141 yachts set off on 21 November with the ARC on their way to St Lucia, but not all of them made it to the finish. First a calm, then unusually strong trade winds as well as two ship abandonments and a tragic death kept the sailors, organisers and observers of the rally on their toes.
Due to the weak winds that were forecast for almost the entire first week after the start, most of the skippers opted for a far southerly course in search of the trade winds off the Cape Verde Islands.
Only a few yachts took a more direct, northerly route, where strong winds were expected instead of calm. Among them was the French X 4.3 "Agecanonix", on which the fatal accident of a fellow sailor came. The two other crew members were then picked up by a cruise ship and abandoned the yacht.
And a Hanse 588 was also built after Failure of the steering gear left to its own devices. Her crew reached the Caribbean safely on board another yacht in the ARC fleet.
These two cases were not the only ones to show that the rally is no walk in the park. "An area of low pressure on the northern route influenced the entire wind field on the rest of the route," explains meteorologist Sebastian Wache. "It was an extraordinary situation. I've rarely seen so many lulls, shifting winds and choppy seas," says the Kiel native, who has been providing numerous crews with weather data and routings during the voyage since 2014.
The first boat to arrive after a good twelve days was the "12 Nacira 69", an Italian Vismara, which sailed with 16 other boats in the Racing Division. Second place went to Jean-Pierre Dick on the JP 54 "The Kid for Ville de Nice". Third place went to the "Salamander", a Nauticat 521 from England.
18 German crews also sailed to the Caribbean with the ARC 2021. YACHT accompanied some of them in the days immediately before the start in Las Palmas. Read in the new YACHT 2/2022 how they experienced the start of the adventure and what conclusions they draw after their arrival.
