number of boats following the northerly route were damaged.


Our route compared with the recommended route

So to our experience - we used the weather routing model Predictwind (see www.predictwind.com). We had set up the boat polars beforehand and using the supplied satellite communicator (with an iridium card inside) we received two emails a day giving a line by line report starting with our then actual position and showing forward projections of lat and long, TWS (true wind speed), TWD (true wind direction), TWA (true wind angle) compass course to steer and boat speed based on the polars. This data was reviewed in the context of the daily forecast for each of the Atlantic weather areas emailed by the ARC organisers and also daily data emailed to us taken from the Passage Weather site. The latter really was a check to a degree of the data we were receiving from Predict wind. We followed the Predictwind weather routing which took us on the northerly course and we found it pretty accurate although the polars were not altogether accurate when running as they most likely make the assumption that running flat off is under spinnaker. So flat off the polars were mostly around one knot to fast as we were mostly running with a poled out headsail.

What did we sail with - we carried a 105% overlapping headsail all the way. Either two sail reaching, with outboard sheeting, or flat off with the headsail poled out. We generally set up the pole with both fore and after guys so it was fixed in position and we could reef the headsail without having to let the pole forward. On one day we carried the A2 genaker from 0400 hrs to around 2100 hrs - the only action it saw for the entire trip. One other afternoon, later in the crossing, we spent several hours trying to fly the A3 genaker with the pole but that proved relatively unsatisfactory as given the way we had it set up the brace kept tripping the release line so eventually we gave it away and reverted to the headsail.

Weather conditions - one day earlier in the passage we had a steady 30-32 knots for close to 24 hours with the occasional gust to 37 knots. These were the windiest conditions we had. There were a few days where we had 15-20 knots for a few hours but on average mostly winds between 20-28 knots. This did mean that we were trimming a lot, particularly the main and the Leisurefurl system made that easy work and although it does mean coming up to around 45 degrees off the wind to furl or unfurl.

Sea conditions - the first few days were quite rough given the SW'lys that caused a delay in the start for two days but the sea state slowly settled and the last 5 or 6 days were characterised by sunny skies, blue warm water and white caps as far as one could see. I had expected bigger seas and sailing across the Bay of Biscay we experienced stronger winds and much bigger seas!

Our average speed across the ground for the 13 days 16 hours was 8.4 knots with a top speed of 21.6 knots. There was one black night earlier on, pretty windy when we were running flat off with white sails up - that made for quite challenging steering but was the only time in the crossing that I felt we were pushing a bit to hard for comfort/safety so we did back off a bit subsequently.
In contrast it appeared that the boats that followed the southerly route, as recommended, had winds up to 50 knots and many were becalmed for lengthy periods.

So all in all we were either lucky with the weather or the sophistication of the Predictwind weather routing system ensured we had a very fast passage and avoided possible trouble areas.

Cheers
Keith & Pam