The Long Haul
We’d been told to expect meteor showers on our first night out of Bermuda, so Sue and I were eyes-alert to the black sky when a green light, round like a traffic light, erupted from the sea 300 yards off our starboard bow. It arced toward us and Salamander’s foredeck and sails were briefly aglow in green, like an alien spaceship. Then it was gone.
“What the hell was that?” Sue asked.
“A flare,” I said, already imagining a liferaft disappearing in our wake. They had fired their last flare… we were their only hope… we were in the Bermuda Triangle…
“Distress flares are red, not green,” our skipper, Chris, said. In the sensible light of day, I realised that a man-made light from beneath the water could come only from a submarine. Google agreed. The long grey cigar of an American sub had slid undetected beneath our keel.
We were one of 30 yachts sailing in the ARC Europe rally from Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, north to Bermuda and then east across the Atlantic to the Azores. ARC rallies are run by the World Cruising Club (WCC) on popular cruising routes, almost guaranteeing that participants avoid pirates, political unrest and major storm seasons. It makes no promises about submarines.
The WCC does, however, promise to streamline the formalities of customs and immigration, and negotiate bulk deals at fuel docks and marina berths. Oh, and as I found in Tortola, Bermuda and the Azores, all ARC staff know how to throw a party.
For those reasons, some independent yachts consider that being in port with an ARC fleet is like pulling up to your favourite restaurant at the same
