Winds 25-30 with higher gusts as we start the ARC. It is still cool and we are wearing foulweather gear for the first few days as we head south.

ARC fleet on AIS - note more than 50% of the fleet are not on AIS so there actually twice as many as show up here!! It made for an exciting and crowded first night. Luckily it thinned out after that first night.

Paul tries to send a SMS with the Satphone. Not a very satisfactory experience. Remember when you had a "non-smart" phone years ago? But tweeting from the saphone did allow us to update the website from sea...

Frequent visitor - flying fish came on board at least 3-4 per night - more during rough evenings. Paul had the distinction of being hit twice by a flying fish! Once one hit in the head and once in the leg :-)

We had one day of calms during the crossing...

We ate quite well with a special steak meal on the calm day when we could set out a proper table!
We saw ARC boats every day - very unusual for us to see other yachts. This is the 56 foot cat Poco Loco who kindly took some shots of us as well.

We are sailing wing and wing for much of the crossing. I will do more on this in a blog...

3-4 meters swell were a constant feature...

We surfed regularly at 12-13 knots and hit 15 on one occasion. It was our fastest passage ever at just 15.5 days!!

We arrived at 0158 on Thursday 13 December and were warmly welcomed by neighbouring yachties and ARC committee despite the hour!!