Tales of the Good Ship Bountibou: World ARC 2024-2025
January 2024
We welcomed the New Year in St Lucia with great anticipation about starting our greatest adventure with the World Arc. This organization provided a schedule and support for our fleet of 24 boats to make a 15-month circumnavigation.
After a very busy week of seminars and last-minute preparations, we were able to enjoy some downtime with fellow Arc-ers from SV Wimsey (Capt Scruff, aka Sofia, Andrew, and the captain from SV Shiksa. We walked over to the street food fair at Gros Islet, and were treated to some amazing shrimp kabobs and strong rum punch, as well as a rather questionable banana-fish casserole (after some discussion, we decided it must be shark or iguana!). Between that experience and Gregory-the-vegetable-boat-guy's "dasheen" yams, we more fully appreciated our stores on board. And did I mention that the music was very LOUD?!?
Saturday, January 13
After our final safety inspection by Fergus and Nev (our W-ARC advisors), last-minute pictures and fond farewells, our dock neighbors helped to throw off our lines. Then we motored to watch the parade of W-ARC boats enter Rodney Bay to wait for the noon start of the Rally.
It was a truly beautiful morning! The sun was shining bright in a blue sky with just enough cloud cover to make the temperature just right. The wind picked up to about 20 knots... perfect conditions to begin the rally! All the W-ARC boats had their flags a flyin'. It was quite a spectacle to behold.
