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March 2022

Finishing the ARC

By Champagne HippyNo Comments

19 December 14:12 Champagne Hippy crossed the finish line in Rodney Bay, St Lucia. The 13th boat to cross the line and the first Oyster to finish. We had done it, against the odds. Just three months earlier the boat still had no engine room or saloon, or any of the power units installed. In fact the keel only went on the last weekend of August and the boat only hit the water for the first time since the rebuild on 4th October, just 7 weeks before the start of the ARC.

It was a success for everyone involved, from the build team back at the yard in Essex, to the crew who raced it across the Atlantic.

Champagne Hippy is now on charter in the Caribbean for the season (drop me a line if you are interested in chartering her). I then fly back out to Antigua to pick her up and sail her back to the Mediterranean to go on charter there for the summer.

We will be back for the ARC 2020 and we still have places (again drop me a line if you are interested), but for me it is back racing on Panther in the Caribbean 600 and the Heineken Cup in St Martin.

Getting ready for another Trans-Atlantic

By Champagne HippyNo Comments

Well here we go again, getting ready to fly out to St Lucia to join Champagne Hippy for a final trip back across the Atlantic before she goes to a new owner in Majorca.

It looks like there will only be 5 of us onboard, Myself, Jake as first mate and (brilliant) engineer, Lee and Guy and we will have Kat looking after us on the crossing.

This may well be my last crossing on Hippy as the new owner currently has no plans to take her back to the Caribbean. In the meantime I have my own boat to deal with – Karelia, a Farr designed beneteau 50 which is currently in Greece. More on this as the story onboard unfolds.

If you want to follow us across the Atlantic on Champagne Hippy, I will as always have my trusty Yellow Brick satellite tracker running. We plan to leave around 17/18 April and it should take about 3 weeks.

To follow us go to http://my.yb.tl/alexalley