ARC festivities, homework - and a dentist!

Excitingly we now have the whole crew here - Tom arrived on the 13th and Peter on the 16th... so everything's falling into place! Apart from boat preparation we've been taking part in many of the ARC events, and a glass of wine or two might have been consumed at the nightly sundowners at the yacht club. On Sunday it was the official opening ceremony for the event, a procession around the marina with a band and flags for each country represented here. For some reason Blue Pepper got to be the UK flag bearers which was a bit of a responsibility! This pic of Malcolm waving that flag was taken before once of his wisdom teeth exploded. A dentist was swiftly tracked down with the help of the ARC team and within a couple of days Charts was one tooth lighter and holding a pack of painkillers! Luckily it happened in time to sort before we leave.

We've also been to some seminars to help with the preparation. The weather and routing one was very popular as you might imagine...

Yesterday we did the final supermarket run. Peter the carnivore was in charge of meat purchasing and I think we have enough Spanish ham to last a circumnavigation! We are pretty much ready to go now, tomorrow morning will see the trip to the central market for fresh produce and then the 'Skippers Briefing' so we can finalise our weather routing. I think we might actually pull this off!