If you could choose anyone to go on a grand adventure with, would it be your life partner? World ARC is a mix of cruising in company and free time to explore. Families with children, retirees or a ‘grown up gap year’ - all are welcome as part of it. Among them, lots of couples had gone through both challenging and memorable voyage together.
One such couple was David and Wendy Tipton. A former farmer from Staffordshire, UK, David had built up a recycling business that he sold, enabling them to buy Mischief, a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 479, and sail around the world. There was only one problem: Wendy hated the water and considered herself an inexperienced sailor.
Before they set off on the 2017 ARC（the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers), Wendy had to learn to swim before she could even do a sea survival course. “It was never my dream to circumnavigate, it was David’s. So I went along with it, but it was totally out of my comfort zone,” she recalls.
They began their first double-handed passage with David sleeping in the cockpit during his off watches, “just in case she needed me quickly,” he recalls. “But after a few days of that regime she said, ‘You might as well go down below, I’m fine.’”
But things didn’t go so well on one of the next stages, from Cabedelo, Brazil, to Devil’s Island, French Guiana. “It was a bit of a catalogue of events,” he explains. “Our radar stopped working, so we were not able to monitor squalls.
Dealing with such a litany of problems between just the two of them was unknown territory, but Wendy says that while the situation did scare her, they were able to calmly work through and solve each issue.
“What the World ARC has given us – not just from the easy passages, but from the difficult passages – is the confidence that you could throw most stuff at us and we’d be OK,” David added. When they received the Division A 1st prize for the leg to Grenada, sailors across the fleet voiced their pride in Wendy for the progress she’d made.
For other couples taking on crew turned out to be a positive switch. Peter and Anissa Pappas, from Wyoming, USA, had never sailed any overnight passages with just themselves aboard their Amel Super Maramu 2000 Callisto before signing up to the rally. Anissa describes herself as a very inexperienced sailor, but they sailed from Grenada to Cape Town double-handed.
“I was always worried if we were going to hit somebody. I never felt totally comfortable with that. I always felt that if something is going to happen, it’s going to happen on my watch.” She says she would frequently wake her husband for a second opinion.
But when one crewmember who had been sailing on another boat found himself without a berth for the leg from Cape Town, the Pappas’s made a snap decision to invite him to join them.
With an extra hand they were soon able to carry more sail area, enjoying having the 52ft ketch flying along under four or five sails, including two spinnakers and a staysail.
“Two was tough, but we did it. But for couples I would say keep an extremely open mind about bringing crew aboard.
Having a floating pool of experienced crew became an invaluable resource for some boats. American retirees Ruud and Laurie Bosman on the Hylas 54 Blue Pearl had originally only planned to sail the first half of the rally.
Both aged 71, the pair never wanted to sail double-handed and had organised crew for the Pacific legs, but no further. “Because we had never planned to do the whole circumnavigation we had made no plans beyond French Polynesia,” Ruud explains.
When Laurie returned home to spend a few weeks with family, they invited other ARC crew aboard, some staying for the entire second half of the circumnavigation.
Many of the World ARC crew strategically took themselves away during long stopovers: diving in Australia, going on land tours, or even climbing Kilimanjaro during the fleet’s visit to South Africa.
For those who did sail as a couple, how they divided the roles often reflected home life. Peter and Wendy on Mischief, and Dan and Agnes on Smoke & Roses, had both worked together so were used to spending extended periods of time with each other. Other couples, where one had spent much of the marriage putting in long hours at the office, had a bigger adjustment to make.
Some had chosen to time their world tour with natural breaks in their children’s education. Mark Chatfield on the Grand Soleil 56 Mad Monkey sailed with his wife Helen as well as his adult son Josh, timing it between Josh finishing school and starting university: “I worked as a sales director, with constant travel. So during the week, his schooling and upbringing, I didn’t see a lot of him – for me this trip was predominantly to get to know him better.”
The majority of boats divided roles along fairly traditional ‘pink and blue’ job lines when in port, with the women in charge of provisioning and domestics, the men in charge of repairs and systems. At sea the roles tended to shift slightly. Domestic jobs were more frequently shared underway, although the majority of ‘skippers in charge’ were the male partners.
Most couples ate an evening meal together before settling into some kind of night watch system, the most popular being a three or four hours on/off pattern, before reconvening for the 10am radio-net. Many adopted a much more fluid watch pattern during the day, each taking naps whenever needed. Several skippers took longer night watches than their partners, but would set alarms to allow 15-20 minute naps on open ocean legs.
Every couple emphasised that while the World ARC schedule was intense, and some stages had been very challenging, the rewards were hugely worth it.
“It’s been pretty incredible,” recalls Laurie Bosman from Blue Pearl. “Things like going through the Panama Canal, in your own boat – I get teary when I think about it. Those early mornings where you’ve got the sun rising and the moon setting, and nothing but you, water, sun and moon. You think you’ve died and gone to heaven.”
“It changes you as a person,” said Wendy Tipton. “You have to improvise, shop for what you can get. We went home for Christmas and I was looking at all my bits and pieces and realised you don’t need it. I’ve been quite humbled by how people actually do live and how happy they are with so little.”
Her husband David added: “If you have the opportunity to do it, you’d be mad not to.”
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