Given the normally ideal tradewind sailing conditions from the Canary Islands to the Eastern Caribbean in late November and early December, it’s hardly surprising there are so many cruising and racing boats crossing the Atlantic in organized events at this time of year. When the Wanderer crossed with Latitude 38’s Ocean 71 Big O in 1995 as part of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), the weather was typically fabulous. Warm winds from astern day after day. Perfect.

The first to start of the three big events for English-speaking sailors coming across this year was the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers Plus (ARC+), with more than 200 sailors heading out on the 2,900-mile trip from the Canary Islands to the Cape Verdes, and, after a stop there, on to St. Lucia.

The ARC+ was created because there were inadequate facilities in the Canaries for all the boats that wanted to do the traditional Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC), which starts in the Canary Islands and proceeds 2,700 miles directly to the same finish line in St. Lucia. This year the ARC had 212 boats from 31 nations with 1,307 sailors. The fleet featured 34 hardcore racing boats, the rest being cruising boats, including a record 31 multihulls.

Unfortunately for most participants, this year hasn’t featured the normal consistent tradewind sailing across the Atlantic. Generally speaking, it’s been a meteorological mess, with an unusual amount of headwinds, light winds, ridges and areas of calm.

In chronological terms, George David’s US-based super high-tech Juan K-designed Rambler 88 was the first boat across, having taken advantage of a small depression in the mid-Atlantic, which enabled the crew to sail a very northerly route followed by a fast reach down to St. Lucia. Despite what were generally light-air conditions, thanks to using the small depression, Rambler was able to sail 207 miles less than the second boat, Team Brunei, an old Volvo Ocean Race boat, to set a new record of 8 days, 6 hours. This is just over an hour better than the old record, and the fourth year in a row the elapsed-time record has been broken.

The overwhelming majority of the other ARC and ARC+ boats are, of course, cruising boats, and most of them were stuck behind a mid-Atlantic ridge, giving them a big case of the slows. There was lots of swimming in the mid-Atlantic this year. Members of both these fleets are finally getting consistent easterly winds, although only at about 15 knots, which is on the light side. The last third of the crossing for them has been and appears as though it will continue to be idyllic sailing, if a little on the slow side.

The first of the ARC+ boats, the Lagoon 450 catamaran Spirit, arrived in St. Lucia on November 29 some 13 days out of the Cape Verdes. Four other boats followed in less than 90 minutes. ARC and ARC+ boats are, of course, permitted to motor, which allows some boats with big fuel tanks to cross much faster than others.

The third event is the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s 2,865-mile Transatlantic Race, for hardcore racing boats only, from the Canary Islands to the Nicholsons Port St. Louis Marina in Grenada. There were 14 entries. The later-starting RORC Transatlantic Race presented navigators with a much starker choice. Since headwinds made it impossible to sail the rhumbline, they had to take a route that was either unusually far to the north or far to the south.

The race features two MOD70s trimarans, Lloyd Thornburg’s St. Barth/Newport Beach/Santa Fe-based Phaedo3, which the owner, still in his 30s, has been using to crush more records in the Caribbean/Atlantic/Med than a bull in a china shop, and the great Giovanni Soldini’s Maserati. The two trimarans are no longer sisterships, as Soldini has added foils.

Maserati went north, while Phaedo skipper Brian Thompson, a former Bay Area resident, took their tri to the south — at least for a couple of days before going north again to consolidate their lead. As it turned out, Phaedo negotiated the weird weather situations perfectly, and, with less than a day to go, holds an unassailable lead over the trailing Maserati, despite the fact the latter has been foiling at speeds up to 40 knots. Paul Allen of Santa Cruz is one of the Phaedo crew. It’s unclear if Phaedo has a shot at bettering her current course record of 5 days, 22 hours.

The lead in the monohull division is currently held by Mike Slade’s Leopard, a 100-ft Farr drop-keel design that used to hold the ARC record and has been raced across the Atlantic many times by her skipper, Chris Sherlock, who has made more crossings than he has fingers and toes. Leopard is close to being on pace for the monohull record, so it will be interesting to see how things pan out.