40 years of the ARC: The evolution of a transatlantic icon

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, and Yachting World has been there since the start

Back in 1985 Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street, Mikhail Gorbachev in the Kremlin, and a world-famous pop star was airlifted off his capsized yacht when Drum – belonging to Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran fame – turned over during the Fastnet Race. It was, in every respect, a very different time.

That autumn sailor and author Jimmy Cornell arrived in the Canary Islands on assignment for Yachting World (in those days a print magazine only, of course), tasked with finding sailors about to set off on an Atlantic crossing. Cornell had four years previously completed his own circumnavigation with his young family while also recording radio content for the BBC World Service. He not only found plenty of sailors to interview, but realised he had stumbled across a whole community.

“I was contributing articles based on our recently completed world voyage to Yachting World when [then editor] Dick Johnson asked me to fly to Las Palmas in Gran Canaria to interview some skippers on their expectations before the Atlantic Crossing – and then fly to the Caribbean and try to find some of the same skippers to interview them on completion of the Atlantic passage,” Cornell recalled.

“However, while I was in Las Palmas I was seeing five or six boats leaving the marina every day, setting off on the long voyage across the Atlantic, the waving and tears of friends… and the following day witnessing the same scene again, I decided that surely somebody should get all these separate people into one group motivated by a sense of togetherness?

“I flew to the Caribbean, met some of those I’d met in Las Palmas, and each agreed a rally idea was something they’d have gladly joined. Back in London, I spoke to Dick about it and he thought it was indeed a very good idea.

“The ARC was launched at a party in St Katharine Docks. Soon after Yachting World hit the stands, letters started arriving at my address – hundreds of them. And in late November 1986, 209 boats left for Barbados in the first ARC.”

That first ARC rally was, Cornell says, “Certainly the first properly organised trans-ocean sailing event.”

“A group of French cruising boats had been brought together for an Atlantic crossing named Le Transat des Alisées. People arrived when they felt like it, and it all looked like the proverbial attempt at herding cats. But I could see the potential of organising a proper sailing event with its own structure, rules and regulations, and an absolute stress on safety. That format was applied the following year.

“Before the start all boats had been inspected for their seaworthiness and all essential safety equipment was checked. That structure, which I’d laid down in those early days, has been followed to this very day in the ARC, and has been adopted by countless other rallies.”

Trailblazing concept

The first ARC rally saw sailors from 24 countries sail from Las Palmas to Bridgetown, Barbados. A Yachting World Trophy for the first yacht to arrive in Barbados was awarded to a 54ft trimaran, while the winner of the Jimmy Cornell Trophy for the best performance by a family crew (parents plus child) was won by a 31-footer from Finland – a results sheet that could easily still be seen today. But over the years, the ARC has evolved.

Inevitably, sending a couple of hundred yachts across the ocean on the same course meant that some crews saw the crossing as a competition, and in 1989 a Racing Division was introduced, using the Channel Handicap System (CHS). These days the race fleet is handicapped under IRC, with the key difference from the main fleet being they’re not permitted any engine hours.

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Cornell always resisted turning the rally into a race. “I made sure there was always a so-called racing division in the ARC, and that the rest of the fleet, which formed by far the majority, were not actually competing.

“I still believe that the main attraction of the ARC was the sense of camaraderie and the safety in numbers it provided. I find it very irritating to read that some boat had ‘won’ the ARC. My attitude all along was that everyone who took part in the ARC was a winner.”

Linking events

After four years of finishing in Barbados, Saint Lucia became the 1990 destination port, and Rodney Bay has been the rally’s Caribbean home ever since. Connecting rallies were also established – the ARC Portugal in 1995, taking a fleet across the Bay of Biscay and down the Portuguese coast. An east-bound transatlantic rally, the ARC Europe, began in 2000, bringing ‘returners’ home and giving an option for US-based cruisers. And an Atlantic-with-stops ARC+ rally, sailing to Grenada via Cape Verde, has proved popular with family crews since it was introduced in 2013.

Following on from Cornell’s Europa round the world rallies, which he began in 1991, a circumnavigation was also introduced in 2008 and the World ARC now sets off every year.

World Cruising Club (WCC), the organising company behind the event, was established in 1987. Cornell remained associated with the event for many years, though Andrew Bishop and his team, including Jeremy Wyatt, held stewardship for the longest period and oversaw a great deal of expansion and modernisation.

Today WCC is owned and run by Paul and Suzana Tetlow together with a small, dedicated team out of Cowes in the UK. At events the team is bolstered by an army of the famous ‘yellow shirts’, many of whom have themselves been involved with the event for years. Bones Black was this year on the scrutineering team, having sailed the ARC many times with his wife, Anna, when they ran charter yacht Emily Morgan.

The ARC formula has since been emulated by other event organisers, with rallies now running in locations as varied as Tasmania and the Amazon River, of varying levels of formality. The round-the-world format has also been adopted by some big brands, with Oyster Yachts and Grand Large Yachting creating multi-stage rallies exclusively for their own marques.

Scaling up

This year 145 yachts set off from Las Palmas on the ARC, with a further 56 departing on the ARC+ two weeks previously. The biggest ever ARC year was the 30th anniversary in 2015, which saw 268 yachts cross in the two rallies.

Though overall numbers may now be slightly down from the peak, the marina in Las Palmas is almost equally full, reflecting the increase in size of yachts taking part, and the relentless rising popularity of multihulls. While a decade ago the rally could house over 220 boats in the start port, it is now maxed out at 175 because multihulls require two finger pontoon berths or a hammerhead to moor on.

The shift was consolidated some six years ago when the first boats home in both the ARC and ARC+ rallies were multihulls for the first time – both beating larger, racier monohulls. The proportion of multihulls has maintained a steady average of 30-40% in recent years, with a notable proportion of new boats in the fleet being catamarans or trimarans.

Bigger boats

Monohulls taking part have also undeniably got bigger. The largest yacht in this year’s fleet was the 100ft Wally Vantanera, while the brand with the most boats in the ARC was Oyster, with 12 50-footers or larger, many heading across the Atlantic en route to their own Oyster World Rally, which begins from the Caribbean in January. On the big boat dock, they were joined by two Spirit 72s, as well as larger yachts from Swan, Baltic, Contest and more.

The increased size of boats in the fleet is something Dan and Emily Bower can attest to. They run the Oyster 62 Skyelark II as a charter yacht, having previously owned Skyelark of London, a 51-footer. They’ve taken part in every transatlantic since 2008, apart from the ones in which they were taking part in the World ARC.

Despite the fact their own yacht has upsized they’ve noticed that relatively speaking they’re no longer one of the biggest boats in the fleet.

“When you’re allocated your number, it’s based on how big your boat is. And every year our number would just go up and up and up!” recalls Emily.

The Bowers find that the ‘bucket-list’ nature of an Atlantic crossing draws many new clients, who discover their pay-per-berth ARC crossing as a way of ticking off a lifetime ambition.

“Usually a life event has happened that triggers it, it might be a career break or a retirement present,” says Dan.

But Skyelark has also taken part in dozens of other WCC rallies – after a Caribbean season this winter, they’ll return via the ARC Europe, before heading north to hook into the ARC Baltic. The advantages are wide-ranging – the reassurance of a nearby fleet for their clients, administrative support for Dan and Em. “And honestly, now a lot of the issue is around berthing,” points out Dan. “It’s getting harder to get, as boats are getting bigger, and the ports aren’t investing. And the rally has more clout.”

Anniversary returners

However, there are still many smaller family boats making the crossing. The Sage family first sailed their Moody 44 Ocean Strider across the Atlantic in 2005 with the 20th anniversary ARC. This year Joseph Sage, and his grown up children, Matthew, 34, Elizabeth, 31, and Victoria, 29, will make the crossing again in the same yacht – though sadly without wife and mother Kim, who passed away six years ago.

Ocean Strider has since been up-spec’d over the intervening two decades, with a new engine, twin alternators, solar power panels, a watermaker and washing machine. They also have Starlink, and have been impressed with how user-friendly apps such as Navionics and batteries monitoring on mobile phones have become. “It’s all just a bit easier than it was 20 years ago,” Joseph notes.

Sage has been preparing for the crossing for years. He opted for a slow route down to Las Palmas, visiting as many ports and anchoring in Brittany, Spain and Portugal as possible, factoring in breaks to meet the Schengen 90-day rule. He enjoys sailing in short hitches, and will do the same on the Caribbean side.

“We’re going all the way up to Puerto Rico, and then we’ll hop back down to get back to Grenada for the lift out, which will be in June, then return for several seasons to explore further to Colombia, Jamaica and Cuba.”

Taking the leisurely approach has paid off – Ocean Strider arrived in Las Palmas mostly ready to go. “A lot of boat prep is about thinking a long way ahead,” Joseph says. “We did a lot of it a long, long way out. Tick those boat prep jobs off as early as you can because it could be three years before you go, but if you do that small job, it’s ticked off.”

“Up and down each of the pontoons you still see people busy at work. You don’t want to get here and realise there’s so much still to do. Then you miss out on all the fun and the community spirit that you get from being part of the rally,” adds son Matthew.

Rookie crews

This year there were also plenty of first-timers, typical of the hundreds of ARC cruisers over the years who have joined the rally for reassurance.

Byron Bay sailor Stephen Huntsman is sailing his Fountaine Pajot Isla 40 Osiris with friends.

“It’s always been a dream to sail across the Pacific, and it became time to action that,” he explains. “But the most appropriate boat was best to buy brand new in La Rochelle. We picked up that boat in August last year.

“We were planning to do last year’s ARC, but did not have enough time. We just weren’t ready. So we deferred and sailed from La Rochelle to Cartagena in Spain, then spent the summer in Mallorca and Menorca. We got to Las Palmas in the first week of October.”

Surrounded on the pontoons by yachtsmen and women with decades of experience, Huntsman admitted that he felt a little intimidated. “It also makes us feel a bit nervous that we might be a bit underdone,” he noted.

But as a first time transocean skipper, he always planned to cross with the rally, even when the original time scale became unrealistic.

“We never considered any other option. I think it would be foolish not to do it with the ARC, really.

“You probably never feel ready,” he adds. “Maybe if you spent 20 years preparing, you feel ready. But it’s a bit of a luxury to have that much time. At some point, you’ve just got to take the plunge and learn by experience, and just go.

“I’m very, very aware that we don’t have as much experience. I’m super-conservative. I don’t like a lot of sailing in strong winds. I reef early – we probably have a lot more reef in than you really need. But it’s not a race for us. We’ve got all the time we need, and I’d rather be underdone than over!”

Sea gypsies

Some things remain timeless. Hungarian Vendee Globe veteran Nandor Fa met Romanian Jimmy Cornell in Las Palmas 40 years ago, while Fa was preparing to set off on the first circumnavigation by a Hungarian sailor. He later went on to compete in multiple around the world races.

In 2025 he was back, taking a group of young Hungarian sailors across the Atlantic in the ARC on his own Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 50 DS On’y’va. He recalls the spirit of the early rallies.

“I remember the people who were on the pontoons. They were really cosmopolitan – different nationalities, ages, very mixed in language, in culture, and purpose.

“But one thing was the same: they wanted to enjoy the free life on the sea. It’s a sea gypsy life.

“Most of them were middle-aged people who had sold their companies, sold their house, and changed their life. They didn’t want to be a number. They wanted to be a person.

“The major draw is still the same: somehow to escape and enjoy life on the sea.”

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