St Helena Saturday 16th January 2016
Well we are being overtaken by ARC Rally Boats.
The ARC Rally is world famous in the yachtie world and has been going on for many many years now, they basically travel in a group of around 200 yachts and do a circumnavigation in a very well organise way.
They usually end up with only around 20 boats by the time they finish as a lot drop out along the way, as they get to a destination and decide they like it there and just stay.
Our first encounter of these guys was way back in Cocos Keeling, where they came in like a swarm of locusts.
They descended on the little anchorage about 23 boats and just overtook the whole area, with their parties, loud noise, racing around on dinghies, they stayed about 4 days, then up anchored and left a mess in their wake.
We were not impressed with these guys at all, actually to sail around the world like that does not impress us either, It's way too organised, with way too many rules and regulations, and the big party scenes are not really our thing.
Yeah it's nice now and then but we enjoy the peace and quiet and to do things our way, not be told what and where you have to go.
So when we heard they were decending on this little oasis we were not real happy.
But we were told, only 13 boats were coming so I guess that's not too bad.
The first one came in late last night, we were listening to them on the radio, they were talking to St Helena radio and trying to get in contact with port control, who was not answering.
After about an hour we decided to beak in and when they said they were 33 tons we knew it was a large boat, we shined a torch on a orange mooring as they would need it for their weight.
They followed our torch beam and managed to hook up no problem and man what a boat, it was a massive 62 foot Lagoon.
Man it was a beauty, The Captain has been toying with the idea of getting a cat for our next boat, not so much myself until I saw this one, and agreed with him as long as it was the same as that...haha
Then the next one arrived it was a 54 foot Amel monohull, than he agreed we could have that as our 2nd yacht, I thought the cat was impressive but the Amel is just pure class, way too deep for our pockets but it's stunning.
They have come in thick and fast all day there is now 10 here and only one mooring left so I guess the next one will be lucky and the other two will just have to anchor.
I'm not sure if they have changed the rules and regulations but they all seem to be very large expensive boats, we really feel like the poor relations..haha
Well tomorrow is another day.