Swan 80 First to Finish ARC

The fact that it took Marco Rodolfi’s Italian-crewed Swan 80 Berenice 14 days, 1 hour to be the first boat to complete this year’s Atlantic Rally for Cruisers is a testament to how light the winds have been for most of this year’s crossing. The fleet started in the Canary Islands and is sailing a 2,700 mile — rhumbline — course to St. Lucia in the West Indies. Even worse than the light winds was the fact that the Italian boat had six hours of 35- to 40-knot headwinds early on in what’s supposed to be an all-downwind crossing. Rodolfi reported that the last three days featured the idyllic tradewind sailing conditions.

This is the 25th running of the ARC, the granddaddy of all cruising rallies, and there was a record 233 entrants. To our knowledge, the only boat with California ties is George Backhus and Merima Dzaferi’s Deerfoot 62 Moonshadow, which was sailing at 8.9 knots some 635 miles from the finish this morning. It looks at though she’ll be one of the first 20 boats to finish.