The weather finally turned. At just after midnight on Saturday morning, the cold front that had been stalled just west of the Chesapeake Bay for days, bringing wet, foggy, misty weather to the fleet, finally pushed offshore with a flurry of rain showers and thunderstorms, clearing the air for a gorgeous early morning. The full moon – the rally was planned around it after all – finally showed it’s face as the fleet re-entered the Chesapeake Bay, and the day dawned clear and cool, a fresh northwesterly breeze propelling everyone south on the rally’s final leg.

The inaugural ARC DelMarVa Rally – 450 Miles around the DelMarVa Peninsula – got underway in Annapolis on Sunday, with 21 yachts taking the starting line off Back Creek (with two more joining in Portsmouth). And if it weren’t for the rough, tiring conditions over the next 36 hours, we’d have had a news story up on the website much sooner!

Waking up on a rally start day is always bittersweet. Knowing that the fleet will be heading to sea in a few hours is a relieving sensation. The work is nearly over, and after one more big push I know it’s soon time for a cold beer and a relaxing afternoon exploring Bermuda. But knowing that there are 30+ boats about to cross the Atlantic, and I’m not on one of them, is painful too.

Malcolm Gosling, 8th-generation of the famed Gosling family here on Bermuda, kicked off last evening’s festivities at the St. Georges Dinghy & Sports Club with a rousing rum tasting on the deck overlooking the harbor. Gosling’s is known for its Black Seal Rum, the main ingredient in the famed Dark & Stormy drink (Black Seal and ginger beer), popular now with sailors the world over. 

While I'm in Bermuda for the ARC Europe rally, my friends Matt and Nicole are 15 days into the Pacific, tackling the longest-ever continuous plastics research project onboard the 29-foot Sakura, bound for Japan. Matt's been keeping a blog and sending in fairly regular posts over at oceanresearchproject.org. They're very interesting and inspiring, so I'm reposting them here. They need all the help they can get (currently they've got only enough funds to get to Japan - help them get home!). Here's Matt:

My mom is directly responsible for a lot of things in my life, most obviously life itself. I'm writing this from Bermuda because she constantly espoused "do what you love, and the money will follow." But it's that one day in the driveway when we were throwing the football and I asked her to help me get healthy and in shape that I'm reminded of most today. I wrote about it last week. And if I die at age 62 like she did with an alien growing inside my head, well, I will have lived well. As she did, thanks to her.

This is cool. I spoke with Jean-Charles & Antoine, the skipper & mate of the VPLP cat Tosca today in Bermuda. The conversation will be on the 59º North Podcast sometime next week, but I wanted to share this first for a little preview. Turns out Jean-Charles & Antoine were both crew onboard the VPLP tri Geronimo when they set just about every sailing speed record on the books (including the Jules Verne trophy, round-the-world nonstop in 63 days!). 

The first boat is due to arrive later this afternoon, the 61’ carbon-fiber Moxie catamaran Tosca. They’re making remarkable progress, having left Portsmouth only just after noon on Saturday. As of 5pm Bermuda time Tuesday, they were within striking distance of the island, only ten miles out, and a full 250 miles ahead of the next closest, another cat actually, the Dean 440 Mariposa. 

If you follow me on Twitter, you'll notice that I posted a brief note last night just before 11pm. I had a call from an '8816' number - a sat phone number - that woke me up. Normally I sleep with my phone on 'Do Not Disturb,' but as the ARC Europe fleet just went to sea, and my number is listed as their emergency contact number, I left it on. I thought it was one of our boats - and always think the worst. But it was Matt on the phone. 

Seven boats are set to take part in the USA start of ARC Europe this year, a whopping 7x the numbers we had last year (yes, it was only 1...)! Combine that with the fleet in Tortola, and Mia, Lyall and I - the 'Yellowshirt' team - is set for a busy ten days in St. Georges, Bermuda! 

Here comes No. 4 in the ongoing 'Don Street Stories' series. This one was intended to be run as a sidebar to the magazine article, and it's less of a 'story' than it is my own thoughts on one of Street's most vehement opinions, and that's manual bilge pump capacity. Don't get me wrong - I agree 100% with Street that boats going offshore need more pump capacity - but my thoughts below represent what I see actually happening in the ocean sailing world, not necessarily what I think is right. Interestingly enough, Patrick Shaughnessy, President of Farr Yacht Design, and I talked about this very topic in my last podcast episode. Here goes.