The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers rolled into Grenada this year with many entrants talking about one thing: Starlink. So, is being connected to the internet 24/7 mid ocean good or bad? Sam Jefferson posed the question
The ARC is back in town and that annual pilgrimage of yachts heading across the Atlantic has made landfall. I was out in Grenada to chat with some of the early arrivals in the ARC+ fleet which had made its way across the Atlantic with a stopover in the Cape Verdes. As you might expect, the first few boats in were mainly multihulls, with Mongoose, an ORC 50 picking up second place followed by a clutch of Outremers. There were, however, some real surprised, not least that Nessun Dorma, an Italia 15.98 monohull managed to grab line honours. On a relatively light weather passage, skipper Constantino Neri got his crew to hand steer all the way across in order to keep ahead of the chasing pack. The Italia is a light weather flier and the skipper's dedication paid off as they arrived in the early hours of 29 November, several hours ahead of Mongoose. It was an impressive achievement. “It has been my dream for many years to cross the Atlantic and to finish first is great,” Neri reflected: “The Italia is a beautiful yacht and I absolutely love Nessun Dorma. I wanted us to hand steer as I felt we had a big crew and it made for a more authentic experience.”
As far as monohulls were concerned, there was also a strong showing from Sassicaia a Danish built Luffe 48 dating back to 2003 but still very much amongst the first boats in. The achievement was perhaps all the more impressive given that the boat had three children aboard. Luffe Yachts can trace its lineage back to the narrow beamed, lightweight skerry cruisers and, as such, they don’t have a lot of interior volume meaning that the skipper and his wife had slept on deck for most of the trip from Las Palmas to Grenada.
Not much changes on the ARC generally but this year, there was something of a revolution with this being the first year in which Starlink was widely used across the fleet. Starlink is the latest innovation from creepy tech bigmouth Elon Musk – he of the impressive weave. Musk’s system means that you can now get 4G and 5G signal in the middle of the ocean at reasonably affordable prices. It is therefore at the spearhead of the biggest revolution in sailing since the introduction of GPS for navigation.
I thought it best to focus in on this innovation and its consequences for the entrants
