Day 1&2 Las Palmas to

Big start of the ARC + today and Altair is underway! We got off the dock a little later than planned but with only 1/2 mile from the dock to the start we were in position with plenty of time.  Aaron is waving good bye to our fans on the breakwater. 69 boats are tacking in and out of the finish area.  The Multi-hulls started first and most of their class were across the line soon after the gun.  Altair has mainsail up and is parking, waiting for the moment to unfurl

the orange ship on the other side of "Abraxos" is the start boat.  we passed just A before crossing the line

the genoa and rocket up and over the starting line.  I unfurled the genoa with 4 minutes to start gun and we sailed fast towards the boat end of the start line.  We crossed the start well within a minute of the gun and had about 6 boats in front of us to catch, plus 6

boats just behind Altair at the start

local Opti fleet regatta at our start line

more next to us and the rest of the fleetbehind us.  Altair reached along down the coast of Las Palmas in 25Kn-30Kn breeze and 2 meter seas with a long period between them. The plan was to sail fast South as we could and avoid any wind shadow created by the islands nearby.

Square rigged "Christian Raddich" sailing to Mindelo as well just with ARC for fun. 

With most of the Genoa out and 1 reef in the main we managed to keep within site of the leaders and the class that started ahead of us for the first several hours.  The lumpy seas would only get bigger as the night went on.  From the pilothouse the bow could be seen to lift up way over the wave, then level down and feel the wave slide underneath the hull.  This course and pattern of wave action continued all night until the seas grew so much that one watch before me elected to furl the Genoa and try to steer the waves more directly behind the boat to find a more comfortable ride.  However with that, the boat was actually rolling like crazy and making it difficult for the crew off watch to sleep.

In the morning of day 2 the wind was slowing down enough to allow us to fly the spinnaker.  It took some effort to get the 150 lb sail out from the lazarette locker under the tender on the aft deck and up to the fore-deck.  Once rigged and ready to fly it was very exciting hoisting such a large sail up 120 + feet up the mast.  

Once the wind caught the sail and opened it up even this 200,000 lb sailboat could 

felt accelerating.  Also the nice thing about this big heavy sail boat is that the spinnaker can be set and tied off and the autopilot engaged and the boat will sail itself if the wind angles are close to being correct.  With this massive sail up we were sailing along almost on-course at 10.5 to 11 knots for most of the day.  

ghost bird aboard 

Our first gibe came just after hoisting while the next one we did at 2100 night

under the bright deck lights.  Altair sailed with the spinnaker all night which was definitely a thrill and something that some captains will not consider doing.  

Day 2 turned out to be my favorite day of the Canary Islands to Cape Verde leg because of the terrific down-wind sailing that we got to do with some waves to be surfed. With sailing this good, there wasn't much else being done on board and that was perfectly OK with me.