There are certain advantages and disadvantages to sailing around the world with a rally versus going it alone.

Advantages:

1. The best thing about the ARC is the camaraderie. Sharing an adventure like this leads to close bonding among the participants. We have made what I am sure will prove to be life long friends.
2. There is a certain sense of security knowing that there is potential help no more than about eight hours away. That may seem like a long time, but after a number of days at sea the boats get fairly well spread out. It’s not unusual to be 30 miles or more from the closest boat and rather rare to be less than 10 miles.
3. The ARC participants for the most part are highly experienced sailors and sharing knowledge over the radio or via Starlink/WhatsApp or in person while in port is a great advantage. The knowledge pool is vast.
4. Checking in and out countries is considerably easier with ARC. The ARC facilitators arrive at the destination port several days before the fleet. They coordinate with the local authorities to make customs and immigration go smoothly. Prior to joining the ARC we had been to several countries where the process took many days. With the ARC it is done in hours.

Disadvantages (the pace, the pace, the pace)

1. The pace doesn’t allow for much time to get familiar with the destinations. We are typically in and out of any one place in a week or less. This adventure is truly about the journey, not the destination.
2. The pace makes maintaining the boat challenging. We are pushing these boats hard and things are constantly breaking. Arrival at a port means at least a couple of days and often more of boat repairs. After that we provision, and off we go.
3. The pace forces us to start on passages when the weather conditions are less than ideal. We have definitely left ports in conditions that we would never have considered leaving in if we were sailing on our own. We have been through weather that most sailors will never experience (or want to). It has given us confidence and made us better, and safer, sailors.

Overall, the World ARC Rally was the right decision for us.