SPECIAL REPORT

HELEN FRETTER ON THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY ARC

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This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, and Yachting World has been there since the start

Back in 1985 Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street, Mikhail Gorbachev in the Kremlin, and a world-famous pop star was airlifted off his capsized yacht when Drum belonging to Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran fame - turned over during the Fastnet Race. It was, in every respect, a very different time.

That autumn sailor and author Jimmy Cornell arrived in the Canary Islands on assignment for Yachting World (in those days a print magazine only, of course), tasked with finding sailors about to set off on an Atlantic crossing. Cornell had four years previously completed his own circumnavigation with his young family while also recording radio content for the BBC World Service. He not only found plenty of sailors to interview, but realised he had stumbled across a whole community.

"I was contributing articles based on our recently completed world voyage to Yachting World when [then editor] Dick Johnson asked me to fly to Las Palmas in Gran Canaria to interview some skippers on their expectations before the Atlantic Crossing - and then fly to the Caribbean and try to find some of the same skippers to interview them on completion of the Atlantic passage," Cornell recalled.

"However, while I was in Las Palmas I was seeing five or six boats leaving the marina every day, setting off on the long voyage across the Atlantic, the waving and tears of friends... and the following day witnessing the same scene again, I decided that surely somebody should get all these separate people into one group motivated by a sense of togetherness?