They had sailed nearly 3,000 miles over the worst the Atlantic had to serve up, crossing from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (in Spain’s Canary Islands) to St. Lucia in the Caribbean. All of them were weary but had the glow of accomplishment about them as they finished the 2021 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), organized and managed by the World Cruising Club (worldcruising.com). Most of the 143 boats that started took just under three weeks to cross, but some didn’t finish at all, including two that were abandoned and three that turned back.
This was by all accounts a fast ARC with rough conditions, but that’s not what made it noticeably different from the 35 previous years that the rally has been run. Instead, the differences clustered around the boats, the people and the attitudes that have morphed this event from a classic passage for cruisers to a box to check on a bucket list marked off by a younger crowd seeking adventure. Covid turned a few participants’ plans inside out, but it also sprouted a group of new and intrepid sailors who were bored of sitting at home and needed an excuse to go out and do something bold.
Not everyone had crossed the line by the time I arrived at the docks in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia, this past December, and you could hear whistles, hollers and loud hailers beeping in welcome day and night for those straggling in. The changes from years past were immediately visible. For one thing, the boats had grown—both in terms of LOA and the number of hulls. The first across on December 3, for example, was the Italian-flagged . At nearly 70ft, the racing Maxi
