SAILING ACROSS THE ATLANTIC Off the Beaten Path – 8 LESSONS LEARNED, a 1,690 nautical mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean from Mindelo, Sao Vicente, Cape ...

Closed Captions (CC):
a few years ago when you first told me

that we should cross an ocean in a

sailboat I thought it was crazy I

thought it was more likely that I would

walk on the moon one day and now that

we've done it I know it's crazy I would

say crossing an ocean is always a

highlight for every sailor and no matter

how much you plan and prepare for it,

it's always about facing the unexpected

in this episode we take you on a 1690

nautical mile journey across the

Atlantic Ocean from Mindelo, Sao Vicente,

Cape Verde, Africa to Cabedelo, Brazil

South America our original plan was to

take the easy

milk run route crossing the Atlantic

with the trade winds and heading due

west to the Caribbean. But that's not

what we did. we left the popular

tradewind route and went off the beaten

path. This gave us extra challenges of

sailing in the doldrums, facing brutal

heat and daily thunderstorms

No sailing passage is perfect. We did a

lot of things right but we also learned

some valuable lessons along the way.

Passage planning is always very

important but it becomes more essential

the longer the passage. The longer the

passage the more vulnerable you are to

weather changes or unexpected events. A

weather forecast beyond five days is an

illusion and most likely you will not be

able to escape approaching weather

systems anyway so good weather routing

is the key to long passages. In our case

the main question was where to cross the

the doldrums so the ITCZ

which is their official name are

characterized by brutal heat low winds

and furious thunderstorms. All this

doesn't sound too inviting so you will

try to cross them as fast you can

Here's the next challenge, the shape

of the prevailing winds on the other

side if you cross them too far east you

risk to be in them very long if you

cross them too far west you might see

strong headwinds on the other side we

decided to head Southwest first until we

reached 29 degrees west then headed due south

across the equator at 29 or 30 degrees

west and then continued south west to

Brazil. All this played out very well for

us we had a few days of little wind but

always had enough to keep moving

Also our navigation equipment worked out

really well we have a Raymarine system

worked flawless and we download GRIB data

using our reading

go predict went offshore from time to

time we took a noon siding with a

sextant to train our celestial

navigation skills. I think the

strategy worked out very well and we

would do it the same way again. Our

second noon shot of the Sun and did the

math and we should be at 13 degrees six

minutes north and 2800 degrees west GPSS

we are 90 degrees north and 2775 west

this is just a difference of seven miles

not too bad something yesterday was 30 something miles hey yeah

getting there

we also learned that we need to make

some upgrades to our natural power

resources. Maybe apart from space there is no place you depend more on yourself

than in the middle of an ocean

self-sufficiency is key. When it comes to

energy and spares as far as tools

and spares are concerned we never felt

that we were over or under equipped

energy however always was a scarce

resource. Our wind generator made some

contribution but the performance curve

was let's say maybe a little optimistic

also in the trade winds when you have

the wind from behind on the long

downwind passage it doesn't produce a

lot of energy either. Also the solar

panels did not meet our expectations the

position turned out to be covered by the

shade of the sails most the time so we had to

operate the our gasoline

generator almost every day to charge our

batteries so in Brazil we will add at

least 500 on solar power system to

become self-sufficient. okay so it's Day 4 Monday

February 11 and the first day we have a

little wind a little means we have

three bf straight downwind we're

actually making four plus knots

which is a lot compared to the one and a

half to two and a half knots that we

made the last couple of days so I hope

we are making some time that we lost

some last days yeah so we've got the mizzen sail up, the wind

generator is moving finally it was not

for a while

there was literally no wind and what else

we got going on with the sails out here

you know we have a wing a wing

configuration with a Genoa on the

starboard side and the mainsail on the

port side as you can see we don't have a

lot of swell so we don't have a lot of

movement we don't meet boom out the Genoa

we also don't need cutter sail to help us soften the blows. Its a good configuration downwind.

our next waypoint straight downwind so

yeah that's all we go okay good

after four days of barely moving, going

about one and a half to two have knots

we finally have wind and we are now

flying at a good five and a half sometimes six

and half knots and it's really fun

finally making some ground. Day 5

I brought 12 books on board but I don't

think I was properly prepared for just

how much downtime we would have

so it's been a pretty pleasant passage for

me I like the smooth waters I did have

two very brief bouts of seasickness but

I've refused to take the seasick

medicine and you know I've been fine

so we've mostly just been relaxing I am

on my second book almost finished with

my second book so I'm hoping I have

enough books on board to keep me

entertained out here but it's nice

I like it

the sun's shining bright today and the

dogs seem to be enjoying it and it's

nice so far it's taking us a little

longer than we thought

but that's okay I've read every book

that I brought on board so now the only

book left me to read is the Sailing

maintenance manual so lesson learned

next time we have a passage like this I

bring a few more books. Right, Cap'n Jack?

one thing we did right was with our

provisioning we brought along almost 600

liters of water and only used about half

of that our fresh vegetables lasted

about a week and we managed to have

fresh fruit all the way to the end we

just need to learn a few more recipes

crossing the equator was a huge

milestone

Goodbye North, hello South! We are officially across the Equator!

we did it right

we asked Neptune for safe passage passed

our exam took our vows and made our

sacrifices. Even the Sea Dogs

participated in the ceremony. Make your

sacrifice. That was really a

true sacrifice for them Sea Dogs

do your vow to protect your ship your

crew and your captain on all seven seas

then if yes eat this treat. if no, throw

this treat overboard

we were christened with equatorial

waters and celebrated this rite of

passage for all sailors. The first

ringing of the ship's Bell in the

southern hemisphere the blazing heat

became our biggest challenge on this

passage

it's so HOT! We struggle to find any

relief from the heat. I just can't tell you what I would give for one cube of ice!

Just one cube of ice. I would be so happy. But it's really beautiful and we are getting close

It's been 187 days since we departed from Stralsund. We are now across the Atlantic. We see land. After 15 days at sea, HELLO BRAZIL!

sometimes your worst night at sea is the

night you spend at Anchorage when we

arrived at the Anchorage in Noronha,

I didn't like it in reality it was much

less protected than you might think from

the charts. It was completely opened to

the swell and the better protected area

was all taken by local boats. Also taking

into account the drastic wind shift

during the frequent thunderstorms there

was only partial protection from the

winds - it took hours until finally the

anchor would hold and stop dragging however the pounding of the high swells forced

us to go on anchor watch all night long.

After a brutal night at Anchorage we

weighed our options of whether to stay

another night or get back to sea where

we could feel more safe. But first we

took a little time to enjoy the

beautiful weather and scenery of this

gorgeous remote island

as we wanted to stay another day to

explore the island I explored other

Anchorage's with our dinghy but when I

checked the swell forecast I decided to

leave before nightfall a swell forecast

predicted two and a half to three meters

swell for the next night. In the meantime

the anchor was wedged into the rock so

well we couldn't break free not manually

not using the electrical windlass not

using the engine so eventually I had to

take the decision to cut the anchor and

leave it behind which made the already

expensive Anchorage in Noronha even more

expensive

tropical squalls can happen at any time

on an ocean crossing no matter how good

the weather forecast and how little the

likelihood of storms in your

your season preparing for an ocean

crossing also means preparing for storms

as one of my good sailor friends used to

say at one point Neptune will get you

with your pants down however here we are

talking more about squalls and tropical

thunderstorms than major depressions

because the ITCZ is notorious for

low winds few thunderstorms that can

last anything from two hours to an

entire night they come with rain so much

you can't tell where the ocean surface

begins and wind speeds that easily

exceed 50 knots while during the day

you can see them coming and get prepared, at night hell breaks loose faster than you

can spell your first name

so at nightfall we reduced our sail area

which is pity at the low winds loosing

some more speed but necessary to not

jeopardize the boat this turned out to

be good strategy for us

we just saw land and we're about to be

in Brazil - mainland Brazil - so we have

been and sea, this is our 20th day at sea

it's been 19 like full around-the-clock

days but this is the 20th actual day at sea

and this is the whole of our trash we

did a really great job with our trash

tasks so we use these huge 8 litre

bottles of water and we refilled other

bottles the smaller bottles from this

water and we stuffed all our trash in

there we and so we feel two of these

this one's really full it's really

packed just to the brim but it's

amazing how much trash we got in

these bottles and then we did have one

big trash bag and it's got mostly cans

and bottles but also our waste

paper from our diaper Genie which also

was a lifesaver because all of our waste

paper went in there and there was no

smell it was all protected and we just

empty it out in here and then this is

one small bag

that just has mostly crushed up

soda and water bottles we

tried to smash as much as we could and I

also have all our cans and

glass and plastic bottles

that's trash

for two and a half weeks almost three

weeks of trash so I think we did

pretty well but as soon as we get to

shore we'll be happy to get this off the

boat

We are not the first sailors to ever cross an ocean and we certainly won't be the last but to me

this experience was truly special and I

feel like we really accomplished

something after the crossing is

before the crossing so we were working

on the next challenge