ARC 2020 thoughts
November 2012 saw me fall in love all over again. A lifelong dinghy sailor and racer, I knew that the day would come when I needed some lead in a keel to help me to go exploring, hang off the anchor in beautiful bays, see the coastlines of countries and meet the locals.
A review of the RM 1260 ocean-going cruiser, ‘lighter than fibreglass, stronger than steel and wood,’ prompted a visit to a yard in La Rochelle, and an order was placed. Fast-forward to September 2016 and I had taken delivery of Grace, the updated
RM 1270 model. Since then I have been single- and doublehanded cruising around the south coast and double-handed racing in Rolex Fastnet 2017.
My retirement was planned for January 2020 and the ARC was to follow. Well, 2020 became the year of what might have been, with murmurings from China about a deadly flu and its subsequent global spread.
My crew – made up of lifelong friends – decided that even if the ARC did take place the whole process seemed ‘too hard’.
I would stress that these are my thoughts and relate to our crew and our risk assessment. A second spike seemed inevitable – could a second lockdown occur? Perhaps worst of all was the prospect of a crewmember falling ill. I really feel for the World Cruising Club; making a decision about this event involving travel for so many people from multiple jurisdictions must be a real headache.
In the end, we decided to postpone, which World Cruising is happy to support. So here’s to November 2021 and the never-ending list of jobs before we leave. Chris Lewns
Jeremy Wyatt, World Cruising Club (WCC)
director, responds: For Chris the ARC was to be an experience of a lifetime bringing together friends and family from around the world and so his decision to postpone his participation for a year is completely understandable, and fully supported by WCC. Other participants have taken the same decision to postpone. However, there are still a significant number of cruisers who are keen to cross the Atlantic this year and at WCC we are making plans to facilitate their crossing providing certain key factors can be met, and subject to regulations in force at the departure and arrival ports in November. The safety, health and wellbeing of our participants and staff are paramount in the decisions we are taking to structure the ARC in a way that will meet local regulations, particularly regarding social distancing, and any limits on size of group gatherings, as well as ensuring skippers maintain a COVID secure approach to their crew and passage making. WCC continues to liaise with the relevant authorities at the rally ports and to keep participants updated about the ARC currently planned for this year.