A Tale of Two Chemists: ARC1500 – Preparing for Departure

Sat 28^th October – Friday 3^rd November

It’s been almost a week since arrived back on the boat in Norfolk and it’s flown by so fast. The rally office opened on Saturday and the marina was already full of boats heading either the Tortola (ARC Caribbean 1500) or the Bahamas (ARC Bahamas). It’s been a time to complete countless jobs in preparation for departure, but also a lot of socializing as the participants get to know each other. The first jobs on Cotinga were to change the fuel filters / water separators and do an oil change. These can be messy jobs but this time it went just fine. Then it was time for the safety review. The rally provided extensive information in advance on what would be required so mostly the review was fine. There were some small things that needed addressing – have a knife in the cockpit to cut any lines securing the life raft if we need to deploy rapidly, store gloves in the flares box to avoid burns, tighten the jack lines and tape the lifeline split-ring connectors so they don’t come loose. The big issue was our EPIRB (emergency position indicating radio beacon). Ours was registered until Dec 2018 but the battery certification ran out this month. Unfortunately, the 5-year batteries can only be replaced a specified number of times and ours is old and had reached it’s limit. So on Monday I rented a car and headed to the West Marine store about 10 miles away and bought a new one. I also took our three propane tanks to A&B propane for re-certification and re-filling. The rally did organize transport of propane tanks for re-filling, but once again our tanks are old and were past their certification date and they wouldn’t handle them. In fact our tanks were already past their date five years ago when we bought the boat, but they are made of aluminum and are still in good shape so A&B re-certified and re-filled them.

Rod, Brian and Dave all arrived on Wednesday and it was great to see them all. On the social front we have been meeting lots of great people from other boats. There are 23 boats participating in the rally and some of the boats have already travelled a long way just to get here. There’s one boat from England and quite a few from Canada. Like us, many are heading down to cruise in the Caribbean, but others have bigger plans. One boat is going to join the ARC World rally in February and as the name suggests will continue around the world. Later in the week we met Alison and Daniel on “Equus” who have a well defined 10-year round-the-world trip all planned out. There are two boats with young children and we got to know Rafaella and Richard on “xxxxxx” who have two boys Sebastian (~10) and Matthew (~7). Rafaella and Richard work for Nestle, most recently in Ohio, and are taking a 1-year sabbatical before relocating to Florida. Overall it’s a really warm and welcoming crowd and with there is no shortage of things to talk about. I’ll try and say a few words in captions about some of the participants. We are all working frantically to get ready and share some apprehension of the passage ahead.

One element of unexpected excitement … before leaving home Dave’s wife Kathy gave him drone so that we could get some arial photos of Cotinga off-shore. This would be fantastic, but in order to achieve this we need to be able to launch, fly and land the drone back on the moving deck of Cotinga. This is no mean feat as none of us have ever flown a drone before. So after lunch on Wednesday we headed to the park to practice. Let’s just say we weren’t exactly great as drone pilots. At one point we got the drone stuck up a tree and had to stand around throwing sticks up to shake it loose – which we eventually did. Before we got to the park we noticed a big event was taking place at the Pavilion next door and there were roads closed off police everywhere, including police vessels on the water. We checked with a friendly policeman at the park before we started flying to make sure it was OK. He even threw a few sticks himself to help get the drone out of the tree. However, when we got back to the marina we noticed half a dozen heavily armed coast guards. After a quick stop at the bathroom, we took the drone back to Cotinga, soon to be followed by the coast guard. They had heard a report of someone flying a drone and cam to question us. Dave had to submit his driving license for inspection and we warned to expect a visit from the police. As promised a senior police officer arrived a few minutes later for more questioning. In fairness they were all friendly and polite, but for a while we thought maybe Dave wasn’t coming with us!

First thing this morning (Friday) we made a provisioning run and then attended a number of safety seminars later in the morning. We have seven meals already prepared and frozen and we have five others planned … not to mention the fish we expect to catch! Tomorrow we’ll do a final shopping trip to get fruit and vegetables. The seminars were informative, if alittle sobering, and covered medical situations, various emergencies like fire, man over board, rigging failure and loss of steering. There was also a talk from the Norfolk coast guard rescue coordinator that was very useful. Then this afternoon we did live demonstartions of life jackets, life rafts and flares – all of which were excellent. Tonight it’s party time with the rally departure dinner. Now I must do some laundry and get showered!

Mike