Cat owners planning to participate in the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers should be aware of the poor facilities offered by World Cruising Club in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria.
Essentially, catamarans are put in a separate 'marina', known as Latina. Crews from catamarans in ARC 2007 renamed it 'Latrina'.
Latina is basically a dirty fishing port with minimal facilities. The dockside is made of tarmac and it is impossible to get aboard your boat without walking major pieces of grit and dirt across your boat. Generally, this marina is noisy (the locals sit ther all day every day), dirty and arguably unsafe.
One of the challenges of the dock is that with the ride and fall of the tide, you can find yourself jumping from heights of 6-8ft across gaps of similar widths. We had two crew members fall in the water attempting this whilst the boat next door to us had a child fall into the water. This is all very concerning.
Because of the 'leap of faith' people had to make to get back on board their boats, we now have star crazing across one of our sugar scoops where people have landed with a 'thump' at completion of the 'leap of faith'.
The location is detached from the main pontoons where the monohulls are placed and thus, much of the 'atmosphere' of the event is lost.
The other matter is security. Issuing of keys to get in and out of the Latina was managed poorly, and we had on more than one occasion situations where crew were unable to get back onto the boat for several hours at night - on one occasion, two of our crew had to beg a berth from a monohull for a night. Such was the problem that crews eventually decided to leave a 'master key' (a pair of boltcroppers) in a discreet location close to the gate!
Despite making complaint to World Cruising Club Managing Director, Andrew Bishop, they appeared unconcerned about this and despite promises to improve the facilities, we saw no evidence of this. We were not the only boat to complain.
Similarly, we became involved in an incident at sea whereby a 50 refugees trying to escape Africa for the Canary Islands needed to be rescued whilst 300 miles offshore in an open 8-9m launch. They had been at sea for 15 days without food and water whilst two of them were dead. We landed up co-ordinating the rescue. Despite claims made by World Cruising Club about 'Spanish Naval Patrols rushing to rescue' the reality was an initial promise of assistance from a larger vessel within '3 days'. It was only when we spoke to the UK coastguard and got them to make representations through the UK Foreign & Commonwealth office that the situation changed.
Presumably World Cruising Club issued PR that told the story as would best represent their own organisation, not with any particular regard for truth as this may potentially damage revenues and the events reputation.
We have made proposals and recommendations to World Cruising Club Atlantic Rally for Cruisers about how they could improve safety for the crews and the quality of the briefing that they give to crews on how to handle this event. Despite our genuine concerns and a request to meet and folow this up, to date, this has fallen on completly deaf ears. This seems to further confirm that World Cruising Club are perhaps more interested in extracting a profit, maintaining good PR than they are genuinely interested in the safety of the crews.
Perhaps the reality is that you are more likely to kill, injure or maim yourself trying to get on and off your boat in the 'marina' than you are spending 3 weeks at sea!
I can only struggle to recommend the ARC to catamaran owners. It all depends upon what you value from the event, the ARC isn't too bad and the concept of sailing across an ocean in 'company' is great but it is the sailors that make the event. I am sceptical about the World Cruising Clubs true value in this event.
