When it comes to regrets, I have none. But on all my voyages the golden rule has been to know what NOT to do. I learned that valuable lesson on my very first day on a sailing yacht.

At the time I was working at the BBC World Service and the BBC yacht club had a 40ft sloop called Ariel based on the Hamble. I signed up for a sailing weekend along with a friend from television news called Charlie McLaren. We travelled down on Friday, met the captain and sailed to the Isle of Wight, planning to spend the night at Yarmouth. As we neared the island, the captain told Charlie, who was the mate for the weekend, to get the crew to lower the sails.

‘At any given moment there are 10,000 boats undertaking a long voyage.’ Photo: Dan Bower/World ARC

Suddenly there was a loud crunch and Ariel came to an abrupt halt. Even I could tell that we’d run aground. The boat was heeling over at an angle and rocking in the swell. Then, while lowering the mainsail, the wildly swinging boom hit the other crew hard on the head, the violent blow splitting his scalp open.

With blood gushing all over the place, we took him below and put a towel around his head. Charlie offered to make him a cup of tea, but as he was pouring the water into a mug, the grounded yacht gave a sudden lurch and the boiling water all splashed into his sea boots.

Screaming like mad, Charlie ripped his boots off, yet by the time he’d pulled off his woollen socks both legs were already covered in blisters.

With the situation now bordering on the desperate, and no prospect of getting afloat on our own, the captain hailed a passing motoryacht and asked them to pull us off, which they did. He then contacted the Coastguard by VHF and was told to head back to Portsmouth, where the hospital had an A&E department.

Classic cruising in an Atlantic crossing with the ARC. Photo: Leonardo Pazzaglia/ARC

We motored across the busy Solent waterway, and saw an ambulance with its blue lights flashing waiting for us. I bade goodbye to the captain and took the train back to London. “How was your weekend?” asked my wife Gwenda when I got home.

“Very interesting. I think I’ve learned a lot,” I told her. “Not much about sailing, but a lot about what NOT to do on a boat.”

Over the years I came to realise that learning what not to do fully accords with the ruling principles of voyage planning. The primary objective is to plan a route or passage that takes best advantage of prevailing winds and favourable seasons. Essentially that’s about always being in the right place at the right time, or, better still, not being in the wrong place at the wrong time!

According to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, ‘Voyage planning is common sense’. The definition of common sense is the basic level of practical knowledge and judgement that we all need to help us live and travel in a reasonable and safe way.

Cornell has sailed many ways around the world, from the Northwest Passage (inset) to the Antarctic. Photo: Jimmy Cornell

Avoiding pitfalls

For the last 35 years I have kept a record of the global movement of sailing yachts based on the number of arrivals in key locations around the world (see full feature in the October 2023 issue of Yachting World and at yachtingworld.com).

Worldwide it is estimated that at any given moment there are around 10,000 boats undertaking a long voyage. The vast majority of those adventures have a happy ending. Bearing in mind the many challenges that sailors on ambitious voyages have to overcome, it is quite remarkable how there are relatively few failures.

South Pacific sailing paradise – Mo’orea in French Polynesia. Photo: Cavan Images/Alamy

From the cases of unhappy or abandoned voyages that have come to my knowledge over the years, and from conversations with owners and crews, I narrowed down the most common factors that contribute to the ‘failure’ of a voyage. These are: the boat itself; problems with the crew; an inability to be self-sufficient; inadequate funds; or having the wrong attitude to life at sea.

These are such important matters for anyone planning a long voyage that I conducted several surveys among long distance sailors, as well as participants in my rallies, to find out more about those causes.

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Managing finances

Applying those criteria to my own experience, the choice of my various boats has been generally right, and every one of them fulfilled my expectations. But when it came to the financial aspect, the early part of my first voyage was quite difficult as we’d spent all our money on the boat, and had absolutely no savings.

However, although I had resigned from my job at the BBC, I was asked to send back reports on any subject of interest that I might come across. Most of my reports were sent to a programme called Hello Tomorrow, which dealt with developing countries. The programme was produced by the BBC World Service and sent to radio stations around the world. Often an interview that I’d recorded at a previous stop had already been broadcast in the country where we had just arrived.

Cornell at the wheel of Aventura Zero, the bespoke Outremer 45 he planned to sail round the world using only electric power without having to rely on any fossil fuels. Photo: Jimmy Cornell

This made my task much easier and I had no problem finding new material everywhere: visiting an experimental farming station in the jungle of Panama; the Potato Institute in the Peruvian Andes; or a tea plantation in the highlands of Sri Lanka. Besides providing us with a modest, but regular income, my work provided an excellent opportunity to meet interesting people in every country we stopped.

The financial aspect of long-distance cruising is now very different from when it was still possible to do it on a limited budget. My advice on cruising budgets is to be prepared for the costs to be higher than expected, and to have recourse to some reserve funds in a serious emergency.

I’d also urge everyone to think carefully before making a clean break with shore life during the current economic uncertainty, creeping inflation and currency fluctuations. If possible, you should keep a shore base in case you are forced to change plans, whether for health or financial reasons, to have somewhere to return to.

Build routines

Sailing with our two young children on the first voyage imposed on us a certain discipline. We established a routine with regular meals, schoolwork, rest periods and watches, a pattern that continued even when I was not sailing with my family.

Crew compatibility and their attitude to the voyage are vital for a stress-free adventure. Photo: Sebastian Gylling/ARC

There were other rules that became routine, such as always checking the anchor with a mask if we were spending any length of time in an anchorage. Some of my later crew found my insistence on a regular routine as pedantic and at odds with their expectations of a cruising life. In most cases, they had joined me for a limited time and were looking forward to a nice and enjoyable vacation.

They were irritated by such onboard routines as keeping regular watches, being quiet when the off watch crew were sleeping, or not having unlimited use of fresh water. I realised that it was not the routines they could not accept, but the concept of discipline.

Stay flexible

Having done all my early sailing at a time when there were no weather forecasts available on ocean passages, my offshore tactics had to be based on the actual conditions being experienced. This is how I learned the importance of being flexible when it came to route planning.

Seizing a potentially promising opportunity had always been my attitude and this is how our planned three-year world voyage on the first Aventura ended up lasting twice as long. Looking back on that voyage, and those on the following four Aventuras, I realise that some of the most memorable highlights of my sailing were thanks to those unforeseen detours.

What it’s all about – incredible sailing in the world’s most spectacular locations. Photo: Oyster World Rally

Having transited the Panama Canal, rather than take the direct tradewind route to Tahiti, on the insistence of our children Doina and Ivan we turned left to visit Paddington Bear’s original home of Peru.

From there we continued to Easter Island and Pitcairn, two of the most interesting islands in the world that we would have otherwise missed.

A chance encounter with an Englishman on Easter Island led to an even longer detour and extended our South Pacific sojourn by at least one year. When I told him I was a journalist and working for the BBC, he asked whether we were planning to sail to the Ellice Islands for the forthcoming independence celebrations. He painted a very tempting picture of the planned festivities, and I was hooked on the idea.

So rather than continue west, as planned, towards Australia, from Fiji we turned north and witnessed the birth of Tuvalu, the smallest independent nation in the world. During the independence festivities, I met Ieremia Tabai, chief minister of the neighbouring Gilbert Islands, and future president of Kiribati, who invited us to come to their own celebrations the following year.

By now we were so seduced by the South Pacific and its people that we decided to spend as long as possible there instead of rushing west to complete the second half of our circumnavigation.

From Tuvalu, we sailed south to New Zealand to avoid the cyclone season. The following year we returned to the tropics, and from Tonga sailed north, crossed the equator and eventually made landfall at Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati.

Aventura III at Romanche Glacier in Chile. Photo: Jimmy Cornell

Similarly, after the launch of Aventura III in 1998, my planned round the world voyage started with an expedition to Antarctica, accompanied by my son, Ivan But on our return we decided that rather than continue west, we’d sail north all the way to Alaska.

The unplanned detour started with a leisurely cruise through the spectacular Chilean fjordland, a wonderland of ever-changing scenery, with sparkling glaciers, tumbling waterfalls, and countless sheltered anchorages. On a stretch of 600 miles, there was not one single settlement, not even a house, and we met only four cruising boats and about as many fishing boats.

From Chile we continued to Easter Island and Pitcairn, both of which we’d visited 22 years previously. But we took our time to call at places that we’d missed in the past: the Austral and Line Islands, as well as Hawaii and Alaska. Aventura III’s tortuous world voyage was eventually completed 12 years later.

My willingness to change plans and take detours is probably explained by my being open-minded whenever I am faced with an option that looks challenging but has the potential of richer rewards.

Pick crew carefully

After that first voyage, whenever possible I sailed with Gwenda, or my children Doina or Ivan. When they could not join me, I had no choice but to take on crew. It was not long before I discovered that the crew problems I’d witnessed on other boats were now affecting me as well.

On a few occasions, I was disappointed to discover that even old friends behaved differently on the boat than ashore. Some of the worst were those who had their own boats and some offshore experience but were unable to accept my role of captain. This sad experience was obviously not unusual, and I realised that’s the reason why the majority of cruising boats are sailed by couples on their own.

Cornell and the first Aventura depart London in 1975. Photo: Jimmy Cornell

There must be some truth in Hemingway’s advice that “one should only sail with people you love”. The risk of having problems with occasional crew is virtually impossible to avoid because in most cases they happen after the passage has started.

This is one of the reasons why I always advised participants in the ARC to set an initial course to the Caribbean that passed close to the Cape Verde islands, not only because they would encounter better winds from there on but mainly because it gave them the opportunity to stop and get rid of a difficult crew. It happened every year.

The right attitude

However, I’ve come to believe that the most important factor that can have a bearing on the success of a voyage is your attitude to the sea and sailing – and to cruising life in general.

Setting off on a life on the ocean is a major decision that entails a complete change of both lifestyle and mentality. Leaving on a sailing yacht just because it is a convenient way to see the world is not a good enough reason. I have come across this attitude among sailors I have met, some of whom were unwilling, or more often unable, to make the transition from a shore-based mindset to becoming a full-time sailor.

The cruising Cornells – Jimmy with wife, Gwenda, and children Doina and Ivan. Photo: Jimmy Cornell

This may not be a major problem on a relatively short voyage, such as sailing to the Caribbean and back, but can have serious consequences for those who leave on a longer journey of several years. The ultimate success of a voyage does not depend on the boat, finances or crew but on you and your attitude.

Having the right attitude is as difficult to define as having common sense. You either have it or you don’t. Life at sea can be difficult, uncomfortable, occasionally hard and dangerous. You must be physically in good shape and psychologically able to deal with the demands of a challenging existence. Before committing yourself to a long voyage, it would be advisable to do a short ocean passage to decide whether that’s the kind of life you’d enjoy.

In my 50 years of sailing I’ve met many outstanding people, and invariably what made them stand out was their attitude. What I most admired in them was their profound respect for the sea.

All-electric Aventura Zero. Photo: Jimmy Cornell

What they all had in common was that special mindset to embark on a long voyage, which required qualities such as courage, perseverance, determination and self-confidence. The fact that we live in an age when it is so much easier and safer to sail to the remotest parts of the world has not changed those requirements in any way.

Looking back on my eventful life, I realise above all how fortunate I am to have reached this age without having any regrets for the things I’ve not done. And that’s only because I have done everything that I always wanted.

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You don’t see Guyana as you approach it from the ocean, its low-lying coastline perfectly camouflaged against the hazy tropical horizon as the sun rises. And yet you sense it in so many other ways: the pungent petrichor of South American rainforest, the towering white thunderheads away in the distance, and even in the way the sea itself changes.

The deep blue of the Atlantic slowly gives way to beige, then caramel, and finally to rich chocolate-coloured waters. This is your sign that the swirling estuary of the mighty Essequibo River awaits.

Scouting for adventure

Sailing on Scout, our 2021 Garcia Exploration 45, we’d spent the last year travelling down from Maine to the Caribbean – taking in the east coast of the US, the Bahamas, and the Turks and Caicos, before putting her through her paces along the Thorny Path towards the Windward Islands. A few months of island hopping later, we found ourselves anchored south of 12°N, sitting out the first part of the 2023 hurricane season.

The eastern Caribbean is famous for its cruising, but sometimes it feels like everyone else knows it too. We’d appreciated the safety of buddy boats, good charts, and well-trodden paths, but by October Grenada’s busy anchorages were starting to feel a little too familiar and we were itching to get back out to the deep blue. So we hatched a plan for a radical change of scene.

The Pearce’s Garcia Exploration 45 Scout in bluer Caribbean waters. Photo: James and Jayne Pearce

With the hurricane season still in effect, we were limited to heading south. Tobago would be a comfortable overnight passage… but where then? Our insurance company wasn’t enamoured with the idea of us visiting Venezuela, so our eyes moved further down the chart and rested on Guyana. That looked perfect for a month’s getaway!

It would be a solid multi-day bluewater passage in both directions, and would give us a glimpse of the vastness of continental South America. Best of all, it looked like we’d be able to sail upriver once we got there, giving us a chance to try out Garcia’s famous lifting centreboard design and Scout’s resulting 3ft 9in (1.14m) draught.

There were just a few problems: we didn’t know anything about the country; no-one we knew had ever sailed there; and we weren’t even sure if there was anywhere to go if we did!

Caribbean in South America

Geographically, Guyana is located on the north-eastern coast of South America between Venezuela and Suriname. Culturally, however, it considers itself firmly Caribbean, and boasts a complex, diverse, and sometimes sorrowful history, shaped by centuries of indigenous culture, colonial rule and immigration.

The earliest inhabitants were Amerindian Arawaks and Caribs. The Spanish first glimpsed the country in the late 15th century, but it was the Dutch in the 17th century who established permanent settlements, importing enslaved Africans to develop plantations for sugar, cotton, and tobacco. The British next took control, followed by an influx of indentured labourers from India, China, and Portugal. The historical foundation for the complex ethnic makeup of today’s Guyana runs deep.

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The country’s fortunes recently changed dramatically with the discovery of significant offshore oil reserves, bringing the hope of economic prosperity to the otherwise poor country – though also leading to much debate over environmental sustainability issues.

The first leg of our adventure led us from Grenada to Tobago. Heading south-east in this part of the world requires some patience, and we waited to ensure there were no likely hurricane risks, and for the tradewinds to swing far enough north to offer a comfortable point of sail.

Even with good winds, however, this was our first experience of the Equatorial Current that runs along the northern coast of South America and up towards Barbados. It took at least a knot off our usual speed and required a much closer reach than we’d expected.

Tobago was the perfect stopover. Mountainous slopes of rainforest tower above the deep, protected anchorage of Charlotteville, and its sleepy quiet was a welcome contrast after the hustle and bustle of Grenada.

Local ferries provided a useful visual guide as to where the deepest water was to be found in the river. Photo: James and Jayne Pearce

Knowledge of the Equatorial Current fresh in our minds, we knew the 300-mile passage to Guyana would likely not be a quick one. A three-day window of lighter north-easterly winds opened up and, although the thunderstorm capability was forecast to be high, we figured it was our best chance at a feasible point of sail. We also wanted to keep relatively far out from the Venezuelan coast to avoid any unwanted attention and the stronger currents.

Our strategy was to depart pre-dawn, motor-sail 50 miles due east from Tobago, then turn south-east, staying almost 100 miles offshore for most of the trip.

For the first two days, everything went to plan: an easy close reach with dolphins for company, and just a few gentle course changes to avoid squalls and sparse traffic. We spotted only one fishing boat as it circled its trolling grounds, easily visible on AIS, and with a friendly, waving crew.

On the last day of the passage, the 15-20 knot wind proved stronger than forecast, and we couldn’t resist making the most of it. The downside? We found ourselves barrelling towards the poorly charted (and shallowing) coastline, not at dawn as hoped, but in the darkest hours of midnight. Since we were relying on the morning’s 2m tide to enter safely over the bar into the mouth of the Essequibo river, we needed to kill some time.

Heading upriver towards Hurakabra. Photo: James and Jayne Pearce

The mighty Essequibo

Anchoring in the growing chop was out of the question so, bleary-eyed, we reefed the main and staysail, and spent a few hours beam-reaching up and down the coastline with our 9ft centreboard down. It was fast and sporty sailing, but in the pitch dark, just 15ft above a muddy estuarine shelf, and with the added challenge of avoiding a fleet of poorly-lit Guyanese shrimping boats, it wasn’t quite the relaxing end to the passage we’d expected.

We were happy to see the dawn, and lifted our centreboard to finally turn towards the wide mouth of the river that welcomed us.

Stretching over 600 miles, the Essequibo is the longest river in Guyana, running south from its Atlantic delta through the lowlands, meandering through dense virgin rainforest, and up into the mountainous interior. We hoped it would give us a taste of river exploration and an unusual cruising experience. When researching the trip, we discovered we were set to be only the second yacht to enter the river all year.

At its entrance, the river is so wide you can barely see land. Only once our sails were down, and we were safely over the shallow bar, did the morning light slowly reveal towering native trees lining the two shores of the estuary.
As we headed further in, they came into focus, the sounds of exotic tropical birds got louder, the brown of the water got richer and redder, and we started to glimpse small villages and homesteads populating the shoreline.

Exploring while anchored by Baganara Island. Photo: James and Jayne Pearce

Maybe it was the hypnotic drum of our engine after three days at sail, maybe it was the heavy, humid tropical air, or maybe it was our tiredness from the passage, but we sensed that even time itself seemed different here. Our new clock was the languorous ebb and flow of this vast tidal waterway, coupled with the diurnal pulse of the jungle and its fauna. Within an hour of entering the river, we were spellbound.

Into the rainforest

Heading south, the wide estuary soon became a braided delta. Numerous waterways wound between densely wooded islands, with evocative names like Kwatano, Akuraikuru, and Kukuritikuru. Showing 20ft or more, the depths of the channels seemed surprisingly safe, but we soon learned that the deeper water was often closer to the shore than in the calmer central parts where silty shoals formed. The muddy water is absolutely opaque, and apart from barely discernible changes in the surface eddies, identifying shallows was a real challenge.

Thankfully we’d discovered a couple of useful cruising guides for the Essequibo, one from Chris Doyle, and another by the RCC Pilotage Foundation. Both were almost 10 years old, but still provided invaluable route information, even though the charts of some shoals seemed to be drifting out of date.

As for Scout’s digital chart plotter, it seemed like many of its unreliable soundings were from a long-gone imperial era: we noticed Navionics proudly declare a ‘fresh water spring hereabouts’, text that sounded like it had probably originated from maps of a 19th century expedition.

Bartica is a frontier town on the very edge of the jungle. Photo: James and Jayne Pearce

Our first night’s anchorage was by the Lau Lau Islands, two uninhabited slivers of rainforest in the middle of the river, about 25 miles from the mouth. The holding was fantastic in what we presumed was thick mud, and we were thankful for it, since diving on the anchor without any visibility would certainly be in vain, and because we expected to swing dramatically with the current against the tide.

We had time to take the dinghy for a quick ride around the two islands, gunk-holing up little creeks, through mangroves, and deep under the rainforest canopy, surrounded by the most incredible cacophony of bird song and rainforest sounds. But the 6°N sunset crept up quickly on us, and we were lulled to sleep by the sound of the river rushing past the hull, and the evening calls of roosting parakeets and the howler monkeys on shore.

The next day, we pushed on upriver, winding our way from one bank to the other, trying to find the deepest channels. We were constantly accompanied by bright yellow butterflies from the shore, and the swallows that darted around the boat trying to catch them.

Unsurprisingly, all charted markers were absent, but the Doyle waypoints continued to give us a broad idea of where to go. Observing the route of the daily river ferry (which we were sure must draw more than us!) gave us the final clues we needed to pass between the shoals, promontories, and rusted hulls of river boats long-wrecked on the eastern shore.

Remains of the Dutch Fort at Kyk-Over-Al, once a colonial capital. Photo: James and Jayne Pearce

Our destination was the town of Bartica, at the confluence of the Mazaruni and Cuyuni rivers. This little mining town is about as far as you can navigate before shallow rocks, tight meanders, and raging rapids prevent further progress.

As a result, Bartica has a real frontier feel, its main purpose being a beachhead for transferring miners, goods, and digging equipment from river barges onto gigantic off-road trucks that push onwards into the interior. During the week, it’s an easy-going town, with life focusing around the vibrant fish and fruit market on the dock.

At the weekend, the miners return out of the jungle, their newfound gold, diamonds and bauxite in hand, ready to trade for cash. A pulsing bar and nightclub scene comes to life, allowing this melting pot of pioneers to let their hair down.

We anchored just off the docks in 15ft of water, with enough space to avoid the wash from the colourful wooden water taxis and local boat traffic. Many communities here have no road access, so small skiffs with big old Yamaha outboards serve as the transport of choice.

This far upriver, the tidal effects are lessened, but we quickly learned that giant afternoon thunderstorms pass over the river almost daily, gusting enough to move us around significantly. Fortunately, as the only yacht in the country, we had plenty of swing room.

Despite its position far upriver, Bartica is a port-of-entry, serving both river traffic like us and the refugees who cross the forested border from Venezuela. As we walked through town to the police station, which doubles conveniently as the immigration office, we heard a unique blend of music and languages: part Caribbean, part Indian, part Asian, part Hispanic, and part Amerindian.

Derelict colonial-style house. Photo: James and Jayne Pearce

Frontier adventures

For a few days we explored, stocking up on local fruit and vegetables, and failing at an aspirational attempt to hitch a ride on a truck to an interior gold mine. We instead decided to move Scout across to the western shore to the peace and seclusion of the Hurakabra River Resort. This lodge’s previous owner did much to promote the region to sailors prior to the pandemic, and though it’s now under new ownership, it remains a safe anchorage and welcoming destination for boats.

Caretaker Sherman provided local advice about the river, and showed us around the grounds. His wife, Lorinne, prepared wonderful local fare, with chicken kebabs and callaloo soup high on the list of memorable dishes. We hadn’t fancied making our own water from the muddy river, so were happy to be able to use the lodge’s showers and laundry, as well as top-up our rainwater supplies from the lodge’s tank.

Hubakabra served as a great base, nestled between river and rainforest, and a place to relax between our local adventures. For one excursion, we took Scout further up the Cuyuni-Mazaruni river system to anchor at Fort Kyk-Over-Al, a small island with an abandoned 17th century Dutch fort that was once the colony’s capital.

Still but muddy waters. Photo: James and Jayne Pearce

We headed over to Baganara Island, where the currents were light enough for a few days of jungle kayaking. For one very memorable night, we anchored behind Grass Islands, the roosting site for thousands of local parakeets. It was spectacular, watching and listening to them noisily returning home at sundown in pairs – though their equally noisy departure again at sunrise was less amusing.

Sherman and Lorinne were also kind enough to offer to watch over Scout if we left her. We took one of Bartica’s express water taxis back down the river to Parika, the main port on the delta, then from there it was an easy trip by road to Georgetown, the country’s capital, and a bustling city of yet more multicultural influences and contradictions. Old docks and seawalls flank once-elegant colonial residences and the crowded kaleidoscope of Stabroek market juxtaposes the stark white exterior of St George’s cathedral and glossy new western hotels.

Georgetown offered us the chance to make progress further inland. We took a light aircraft flight over the country towards its most southern region, Kaieteur. The journey was eye-opening, as we passed over the same untouched rainforest we’d seen from river level, and then over mining country, the scars of alluvial extraction obvious from the sky.

Spectacular 200m-high Kaieteur Falls. Photo: James and Jayne Pearce

Finally we approached the tall sandstone cliffs and flat-topped peaks of the Guiana Highlands and landed on a small airstrip at the head of a precipitous canyon. A short walk through the forest took us to the lip of the canyon for a highlight of the whole trip: a view of the majestic Kaieteur Falls tumbling 200m over the escarpment, and crashing down into the rainforest below. At full capacity it’s considered the tallest and most powerful single-drop waterfall in the world.

A country in flux

As we reluctantly departed Kaieteur National Park, we were struck how this magical but little-visited corner was representative of Guyana itself. It’s a wonderful gem of a country, but not well-known as an international destination beyond some limited and adventurous ecotourism.

On one hand, this was fabulous, allowing us to feel like we were really getting off the beaten path. On the other we hope more get a chance to experience this unique place for themselves before it changes.

Because there’s no doubt that Guyana is changing. The scale of the boom from the oil discoveries is astonishing, putting it on track to become one of the world’s largest oil producers within decades.

In the last few days of our trip, we felt the impact of this. No doubt in part because of the oil fields, neighbouring Venezuela scheduled a referendum on whether western Guyana was considered its own territory, a claim which would put Essequibo and the town of Bartica on the frontline of a disputed border. With the vote scheduled for the start of December, accompanied by some alarming rhetoric, we decided it was time to leave.

National pride in Bartica. Photo: James and Jayne Pearce

So we lifted Scout’s anchor from the ochre waters and started our journey back towards the sea. With both the river’s current and tides in our favour – not to mention a proven track we could follow in reverse – the Essequibo carried us, like a 4-knot magic carpet, back towards the Atlantic.

We crossed the sand bar, passed the shrimping boats, and watched the water imperceptibly change from orange towards the deep blue of the ocean. Just as subtly as they’d appeared into view a month earlier, the shores of the country slipped out of sight behind us.

A few hours later, Scout was romping downwind towards the Caribbean proper, with the Equatorial Current now in her favour, and her sails up again at last.

Both of us were pensive on the fast and uneventful three-day passage. While quietly happy to be heading back to some sort of cruising normality in St Vincent and the Grenadines (where we certainly weren’t going to be the only yacht in the country), our thoughts were tinged with the sadness of knowing that we’d reached the end of a truly magical experience. Guyana had been an unforgettable adventure, which has left an indelible mark on our cruising souls.

• Since the Pearces’ trip, the political situation between Venezuela and Guyana has calmed, with diplomatic discussions reducing much of the tension that was present in the region at the end of 2023.

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post Exploring Guyana’s mighty Essequibo River by boat appeared first on Yachting World.

Personal preparations and sailing skills are still the biggest part of planning to sail around the world.  Knowledge and competence takes the stress out of situations, which is more fun for you and the crew.

That doesn’t mean you need to be a seasoned old salt, but you do need to invest time gaining some sea miles and learning about maintenance and systems (or take on some professional crew).

On 1 February 2024, Skyelark II nosed her bow through the Panama Canal’s final Miraflores Lock, and became the first yacht of this year’s World ARC fleet to enter the Pacific Ocean.

It’s now an entire decade since we first set off westward from the Caribbean to sail around the world. For myself and my wife, Em, the World ARC in 2014 was the culmination of six years of preparation and planning, working towards that dream – and the honeymoon we had promised ourselves.

Admittedly, our main hurdles were mainly financial—in our 20s, there was first the challenge of buying and equipping a cruising boat, then getting funding to how to sail around the world.

Our solution was to take paying guests, and as charter skippers (check out adventuresailing.com) we were not typical of the owners on such a rally.

Photo: Edward Penagos/WCC

Back in 2014 we also wrote a series of articles and created accompanying videos (Bluewater Sailing Techniques) with Yachting World.

The series of instructional features and accompanying short videos on bluewater cruising focused on skippering skills and preparations.

They covered both the human elements on how to keep a happy ship, such as watchkeeping and provisioning, to the practical skills needed to keep both boat and crew safe, such as dealing with squalls, navigating tricky coral passes, and recovering a man overboard.

Before we headed back into the Pacific again, this time departing with the World ARC 2024, for both nostalgia and research purposes I revisited the Bluewater Techniques series to see how it holds up and whether it’s still relevant.

With the benefit of hindsight (Em and I now have 100,000 more miles under the keel and two more Pacific crossings), I wanted to see how much had changed and whether the challenges of sailing around the world were still the same.

On re-reading I’m pleased to see that the techniques we suggested then are still valid, and the articles are certainly worth looking at whether you are dreaming of – or indeed actually going – to sail around the world.

The videos perhaps aren’t as slick as the current proliferation of sailing YouTube channels, but they get the message across – and I am pleased to say my fish filleting skills have since improved!

Dan and Em Bower are sailing in the World ARC aboard their 62ft Oyster Skyelark II. Photo: James Mitchell/WCC

But, financial considerations aside, how much preparation is needed to sail around the world?

What are the obstacles to heading off around the world safely and enjoyably? And how can you plan to overcome them in 2024?

The following are my top considerations…

Human elements

Cruising is booming and the community reflects this influx of newcomers – it was great to see how many owners of boats that crossed the Atlantic in the most recent ARC were just a few years into sailing.

They went out, bought a boat, and they made it. The pandemic seems to have spurred people on to make the dream come true, blow the kids’ inheritance and get out and do it right now.

Main: be sure you’re confident in your knowledge and competence, particularly in maintenance and systems. This is the start of the 2024/25 Oyster World Rally in Antigua. Photo: James Mitchell/WCC

Sailing the Pacific – and beyond – is more challenging, not so much the sailing itself but the lack of access to services, parts and help. You need to be self reliant and with today’s complex boats there are a lot of systems to learn.

This takes us on to communication – particularly Starlink, which has made cruising so much less remote.

Now you can get access to information to help solve problems as they occur: perhaps learning how to diagnose a problem with an electrical circuit on YouTube, making WhatsApp video calls with a supplier’s technical support department, or being able to have real time access to telemedicine in an emergency.

This is the first year Starlink has become truly widespread: almost all of the cruising boats I meet now have Starlink installed.

While it’s not a substitute for seamanship and knowing your boat, the ability to research problems or call for assistance does flatten the learning curve for the more technically shy.

Advice from cruising communities might be a more reliable indication of safe anchorages than navigation software in poorly charted areas. Photo: Dan Bower

What Starlink has proven excellent for is sharing knowledge and managing difficulties at sea, and as a mass communication tool it’s made SSB obsolete.

Several ocean ‘incidents’ have been quickly coordinated by always-on-satellite systems that allow messenger apps to work all the time.

We all get out of our comfort zone sometimes, and I’m not condoning complacency, but when going offshore having access to information can matter.

For things like telemedicine I’d argue it’s almost negligent not to have quick, reliable internet connection available.

That said, like any emergency system you don’t have to use it and for us, and many other sailors, the joy of being offshore is the ability to disconnect from news and land life.

Gearing up to sail around the world

It feels like there are more newer boats, and bigger yachts plying the world’s oceans.

An explosion of performance catamarans, aluminium expedition yachts and luxury monohulls now swell the fleets of the sailing rallies.

Many of those new yachts have been specified for ocean sailing since they were built, and come fitted with essentials that 10 years ago were still ‘luxury’ items.

Watermakers, solar panels, hydro generators and lithium batteries that can run air conditioning units – life at sea is becoming a little closer to life at home.

When we changed from our classic 1982-built Skye 51 to a modern Oyster 62, Skyelark II, there were a lot of new systems to understand, particularly given the complexity of hydraulic sail handling and the size of the electrical systems required to cope with all of the loads.

In preparation to sail around the world we went through the recommended 10-year maintenance checks from Oyster which involve major overhauls of all systems.

This is quite straightforward as it’s well documented, and it’s a great time to get to know the boat and understand what you can do yourself or what needs specialist skills.

Round the world cruising places a lot of strain on a boat – exhaustive maintenance checks will mitigate against failures. Photo: Ugo Fonolla/Oyster

These are exhaustive projects which need to be budgeted for, but we see pre-emptive maintenance as an investment.

Regardless of whether you bought new, or refitted an older yacht, you still need to invest time and effort into understanding the systems you have on board.

You need to ensure you have the spares and tools to fix things, or the ability and willingness to live without them, if and when things go wrong, rather than spend cruising time waiting for non-essentials to be repaired in remote places.

The rise in renewable energy sources, increased efficiencies, and the bigger areas available on larger yachts on which to put solar arrays, has made cruising without a genset more realistic.

Since smaller generators often produce the biggest headaches while cruising, reducing dependency on them does seem to be the way to go.

This has been coupled with a rise in gas-less galleys, of which I am a big fan, both for safety and reducing the hassle of sourcing LPG in different countries.

With all these systems you have to consider spare parts and, for the unfixable problems, redundancy – whether that’s having a second source of power, emergency food that can be ready without cooking, figuring out how to raise the anchor without the windlass, or towing the yacht into port with a tender.

All are likely scenarios that need thinking through in advance to sail around the world.

For example, our solution for losing the windlass is two chain hooks which can be attached to long lines and led to the primary winches.

Then it’s a game of leapfrog: one line is being pulled while the other one is being re-led forward ready to take over.

For the galley we carry a gas bottle and a barbecue, but also have an emergency two-burner hob, and we always keep a good supply of dinghy fuel in case of a main engine issue.

Article continues below…

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Choosing the right sails

At the end of the a relatively benign ARC 2023, I called into the St Lucia sail loft and our old friend Kenny was as busy as ever – every inch of loft was covered in piles of downwind sails, while the lawn outside saw a procession of crews reloading socks and chutes.

This is all fairly standard with ocean sailing, but what was a surprise was the amount of damaged ‘white’ sails – mostly technical laminates.

These fabrics don’t do well in the trades, a combination of UV and the rigours of an ocean passage mean that there is every chance a new set won’t get you round the world or even halfway.

St Lucia sail loft is invariably kept busy. Photo: Elaine Bunting

If the boat comes with some nice sporty sails, keep them at home and they will be perfect when you get back ready to last you for years of local cruising or racing.

But for ocean sailing I would pop on a set of Dacrons: bullet proof and easier to fix on the way, and a lot cheaper than buying yourself the new laminates you will want when you get home.

Downwind sails are having a revolution. Bigger boats with smaller crews are not well suited to traditional symmetrical spinnakers and now there is a huge variety of downwind sail options on the market.

Asymmetric sails mainly use high torsion luffs and continuous line furlers which makes handling them much more straightforward.

These aren’t great for dead downwind sailing and to get the most out of them, you need to sail the angles. That means more miles, but hopefully worth it for the increased boat speed and less rolling motion.

For the more direct route the symmetric kite still wins, but as a compromise there has also been a proliferation of light weight twin headsails like Elvstrom’s Bluewater Runner or North’s TradeWind sail which allow for direct downwind sailing in lighter wind speeds than the traditional white sail route.

However, all of them come at a significant cost which may well be a factor in what you ultimately choose.

Photo: Yachting World

For me, it’s more a space consideration versus how often I really need light wind sails. With our masthead rig we can comfortably sail in 10 knots true so we no longer carry any light wind/coloured sails.

I’m not averse to an extra day at sea, but if the winds are light and I’m in a rush, the diesel will get me through at less pence per mile than a quiver of kites.

It’s worth thinking about what your priorities are.

Navigation

Some areas of the world are notoriously badly charted and pilot information is woefully out of date. Fiji springs to mind – but it’s one of the most beautiful cruising grounds and well worth the effort to explore.

In 2014 we spent a lot of time using Google Earth images and visual navigation techniques.

We favoured having someone up in the rigging, with the sun at our backs, to con the boat through passages and into anchorages by looking out for coral heads and reefs.

Photo: Yachting World

Sending a crewmember aloft was a daily experience.

In many cases our chartplotters would show us as on land, or having sailed across reefs. I still have those GPS tracks and, having just downloaded the most up to date charts for those regions, I can tell you that they are no more accurate today.

Visual navigation is still key, as is real seamanship in only entering poorly charted areas in good light and favourable conditions.

To complement the old skills, there is now so much more cruiser shared knowledge. Navionics and MaxSea TimeZero are our choice of charts and both have user-updated information with anchorage reviews and potential hazards.

Many cruisers also detail their experiences on Facebook groups, and regularly post blogs and vlogs.

Cruising communities share waypoints and tracks that are known to be safe, and recent accounts can fill in the gaps in the out-of-date pilot books.

There are tutorials online on how to download or make your own charts from satellite imagery (see svocelot.com).

Get the research and planning stages out of the way while you’re at home – at the time you’re more likely to be searching for an elusive boat part, or you’ll want to be enjoying being where you are.

Cruising for a cause

It’s easy to get so wrapped up in the boat preparations and updating your skillset that you forget you’re cruising the world to see it, not to just tick it off the list.

Time on passage can be spent planning for the time ashore, learning a bit about the area and considering what kind of things you want to do.

Photo: Tomasz Kunicki

Guidebooks can be useful, but reading other yacht blogs and experiences can really help.

More often, the people you meet when you sail around the world form the best experiences.

So it’s nice to think about what gifts and trading items you can carry on board to build those moments of connection and help the areas you’re visiting.

Alternatively you might consider partnering with one of the charities, such as sailaid.com, to take things that are needed to remote communities.

We find footballs for the kids and reading glasses for adults are in short supply and well received.

On a more global level there are various citizen science projects to get involved with, be it checking for plastics in the sea, taking water samples or even looking at cloud formations.

For many of these projects the field work is the most cost prohibitive aspect, and the results of studies may help protect the very things we are sailing halfway around the world to experience – the wildlife, culture and natural landscape that makes the Pacific so special.

Top upgrades

Ground Tackle

A decent anchor and at least 100m of chain.

Pacific anchorages can be deep and you need to feel you’re anchored securely enough to ride out a blow, and confident enough to leave the boat unattended for adventures ashore.

In addition to a spare anchor, a lightweight kedge is useful as a stern anchor in swelly or crowded anchorages.

Photo: Yachting World

Tender

Ideally powerful enough to plane in tradewind conditions, strong enough to survive contact with a rocky or reefy shoreline and light enough to pull clear of the surf and tide.

This can be a long way in places like the Las Perlas, or Australia.

I favour 2-stroke outboards for weight and because they can handle a dunking if the beach landing goes wrong.

Toys

There’s an immense joy in the simple pleasure of being anchored behind a reef, in a turquoise lagoon with just the sound of the waves and amazing stars for company (and the internet turned off!).

To get out and really enjoy and appreciate those surroundings, if you have the energy and space on board then it’s great to carry a few water toys.

Skyelark’s toy cupboard includes kit for kitesurfing and wing foiling, a Hookah (see below), drone, bikes and paddleboards.

Photo: Yachting World

Dive Kit

Used for maintenance or to free a fouled prop or stuck anchor. When things happen it’s best to be self sufficient.

We carry full scuba kit in case we have to go deep for a problem anchor (possibly caught on or wrapped around a coral head), but for routine maintenance we use our Hookah (my favourite toy for the Pacific).

This allows two people to dive down to around 10m with the air supplied from a surface compressor. It’s a crossover between diving and snorkelling and is perfect for seeing those sharks in atoll passes.

I like that you’re visible from the surface, and you can also leave a radio at the surface (see photo) in case you get into difficulty.

Photo: Yachting World

Low friction loops

Cheap and easy ways to re-lead a line to avoid chafe without the bulk (and expense of) snatch blocks.

Chafe is the enemy (after sand) and some care in keeping the ropes running nicely can make a big difference.

For the Panama Canal putting lines through a low friction loop stops them from jumping out of the fairleads and catching on the guard wires.

We also carry Dyneema chafe protection sleeving that is easily whipped onto a line at the first sign of damage as a sacrificial layer.

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The post How to sail around the world: Launching an epic adventure appeared first on Yachting World.

“Slip into the water, don’t jump. Try not to splash, and follow me,” our guide Torea hurriedly told us as the panga-style boat slowed to a stop, only 100m away from a sleeping giant.

“Stay together, stay close to me. Ready? Let’s go!” As the boat clicked into neutral, Torea was already in the water and swimming away, urging us all to follow quickly. Lowering myself into the water, I barely had time to take in the vast blue void of the open ocean below me. By the time I took my first breath, he was already 10m away, kicking toward where he’d last seen the whale spout.

From the boat, the distance we had to swim didn’t look far, but once in the water fighting the wind chop and current, I realised the 100m swim was going to take more effort than I’d realised. I’m unsure of how far we really swam or how long it took in the end, as the excitement and adrenaline rush distorted details. Once we reached the spot Torea believed the whale to have last been, we slowed our pace and searched the endless blue below us. He kept reminding us to stay together and stay close, which in the emptiness of the Pacific, I was happy to do.

We strained our eyes trying to make out a shape in the depths. Light rays pierced into the abyss, dancing around and playing tricks on our eyes. Then, slowly out of the blue expanse, a silhouette began to take shape. She didn’t seem to be moving, slowly ascending from the depths with ease and grace, seemingly unaware of our floundering, awkward presence. As she rose, her calf also came into view just below her.

Time slowed to a stop as these magnificent beings rose to the surface, just metres in front of us. I was torn between raising my GoPro to capture the sight, albeit viewed through a tiny LCD screen, or forgetting my camera to instead be fully present in the moment.

‘Time slowed to a stop as these magnificent beings rose to the surface’ Photo: voyagesofagape.com

The mother humpback took one massive breath and with a gentle flick of her tail sank back below the surface, staying just within sight. Her calf, on the other hand, was feeling playful, and after a moment of hiding behind its mother, swam to the surface to gambol around our group.

It was a truly unforgettable encounter. To look into this sentient being’s massive eyes and see the curiosity, playfulness, and wonder within is nothing short of life-changing. We had several such meetings, and even after almost two hours of swimming with this mom and her calf, it was still not enough. Like a good showman, the whales always left us wanting more.

Migratory passage

For millennia, these incredible cetaceans have travelled through the rich and diverse waters of our world. From gravity-defying acrobatics at the surface to swimming through the crushing pressures of the depths, whales have been exploring our planet’s ever-changing oceans for 50 million years. After being nearly hunted to extinction by whaling fleets, they are just now starting to make their comeback. It may seem like ancient history, but if you have a classic plastic or 1970s-era boat, as we do with our 37-year-old Tayana 42 Agápe, don’t be surprised if your original transmission manual asks for Dexron type A or B oil – in other words, whale oil.

Agápe moored off Mo’orea in French Polynesia. Photo: voyagesofagape.com

While we no longer have a can of sperm whale oil on board, these behemoths are still very much a part of our world as liveaboard cruisers. Agápe’s journey has been in parallel with these deep-sea voyagers since the start.
From our home port of Ventura, California, we sailed south along the coast of California and Mexico with pods of humpback and grey whales often alongside breaching, singing, and playing, sometimes a little too close for comfort. Every time we spotted the whales breaching or breathing at the surface, we slowed the boat down and it was all hands on deck as we tried to capture photos of the encounter. We joined them on their annual 10,000-mile migration south from the nutrient-rich feeding grounds of the Pacific Northwest into the warmer waters of Mexico and Central America. Our journey that year, in comparison, was a measly 2,000 miles.

From there, we made a big right turn to start our Pacific crossing, leaving our whale friends in the warm waters of Panama to birth and mate before they returned to the cool, nutrient-rich coast of Alaska. Just like the whales have their traditional migratory routes and seasons, yachts, too, have seasons and routes that we tend to favour for weather and currents. The route that lay before Agápe’s bow led us from coastal cruising out into open sea, crossing the world’s largest ocean to the South Pacific.

Mo’orea is one of the premier whale watching locations in the world, with strict rules governing organised tours. Photo: voyagesofagape.com

Entering the famed waters of French Polynesia, we found ourselves enthralled by the rich and diverse marine life that lay just under our keel, but also sometimes petrified by the razor-sharp corals and sweeping currents that seemed to be a constant threat to our little floating home. Our first year in the South Pacific left us feeling exhausted as we learned the hard way about squalls, coral passes, and lagoon navigation. As we sailed into the benign north pass of Mo’orea in the Society Islands and dropped our anchor in the clear and protected water, we decided it was time to take a break from non-stop passagemaking. For the past three years, we’d averaged moving the boat every three to five days.

My wife, Rachel, and I still live aboard, but instead of moving our home every few days, we came to think of our Tayana 42 as more of a floating apartment. A very small apartment. We soon learned that the tropical island of Mo’orea is one of the premier whale watching locations in the world. A distinct population of humpback whales makes the arduous journey here every winter to birth their calves, mate, and rest in the warm waters before making the long migration back south to the feeding grounds of the Antarctic.

Who’s watching who? Photo: voyagesofagape.com

Immersive experience

Safely tucked into the lagoon, we’d sit in Agápe’s cockpit having our morning coffee and watch as the mothers led their calves along the outer reef, often stopping to sleep while their calves played at the surface. Occasionally, we’d take our dinghy out to see them, but as one person had to stay in the boat with the engine running, it left the other alone in the water with the whales. The whales are not dangerous, but there are oceanic white tips that are known to sometimes follow the whales, and it’s advised to always swim closely in a group, constantly checking your surroundings. For that reason, we opted to go on several guided tours.

In the US it is illegal to swim with whales or marine mammals of any kind, but in some countries, including French Polynesia, you can still immerse yourself in their world. There are restrictions in place for both your and the whale’s safety, but here you have the opportunity to encounter them respectfully.

playful whale calf swims with Joshua Shankle – among his most memorable ocean experiences. Photo: voyagesofagape.com

Whale watching tours here are often done in panga-style fibreglass boats or large RIBs. Usually, there are 10-12 people per boat, including the guide, captain, and photographer. The chances of seeing and swimming with whales through a tour company are much better than going on your own, as the tour companies all communicate with each other and can travel at over 25 knots in the open ocean. And when you do see a whale, you don’t have to worry about who will stay behind with the dinghy and miss the encounter.

I find myself morally on the fence about whale watching tours, or similar encounters like feeding sharks and stingrays. On one hand, I believe that limiting human interaction with nature is the best approach to reduce our impact, while on the other, I have seen first-hand how people who have never experienced something have no reason to strive to protect and steward it. Tours offer people a chance to connect with the animals in their natural habitat, leaving a lasting impression and hopefully conveying the importance of protecting our ocean and its inhabitants for years to come.

After spending five months in Mo’orea, we had completely fallen in love with the island. Slowing down long enough to make friends outside of the cruising community opened doors for us to see and experience things that few passersby will ever do.

We became good friends with several of the tour operators and guides, getting to know their views and opinions on the tour activities. We learned of their deep respect for the ocean and all it provides for them.

Living in harmony with the sea is firmly rooted in the Polynesian tradition and lifestyle. It only takes a moment of talking to our friend Maui, owner and operator of Corallina Tours, to realise his passion and love for all things aquatic. Running tours might be how he makes a living, but his passion is showing visitors his island and the magic that lies just below the surface.

This love and deep connection to the sea are what help make the tours in Mo’orea unique. Rachel and I have taken part in several whale watching tours around the island and, to date, these are some of our most memorable experiences in the ocean. Swimming with a whale is nothing short of magical and cannot be fully comprehended until you have experienced it.

Agápe has spent four years now exploring the alluring waters of Polynesia, and the feeling of excitement every time we spot a blow or breach has not diminished.

We enjoy all of our encounters with marine life whether above or below the water, but there is something special, an extra feeling of reward and accomplishment when you see such a large, sentient animal, and even more so when you see it from your own yacht.

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Monique, a Rhode Island Red hen who joined solo sailor Guirec Soudée on multiple sailing adventures, even including 130 days icebound in Greenland, has died at the age of 9.

Without doubt the most well travelled chicken in the world, Monique accompanied Soudée on a five year world tour, clocking up (clucking up? sorry… Ed) the kind of sea miles many a professional sailor would be proud of.

Adventurous young sailor Guirec Soudée and his adopted hen Monique sailing on Yvinec. Photo: Guirec Soudée

Young Breton sailor and adventurer Soudée adopted Monique while on a stopover in the Canary Islands aboard his 38ft steel yacht, Yvinec, on his first solo circumnavigation in 2015. 

Monique took to life at sea easily, laying 25 eggs on the pair’s 28-day Atlantic crossing, and swapped pecking at the earth for worms for pecking flying fish that landed on Yvinec’s deck.

“I said to myself: ‘If she annoys me, I can always eat her.’ It feels weird to say that now! We formed a real bond. She was so endearing, she made me laugh so much, it felt as if I had always known her,” Soudée recalled in an interview for The Guardian in 2019.

Article continues below…

French sailor on a world tour via the North West Passage with a red hen

Guirec Soudée met Monique during a stopover in the Canary Islands when she joined him on what had been up…

The duo spent time in the Caribbean, where Soudée worked as a watersports instructor to raise funds for his voyage, and his sailing hen Monique became something of a local celebrity, joining Soudée windsurfing, on paddleboards and swimming in the sea.

Icebound in Greenland

Soudée went on to sail north via Bermuda and Halifax to southern Greenland, arriving in late summer. He often visited children in local schools to talk about his voyage, always accompanied by Monique, much to the children’s amusement as there are no hens in Greenland.

Soudée had set himself the challenge of overwintering in ice, unassisted. The pair holed up in Greenland’s vast Disko Bay, provisioned with 40kg of rice for Soudée, 60kg of seeds for Monique, and 2,000lt of fuel for heating and electricity, as Yvinec’s solar panels won’t operate during the polar night.

At one point he prepared to abandon ship, with Monique tucked into his arm, as Yvinec seemed set to be crushed against rocks by the ice. Thankfully the wind changed, and the pair stayed aboard.

To avoid the temptation of calling for help, Soudée disconnected his sat phone and stayed out of communication until the ice melted in the spring, 130 days later. 

By the time they emerged, Guirec and Monique were unlikely celebrities back in France, thanks to friends who had shared Soudée’s story on social media while he was off-grid. 

World’s most famous sailing hen

For the next three years their adventures continued – through the North West Passage (also making Soudée the youngest solo skipper to complete the passage), down to Antarctica, around Cape Horn, and back across the Atlantic – all captured in spectacular photos and funny videos which built a huge Facebook and Instagram following. 

When Soudée returned to France in December 2018, Monique the sailing hen was famous across the country. The pair made numerous television and public appearances, and Soudée wrote two books recounting their adventures, including one for children.

Back home, the pair moved to a small island off the north shore of Brittany, also called Yvinec. Monique ‘retired’ from life at sea, while Soudée went on to complete a double solo Atlantic rowing expedition, crossing from east to west, then west to east in 2021.

In 2022 Soudée took the helm of an IMOCA 60, Freelance, bidding to compete in the pinnacle of solo racing, the Vendée Globe in 2024. His campaign got off to a good start, finishing a very respectable 25th in the 38-boat IMOCA fleet of the Route du Rhum aboard a 2007 daggerboard design.

Farewell to Monique

Today, however, fans of Soudée and Monique were saddened to read that Monnique had passed away. Soudée posted:

“I knew it wasn’t eternal, but it’s hard to bring myself to turn the page on such an important chapter of my life: nine years but especially five years aboard Yvinec, living the craziest and most unforgettable experiences.

“My little Momo, after everything we’ve been through, I don’t even know where to start.

“Without you I would have gone mad during our 130 days of over-wintering in Greenland, including days of polar night. I had the good idea to only take only rice for me, and wasn’t able to fish. But you kept on laying eggs everyday. You knew our lives depended on your eggs.

“You made me laugh so much. Every time we fought to catch flying fish on the deck, when you were sliding from side to side on every wave, when you tried to swim to join me. You scared me; I thought I’d lost you many times.

“You made it much easier to meet people every time we stopped somewhere. In Saqqaq, they had never ever seen a chicken alive !

“I made sacrifices for you too, I went to prison in Canada for you and I gave up on sailing to Tahiti because nobody wanted you there because of the bird flu.

“Together we saw icebergs, bears, narwhals, dozens of whales and thousands of dolphins. We dreamed like children and we shivered with fear. When we were knocked down in the Fifties, after Cape Horn, when we sailed for weeks in storms, cold and fatigued. 

“Five years later, we arrived in Brittany and you got to live on my island. At first, you slept in the house, never leaving my side. Then you became the queen of the island, always running outside, digging the soil, the sand and the seaweed.

“That’s when I decided to go for my rowing expedition. Crossing the Atlantic in a tiny sealed box. It was out of question to have you onboard, you would not have survived a day.

“You deserved a nice and quiet retirement. I will never forget you, my little Momo. Thank you for everything.” 

If you want to read more about Guirec Soudée and Monique’s adventures, you can buy Soudée’s books:

Buy A Sailor, A Chicken, An Incredible Voyage: The Seafaring Adventures of Guirec and Monique from Amazon
Buy The Hen Who Sailed Around the World: A True Story (kids book) from Amazon

Note: We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site, at no extra cost to you. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post The hen that sailed around the world: a farewell to Monique appeared first on Yachting World.

Often the smallest boats to cross oceans look much like a child’s crayon picture of a little boat on a big sea, certainly Yann Quenet’s Baluchon does. Baluchon is only 13ft 1in (4m long), with one simple sail and a stubby, blunt-nosed hull painted cherry red and ice cream white.

Baluchon is no toy, though. When Quenet sailed it back to Brittany in August, he had fulfilled his childhood ambition of circumnavigating in a tiny boat. Its simple appearance is emblematic of his philosophy. “I have loved little boats since I was a child,” he says, “and I am still a child at heart. Sailing round the world on a little boat is something I have dreamed about since I was a teenager.”

Quenet, now 51, has dedicated much of his adult life to designing, building and sailing microyachts. Whereas most of us progress in incrementally larger boats, Quenet’s craft have always been minuscule. He has created numerous self-build designs for plywood construction from a 9m gaffer to a 5m trimaran and a 6.5m gaff yawl (see them at boat-et-koad.com).

In 2015, Quenet attempted to cross the Atlantic in a 14ft 1in (4.3m) plywood scow, but it capsized in a storm off the coast of Spain and he was rescued by a ship. After that experience he resolved to come up with a bulletproof self-righting microyacht suitable for ocean sailing, and went back to the drawing board.

His solution was a pram-style design that could be built in plywood in under 4,000 hours and would cost no more than €4,000. Baluchon is the result, a tiny boat to be sailed by one person for up to six weeks at a time and resilient enough to take anything the oceans throw at it.

Yann Quenet’s 4m long Baluchon

Smallest boats getting smaller

The history of sailing across oceans in the smallest boats is a surprisingly long one. With a few exceptions (of which more later), it is not about breaking records. This is about stripping away everything complex and extraneous – including other people.

One of the most famous small boat voyages was nearly 70 years ago when Patrick Elam and Colin Mudie made several ocean passages in Sopranino, which was only 17ft 9in (5.4m) on the waterline. Elam observed: “I would not pretend that Sopranino is the optimum size. At sea she is near perfect, but could with advantage be a few inches longer to give a slightly bigger cockpit and a separate stowage for wet oilskins below. In harbour, she is too small (for comfort) and too delicate and vulnerable.”

Also in the 1950s, John Guzzwell consulted Jack Giles about the smallest boat practical to sail around the world and Giles drew the 20ft 6in (6.2m) Trekka, which Guzzwell built and circumnavigated in twice. Smaller still was Shane Acton’s 18ft 4in (5.5m) Shrimpy, a Robert Tucker design which he sailed round the world in 1972 despite having very little sailing experience when he left.

Tom McNally planned to retake his small-boat Atlantic crossing record in Big C. Photo: Ajax News

In 1987, Serge Testa beat that by sailing round the world in his self-designed 11ft 10in (3.6m) aluminium sloop, Acrohc Australis. He broke the record for the smallest yacht to be sailed round the world, one that is still standing 35 years later.

This feat, together with Acton’s well-publicised voyages in the 1970s, ignited a lasting interest in small boat or microyacht voyages. Money is usually a factor in the choice of such small craft but overlaid by a streak of determined romanticism, the almost spiritual challenge of sailing a nutshell craft across a vast ocean.

Yann Quenet is not alone in creating self-build plans for aspiring micro-voyagers. New Zealander John Welsford also specialises in small boats such as the 18ft (5.5m) junk-rigged Swaggie – ‘a mighty, miniature long range cruiser’ – and a sturdy oceangoing 21ft (6.5m) gaff cutter, Sundowner (see jwboatdesigns.co.nz).

As with Quenet’s little boats, Welsford’s designs are for plywood construction. The plans, he says, are detailed for “real beginners with very basic woodworking skills and a good attitude… the other skills will come as the project progresses.”

In his thinking, people can experience a deep sense of escape even through the process of building such a boat. “I anticipate a lot of builders will be people who find themselves trapped in a soulless desk job which condemns them to commuting for hours in heavy traffic, living in a thin-walled and crowded apartment and dreaming with longing of the freedom of the seas, golden sands and warm breezes.”

John Guzzwell’s Trekka. Photo: Historic Images/Alamy

Perhaps unsurprisingly the small boat community attracts a mixture of adventurers, inventors, idealists and eccentrics. One of the less successful was the self-styled ‘Admiral Dinghy’, a former Hollywood B-movie star and retired dance teacher from the US whose longtime aim was to sail round the world in a 9ft 11in (3m) boat. He had scant ocean sailing experience and no money. He’d been building and tinkering with his tiny junk-rigged boat since 1975 and began preparing for a circumnavigation in earnest in 2009. But he had problems with his boat, never went offshore and has since vanished from the radar.

A small boat living legend

A mixture of naïve courage and inexperience appears characteristic of many of the smallest boat sailors. It’s easy to imagine a dichotomy at the heart of it: many of the ideas could be perilous in hands of someone inexperienced, yet how many seasoned sailors would contemplate voyaging in a tiny craft?

Someone who has, numerous times, is Sven Yrvind. A Swedish sailor and boatbuilder, now aged 83, he has been designing and sailing tiny yachts for more than 60 years. He built his first tiny open boat in 1962, and decades of experimentation and voyaging followed.

In 1969, he built a 15ft 7in (4.2m) boat and sailed to Ireland. In 1971, he built his first Bris (or Breeze) in his mother’s basement, its size dictated by the dimensions of the cellar and the door it would have to be taken out through. He sailed this 19ft 8in (6m) cold moulded epoxy double-ender across the Atlantic seven times in four years and went as far as Argentina and Tristan da Cunha. (I highly recommend reading his fascinating and entertaining account at yrvind.com/my-life-texts).

Yann Quenet completed a three-year world tour on his 4m Baluchon. Photo: Damien Meyer/AFP/Getty

In his next boat, the 15ft 9in (5.9m) Bris II, he went much further, sailing south to the Falkland Islands in 1980, before rounding Cape Horn and going north to Chile.

Over the decades, Yrvind (his birth surname was Lundin but he changed it to the Swedish term for a turbulent wind) has continually experimented with tiny yachts. In 1986, he built a 15ft 8in (5.76m) double-ender and sailed it to Newfoundland. In his most recent boat, Exlex (Outlaw), he sailed to the Azores in 2018, and in 2020 from Norway to the Azores and Madeira, returning to Ireland, a voyage of 150 days.

Right now, he is working on Exlex Minor, a glassfibre sailing canoe design of 20ft 4in (6.2m) which he intends to sail round Cape Horn to Valdivia in Chile. This new boat has twin keels and 12m2 of canvas split between three square sails on freestanding masts.

His food, water and all his possessions for up to 150 days at sea amount to around 1 tonne. He stores 111 litres of water on board as he “doesn’t trust desalinators. They can break down.” At sea, his diet is a simple mix of oatmeal and almond flour – “like muesli” – and sardines. “I eat the same every day,” he says, “and at lunchtime, not any other time.”

“I am a health nut. I believe in running and eating once a day for a long life.”

small-boat sailing legend Sven Yrvind. Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty

Yrvind’s way of life divides opinion. Many casual followers think his choice of yacht slightly mad, but the tiny boat community reveres him as a living legend. To him, it just makes plain sense. “My boats are very functional. If you go back to old magazines from the 1950s and 1960s, boats were not much bigger. Back then, a 30ft boat was quite a decent size. The Hiscocks sailed twice round the world in such a boat. Now 40ft is too small; it must be 50ft.

“And what is big enough? With a small boat, you don’t have a lot of problems with money. You go back to first principles. You also have a boat you can tow behind a car. I have been doing that down to France and Ireland. Or you can put it in a container. So small boats are really handy.”

Yrvind in his 15ft 8in Exlex. Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty

No room to stretch out

Smaller even than Sven Yrvind’s vessels are the record breakers’ boats, no bigger than a bathtub.

For many years, the record for the smallest yacht to cross the Atlantic was held by Hugo Vihlen, a former Korean War fighter pilot and Delta Airlines captain from Florida. In 1968, he crossed from west to east in the 5ft 11in April Fool. In 1993, his record was broken by Tom McNally, a fine arts lecturer from Liverpool, in his 5ft 4 1/2in (1.6m) Vera Hugh.

That prompted Vihlen, then aged 61, to go back out a few months later to recapture his record in Father’s Day, which was half an inch shorter than Vera Hugh. Vihlen crossed from Newfoundland to Falmouth in 105 days.

Andrew Bedwell intends to take former record holder Tom McNally’s modified 1.1m Big C to a new Atlantic record. Photo: Paul Larkin Photography

Not to be outdone, McNally designed and built an even smaller boat for the record, the 3ft 10in (1.1m) Big C. His plans were shattered when he was diagnosed with kidney cancer and he was unable to sail it before he died in 2017.

Next year, British sailor Andrew Bedwell hopes to break Vihlen’s 30-year record. As a sailmaker and experienced sailor, he knows exactly what he is getting into. Bedwell has previously sailed a Mini 6.50 to the Arctic and been round Britain in a Class 40.

In 2018 he started reading up about small boats. “I had always had an interest in unusual challenges and things that were raw. I saw these boats and was amazed by them, and I started designing a vessel.”

He contacted Tom McNally’s daughter and was amazed to learn that Big C was still lying in her garden. “It had never been in the water, or fitted out. Sails had been made for it, but they had never been used.”

Lorraine McNally agreed to sell, and Bedwell worked out how he could modify it for him to sail across the Atlantic. He calculates that it will take him around 60-80 days to cover the 1,900 miles from Newfoundland to the Lizard, sailing at an average of 2.5 knots. It has twin headsails set on one furler, and external floats, or pods, that make it behave a little like a trimaran when heeled. Freeboard is only 35cm and “she really does bob like a cork”, Bedwell says.

The boat is so tiny he cannot stretch out in it. “When in there I have to sit. It is dead flat in the bottom and in calm conditions I can just about get into a foetal position – and I mean just. I’ve modified the hull so my hip can just fit into a recess.”

Big C is a tight squeeze for British sailor Andrew Bedwell, and he could spend up to 80 days in it crossing the Atlantic from Newfoundland to the Lizard.

With the hatch fully shut the boat is watertight and airtight, but has only 40 minutes’ worth of air, so Bedwell is making two rotating air scoops at the bow.

When conditions allow, he might be able to stand up, or even go for a swim, but mainly “there is very little you can do with the lower body at all.”

Muscle wastage will be a major issue. To offset this at least partially, Bedwell will use a manual desalinator to make water. “We looked at putting in a generator to pedal but there isn’t space.”

His rationed food will amount to only 1,000 calories a day, “so I will lose weight and muscle mass, but I want a slow, slow decline.”

The food will all be the same. “It is a protein food similar to Shackleton’s pemmican, a clever nutritional bar made of fat and protein, salt and honey, with a little bit of paracetamol to thin the blood and ascorbic acid to preserve it and prevent scurvy,” he explains. “I will eat that for at least a month before I go, to get used to it.”

All 12 of the boat’s watertight compartments will be filled with it. “It will be moulded in bags and pushed into the hull. I will take food from the external pods to start with and work inwards, so increasing stability as we go.”

Italian skipper Alessandro Di Benedetto returns to Les Sables d’Olonne in 2010 after a non-stop circumnavigation with his 21ft Mini Transat 6.50. Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty

Bedwell’s planning sounds scrupulous. But… isn’t it the definition of suffering?

“Yes, very close to it,” he replies cheerfully. “If you said you were going to do this to prisoners, you wouldn’t be allowed to, it’d be against human rights.

“There’s not going to be any comfort in it whatsoever. Food and navigation equipment are the absolute keys. There’ll be no changes of clothes, for example, as there’s no room. It’s so tight. I can use some water to wash but it will be a flannel wash. l’ll do what I can to prevent saltwater sores but there’s not going to be any soap.”

When close to the finish of one of his voyages, Tom McNally was hit by a ferry. The hull of his boat split and he had to be fished out of the water almost by the seat of his pants. Bedwell says: “If I’m hit by a tanker I’m not going to survive that, but tech has changed. Tom didn’t have AIS but we have a standalone Class B transponder as well as a VHF with AIS receiver. I have a masthead light – the boat is so short it doesn’t need to be a tricolour.”

Bedwell says: “Planning this keeps your mind completely occupied as every single little detail has to be completely thought through.” He rejects any suggestion that he is ‘making a bid’ for the record or similar phraseology. “I am not attempting it. I’m doing it. My theory is if I’m just trying, I’m not really pushing myself.”

Matt Kent’s 2017 solo Atlantic crossing attempt in the 42in Undaunted ended in failure.

Smallest boats, smallest problems

The micro-voyagers seem to share a different way of looking at the world, a can-do attitude galvanised by their repudiations.

“Human beings are very adaptable,” says Sven Yrvind. “Lawrence of Arabia lived simply in the desert and said wine takes away the taste of water. It is the same with comfort. It depends on your mindset and how you think, how you look at life. Some people go on holiday on bicycles and put up a tent. Some want a car and a caravan. I think when they get back the man with the bicycle is happier and has more to think about.”

“You can get spoilt,” he argues. “If you get something without fighting for it, you’re not so happy when you get it.”

Returning after 31,000 miles and 360 days under sail in his little yacht, Yann Quenet insists that a small boat is the best. “Small boat equals small problems. When there is no engine, there is nothing to go wrong, just a simple boat that is simple to sail.”

Andrew Bedwell explains how he gradually dismissed fripperies. “I’d had plusher boats, but hated it – all the cushions and wiring hidden behind panels. It’s just not me. I kept coming back to the simple things.” Like Sven Yrvind and Yann Quenet, he made the realisation that his sense of achievement might be in inverse proportion to boat size.

When people ask now about what he is doing with Big C, he tells them, without a hint of irony: “Everyone is different. I need something really big.”

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Nobody could ever accuse my wife Sophie and me of taking the easy route in life. For one of our first proper ‘dates’ we cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and on our honeymoon we hiked Wainwright’s coast to coast across the north of England. I guess they set the benchmark and our idea of fun has only become more ambitious over the years. Except now, it’s a catamaran adventure for the whole family.

A few weeks after setting off on our around the world catamaran adventure, my eight-year-old son and I went on a day-long mountain bike adventure. Over the last few years I’ve got really into bikepack racing, non-stop mountain bike races over distances of around 1,000km. When we were in Lanzarote it felt like the perfect chance to introduce Rory to the sport.

I took Rory along one of my favourite trails, a beer and a lemonade stashed away in our minimalist kit. At first he set a great pace, but as the sun set his energy faded and we nearly ground to a halt in a windswept desert landscape. I was starting to feel really bad about pushing him too far but thankfully after a snack and a quick rest he was happy cycling again.

Nick, Sophie and the boys hiking on their catamaran adventure. Photo: Nick Bubb

We eventually rolled down to my chosen beach and set up our bivvys metres from the surf. We drank our rewards and watched the moon come up, chatting about the power of dreams and adventures until he fell asleep in my lap. Just a few hours later we woke, covered in sand flies but happy as could be. The whole expedition only lasted about 18 hours but Rory still talks about it proudly and his younger brother Billy won’t stop pestering me for his turn.

The whole reason we came on this ‘ocean odyssey’ was to spend more time together as a family and enjoy every moment with the boys before they get bored with us. On the water, biking, or hiking in the jungle, these are special experiences we’ll treasure forever.

Nick aboard the Quickstep Too. Photo: Nick Bubb

How we got here

Ever since I started sailing a Mirror dinghy on the River Deben in Suffolk aged five, I just wanted to go further. Sophie and I had talked about going cruising together since the first months of our friendship, but somehow the timing had never been quite right, until now.

After finishing my engineering degree, I was focussed on competing in the Vendée Globe. I was captivated by Yves Parlier’s heroics in the 2000/01 race, Ellen’s story too, and followed Pete Goss and Mike Golding for years.

Testing the Nautitech’s drying out abilities in the Isles of Scilly. Photo: Nick Bubb

My first step was gaining as many offshore miles as possible. Armed with a small graduate loan I bought my first Mini Transat, and spent a winter refitting it. Four years of Mini sailing later, along with sailing a Maxi cat around the world in the Oryx Quest, and racing everything from 30ft trimarans to Open 60s and eventually the Volvo Ocean Race in 2008/9 (where I met Sophie), I finally felt ready for the Vendée.

I was pushing to get a campaign together, but the global financial crisis was really starting to bite and I struggled to make significant headway. Instead I ended up working with Paul Larsen on SailRocket out in Namibia. This cemented a close friendship and I can’t think of many people more motivated towards a set goal than Paul and his partner Helena.

However, I hadn’t really found my focus. Out of the blue came the chance to skipper the Shackleton Epic expedition in Antarctica with Paul Larsen. Following that was never going to be easy but afterwards I took on a new role with Fauna & Flora International (FFI).

The Quickstep Too under sail with the Bubbs on deck. Photo: Nick Bubb

Like most things in my life, I went all-in and it turned into a huge commitment. Working away a lot, while trying to continue my own adventures, and combine it with family life was difficult and getting harder. Meanwhile, Sophie had been juggling looking after our boys and racing as a professional triathlete and coach. With Covid shutting down her racing season, the time seemed right for us both to take a break and live out our childhood dreams by going sailing.

Making plans

Aside from sharing a great family adventure, we’d visit FFI project sites around the world. Both Sophie and I wanted to ensure the boys see as much of the natural world as possible before it’s gone. That might sound dramatic but thousands of species are becoming extinct each year. We want them to learn first-hand how to conserve nature, and to engage with a diverse mix of cultures.

The Bubb family have been living life to the full on their world travels aboard Quickstep Too. Photo: Nick Bubb

We made grand plans to take bikes, boards, even the boys’ Optimist on the bow, and what felt like most of our garage with us. Most of all, we wanted to figure out a way to make it fun for all and not just a slog around the world as fast as possible. After racing so many miles over the years, with little opportunity to stop and enjoy the good bits, I was excited to explore islands I’d only ever raced past, and was determined that this would start with the Isles of Scilly!

In our search for a catamaran, we wanted space for friends to join us, to stow all our toys, good performance, along with true ‘off-grid’ capability. We decided to go for a Nautitech 40 catamaran from 2015 and happily found one that didn’t need masses of work.

After that, things happened quickly. I reached an agreement at work, Soph pulled out of racing on the Ironman and Skyrunning circuits. We sold our family home in the New Forest and moved aboard Quickstep Too full time in May, in Lymington. Once the school term ended, we left in early August.

Finding time for some light reading on the Quickstep Too. Photo: Nick Bubb

There’s no denying that uprooting your family, especially during Covid, is pretty complicated, but we had a lot of support from family and friends. From day one we had an attitude that our combined skill set and experience had put us in a great position to pull it off, but we needed to remain respectful of what lay ahead, and diligently work through the challenge.

Fundamentally, we’d prepare for it just as we would for any offshore race or long distance endurance event.

Casting off

As I write this, we’re in Shelter Bay Marina just a few miles from the Panama Canal, on the cusp of entering the Pacific, and it feels a little surreal to have come so far aboard our home. We all have mixed emotions about it; the boys are just happy to be back in a marina after so many months at sea or at anchor and have made a load of friends already, I’m mainly relieved to be able to switch off for a few weeks and not stress about all the millions of things that can go wrong. Sophie has a different perspective though, and is worried that it’s all going too fast!

The little known Selvagem Islands were a highlight of the Atlantic. Photo: Nick Bubb

Our adventures started, as planned, with us making it to the Isles of Scilly. After leaving Lymington the day before the Rolex Fastnet Race – we anchored in Studland Bay to watch the fleet crash past in epic conditions – we slowly made our way along the south coast calling at Brixham, Dartmouth and St Mawes. We caught up with old friends as we explored the Carrick Roads and waited for a weather window.

Finally we had our chance in mid-August, and it was magical. We opted to drop anchor in St Helen’s Pool between the islands of Tresco and St Martin’s. A notorious spot for thick kelp, if you can get your anchor to hold there it is one of the few anchorages that gives good shelter from a broad range of conditions.

Sophie relaxing in the sun on the Bubb’s catamaran adventure. Photo: Nick Bubb

Aside from drying out overnight on the sands mid-week, we stayed for six days and didn’t really move until the last night, opting instead to use our tender to get around. Drying out our catamaran wasn’t something we’d done before and I was keen to test it out in case we needed to do it one day to make repairs in a remote location. Happily, all went well, although she sank a little further into the sand than I’d expected!

We spotted a chance to cross Biscay in predominantly north-easterlies and, as it was by then late August, I was keen to take the opportunity. It got a little wild towards the end with well over 30 knots at times but we made landfall in Camarinas, just south of La Coruña. Dolphins greeted us in the anchorage and the boys were happy as could be. Over the following weeks we worked our way along the Spanish rias and offshore islands.

The boys take on a solo sailing adventure on their Optimist. Photo: Nick Bubb

After restocking in Baiona we sailed direct to Porto Santo, Madeira. This hadn’t always been our plan but I was keen to avoid any orca incidents on the Portuguese coast and the forecast was ideal, so we went for it. A few days in Porto Santo gave the boys their first taste of the Atlantic islands and then we moved on to Madeira, so our additional crew, friend Jo Royle, could travel home.

Madeira has very few anchorages and the marinas were full with boats who had their plans disrupted by Covid, so Sophie and the boys explored ashore, while I chose to remain largely on board and look after the boat. My time was not wasted, however, as I developed a plan that had been in my head for several months.

Surfing brothers share a high five. Photo: Nick Bubb

Lying almost directly between Madeira and Lanzarote are the little known Selvagem Islands, a small archipelago designated as a nature reserve. The scientific and natural interest of this tiny group of islands lies in its marine biodiversity, its unique flora and the numerous seabird species that breed on its cliffs, or use them as a migratory stopover.

Island exploration

With the wind in the north-east and due to go very light as we were passing, we decided to give the anchorage to the south-west of the larger island, Selvagem Grande, a go. There is one large mooring buoy available for visitors brave enough to nudge in there.

After a bit of chat with the wardens on the VHF we picked it up and waited nervously as the swell rolled in, taking us close to the rocks. Having monitored things closely for a tense hour or two we decided the mooring was fine, but we’d need to wait for high water to attempt the landing. We’d decided to celebrate Rory’s birthday a day early so had an impromptu celebration on the trampoline as he opened various presents we’d hidden on board.

We went ashore and completed immigration formalities before meeting the wardens who quickly offered to take us on a tour. We ended up having the most amazing few hours hiking amongst juvenile shearwaters and tracking the endemic Selvagem wall geckos.

The Bubb family always find time to cycle on their family adventure. Photo: Nick Bubb

The boys were blown away to discover they were the only children to have landed on the islands all year. To cap a very memorable birthday, we shared cake with the locals during a wonderful little tea party, before picking our spot between the waves to get back out to Quickstep, continuing on to Lanzarote just as the sun set.

Over the next six weeks or so we cruised extensively around Lanzarote, the north of Fuerteventura, Lobos and La Graciosa. We spent many happy days getting the Oppie out for the boys to sail, and surfing for hours on end. Sophie and I took our bikes to explore Lanzarote from end to end while the boys loved the busy Marina Rubicon, where they made many great cruising friends.

We’d decided not to do the ARC. The rally leaves a little too early in the season for us, and more importantly I didn’t want to be committed to a specific date. With work commitments to manage too, our decision was straightforward: we wouldn’t leave Lanzarote until the end of November and would also spend a few days in Cape Verde.

The Cape Verde Islands were another place I’d raced past many times but had never stopped at and was keen to explore a little. With our crew very keen to make it to Antigua for Christmas, we only spent 48 hours in Mindelo but we got up into the hills and loved the vibe around the dock with countless boats nervously preparing for their Atlantic crossing.

Tradewind crossing

Our transatlantic could hardly have been more straightforward. We left Mindelo in ‘muscular’ conditions and flew south-west initially. After clearing the wind shadow off Santo Antao, we hooked into the north-easterly trade winds and never looked back. We made the crossing without a single gybe in a shade over 13 days, having only slowed a little on approach to allow for a daylight arrival.

Securing provisions in the Caribbean. Photo: Nick Bubb

We rolled into Antigua and pretty much straight into the bar at Pigeon Beach. We reflected how – almost without fanfare – the boys were now transatlantic sailors. Whatever happened from now on, we’d all shared the great family adventure we’d dreamed of.

After celebrating Christmas in Antigua, we headed north to Barbuda, seeing in the New Year in splendid isolation at Spanish Point with a handful of cruising friends. The stunning pink and white sands on Barbuda’s coastline are remarkable and despite the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma, we found the local community to be very friendly and upbeat.

Next was Martinique, the cruising mecca that is Le Marin and the beautiful little village of Saint Anne, just a few miles south. We made many friends there and loved exploring the lush green interior and white sand beaches.

Splendid isolation in the Caribbean. Photo: Nick Bubb

Though symptomless, Sophie and Billy both returned positive PCR tests so we quickly moved away from the cruising community, a few miles around the corner to a peaceful anchorage called Anse d’Arlet, which had some of the biggest starfish we’ve ever seen, clear water and excellent shelter close to the cliffs.

Isolation complete, we headed to St Vincent and the Grenadines. More magic days followed in Bequia, Tobago Cays and then Union Island. In Union Island we got to spend time with one of FFI’s local partners and all took a full day hike with a local guide to see the incredible Union Islands geckos and hike up to the highest point in the Grenadines.

The marine park in Tobago Cays is really something very special with turtles and rays constantly surrounding the boat. One of the things we were all desperate to do on this trip was learn to wing-foil. It’s always fun to learn something new together and the logistics are so easy off the back of the cat.

Fun on a wonderful sandbar at Martinique. Photo: Nick Bubb

We started tow-foiling behind the dinghy and the boys refused to let us have all the fun; Rory is now tow-foiling around on his own when conditions are calm and Billy isn’t far behind. Wing-foiling from the boat in Tobago Cays in crystal clear water, having to carve around the turtles as they come up for air, was a very special moment. Sophie and I can both rip along now but neither of us can properly gybe yet, so that’s the next goal!

Panama bound

From here it was all eyes west, as we prepared to start the big move towards the canal. We had a perfect sail down to Bonaire, the kind of trip you dream of with 15 knots, full mainsail, gennaker and flat water the whole way; 400 miles later and we were in diving heaven!

In Bonaire this felt like torture for the boys – they can’t dive with compressed air until their lungs are fully developed (the advice seems to be wait until 12). So the obvious answer seemed to be to try freediving. 

The Bubb children enjoying some freediving. Photo: Nick Bubb

A lovely local instructor came out to the boat and spent an hour with us, teaching us all relaxation and breathing techniques, along with how to safely descend – and ascend – a line. Both boys hit their 5m targets, I got to around 15m, but Sophie discovered yet another sport she excels at and disappeared into the depths! By the end of our stay she was diving down close to 30m and holding her breath at the surface for over three minutes.

All the time there I had my eye on the weather for the last hop west to Colon and the entrance to the Panama Canal. Options included a stop in Cartagena, Columbia and the San Blas Islands but all were weather dependent. In the end, despite waiting for a window, we still had over 30 knots and 3-4m seas at times.

Family photo after a swim in the Caribbean. Photo: Nick Bubb

Our predicted 650 miles became nearly 800 but we rolled into the San Blas after just over four days at sea, as a weary but jubilant crew. The Kuna people were incredibly welcoming and the San Blas is the kind of place you could spend years visiting with close to 300 islands.

In just a few days we still got a real feel for the place and ensured it’s committed to our memories forever. We left with the feeling that we’d probably met our first community who have big challenges just ahead. Most of the islands sit just a few metres above sea level and already it’s hard to see how they will survive living as they do, in the long term.

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Our final stop before Colon was Portobelo. Supposedly named by Columbus and famously Drake’s final resting place, here was a perfect history lesson for the boys all in a morning. With ruins of forts and old cannons to be found all over town, their imaginations ran riot and we surely found gold ingots on every corner, as the life of pirates was brought into sharp focus.

The final few miles to Colon were an easy downwind slide and we entered Shelter Bay Marina at sunset to bring the curtain down on chapter one. Next; the Panama Canal, Las Perlas Islands, the Pacific and on to the Galapagos.

About the author: Nick Bubb

Nick Bubb is a lifelong sailor who has competed in the Volvo Ocean Race, Transat Jacques Vabre, and Route du Rhum among other ocean races. His wife Sophie is a professional ironman athlete and coach. They are documenting their travels on Instagram @OceanOdysseyCrew

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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Andrzej Jankowski, better known as Captain Andy, is a one-off. I met him in Warsaw when I was launching a book of my own, translated into Polish. His book’s title, My Name is Life, may sound presumptuous to some, but it soon becomes clear that Captain Andy is more than just a sailor.

As spokesman for the Independent Underground Students’ Union and press officer for the Solidarity Movement, he was actively engaged in the fall of communism, going on to work as Chief of Protocol for Polish President Lech Wałesa.

The early chapters of the book deal with Andy’s perspective on this historic period, then move seamlessly into seafaring, the passion of his life. The peak of this section is Spitsbergen.

He is minding his own business when the phone rings. An old friend, Tom, demands his presence. He’s short of crew and ice-bound in the high Arctic while he waits for a promised ice-breaker. Sniffing adventure, Andy enlists a pal to ride shotgun and hops on an aeroplane. Read on, and come to sea with a man with a strong handle on where we all stand in a changing world.

My Name is Life, by Captain Andy.

My Name is Life extract

Tom is waiting for us outside the airfield, dressed in a heavy winter coat, knee high quilted boots and a fur hat with earflaps folded down. It is cold out here. Next to him is a second person, dressed the same, though I can’t see his face because he lowered his head, swaying side to side. His feet are close together, the whole of him moving this way and that.

“Hi Andy!” he calls out, “Hi there Rafal, welcome! And this is Bogusz,” Tom points to the swaying guy next to him as if he were an exhibit. He makes no eye or hand contact with us, still rocking side to side.

“Hi, Bogusz!” I call out loud. The man comes to life.

“Eh,” he moans, showing us his young and friendly face, unshaven, front tooth missing. Then the head droops once again and all we look at is the fur cap.

“Actually, there is no Bogusz,” Tom concludes. “He will be with us tomorrow.”

Our fine and brave crew is now complete.

Down at the yacht, the surroundings look unreal. Giant blocks of ice are floating all about it. We go onto the wooden pier. Some guy on a boat with French colours is trying to fight off an iceberg from assaulting his vessel. A sea current is pushing several tons of ice right at him while he tries to repel this mass with a flimsy hook. The wooden handle snaps like a match. Tom does not flinch at the sight, so I assume this is the norm around here.

Crew get cold weather ready

Boarding our yacht I note the Polish ensign flying proud. Down in the mess we wait for Tom to brief us.

“We can’t leave the marina. The whole of Isfjord is blocked by a belt of massive icebergs six miles wide. No chance of squeezing a kayak through.”

“And the icebreaker?” I ask.

“Unfortunately, we’ve no news there.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Wait for a strong easterly wind. The forecast says it will pick up in a couple of days and move the pack westwards. At least the sun doesn’t set at all so we’ll have daylight throughout the trip.”

Great, so our crew has a plan, or rather a hope. We can only wait for an easterly wind to part the icebergs. Someone described a similar miracle in the Bible. So it’s time to wait.
We review charts published by the British Admiralty. I pay special attention to the depths marked at the exit to the bay and further out to sea. I see an ‘Uncharted area.’ Even the British Admiralty failed to explore this bit of our planet, leaving us to guess. I only hope the ‘bit’ is deep enough and not left uncharted due to shallows. The electronic charts also assure me that all is well. There should be no surprises, but one can never be too careful at sea.

Icebound in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, at the start of the adventure

We get ourselves and our ship ready for action, checking the sails, rigging, shrouds, stays, sheaves, engine oil and coolant levels.
I check the liferaft painter. It’s all ready.

Time to get dressed for battle. I layer up – thermal undies, a windstopper jacket and trousers, another wind resistant overcoat, and sealskins on top. I secure the neoprene wrist seals, ensuring not a drop of water can get inside. It will, of course. Then I move on to my cap, something I do not usually wear, but considering the conditions, the hood of my jacket alone won’t do. I spread a layer of anti-frostbite cream on my face, then my new balaclava, goggles and winter gloves.

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Great Seamanship: Where the Trade Winds Blow

Lou Boudreau shipped out of Nova Scotia in the 1950s at five months old in the 98ft schooner Doubloon. His…

Great seamanship on the Southern Ocean

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Then it’s the turn of my feet – I only have a pair of regular sailing moccasins without any insulation. I wear them with two pairs of thermal socks, which will have to do. I never put on heavy galoshes, in case I fall into the water and they turn into killer anchors. There are of course different schools of thought about equipment, but this works for me. I top it off with a Spinlock lifejacket, test my personal EPIRB and stuff my satphone into a waterproof pocket in the sleeve of my jacket. Then a long knife and a mobile chart plotter, independent of the boat’s navigation system. Last of all is a little sachet of sugar which I carry out of habit, just in case. My grab bag is waiting in the cabin, I’m ready to go.

Ice field approach

Tom starts the engine, while the rest of us hoist the sails. I cast off the last mooring line, but Bogusz is in trouble. Pushed by the wind, our 20-ton vessel is drifting away by itself. Bogusz is still shoving off, holding on to the guardrail of a Norwegian vessel moored next to us. Within seconds he is suspended between the two boats, but manages somehow to swing himself back, to land in a heap on deck. Rafal and Bogusz then vanish below, not to reappear until the next day.

Approaching Hornsund Bay, a Polish polar station

Tom and I sail towards the ice field, all too visible on the horizon. From a distance, the first bergs didn’t look all that imposing, but now I realise why we call them ‘ice mountains’. Tower block-sized blocks of ice bob around us like giant corks. The crystal clear water allows us to see how far below the surface they extend. Our ship passes them slowly. Tom keeps scanning the seas, the gaps between icebergs becoming ever tighter, smaller blocks of ice appearing up ahead. Small, but we don’t want to hit them even at our crawling speed.

Another hour goes by and the waters ahead are becoming ever more crowded. Ice behind us, ice up ahead, to port, to starboard. Wind pushes us forward, but the same is true of the icebergs, which keep following us. We still can’t spot open sea.

More hours go by. Tom calls out, pointing to starboard. A giant brown skinned arctic walrus is resting on an icy platform close to the water’s edge. He looks up, then lays back down to rest, not seeing us as any sort of threat.

We reduce speed, barely able to squeeze through the gaps up ahead. For the time being the hull is clearing all obstructions, but things are not promising. More icebergs emerge ahead, lining up to make our passage ever more difficult. I steer her easy to starboard, spotting a slight gap. Sailing on, we hope for more such good luck, but navigating this ice field is never easy.

Captain Andy at the helm

I look up ahead, spotting a dark object far off on the horizon. “Tom, you see that?” I ask.

“Yes, must be our icebreaker, watching our progress!”

“Obviously, waiting for us to clear a path for him,” I quip, even though things are far from funny. Hours pass by. The icebergs finally become more widely spaced. Our sailing is becoming almost pleasant. More and more stretches of open water up ahead, but we have to be careful, making sure this is not a temporary break. The sun sneaks out from behind a heavy cloud and illuminates the landscape. Mountains to our right, open sea ahead, a giant ship now visible on the horizon.

An hour later we are clear of the iceberg field and sail on to some fabulous open seas. Sails up, the yacht flies along at eight knots. What a feeling… gliding through the Arctic Ocean. Spitsbergen to the east, Greenland somewhere westwards far beyond the horizon, Europe and the northern reaches of Norway to the south. We are hundreds of miles from our goal. Our vessel is making majestic progress, free of shore lines and ice barriers, carrying me, equally free, upon its beautiful deck.

We are sailing down the chart, from 79° to 78° North. These sorts of coordinates make me happy. The lack of autopilot means I cannot leave the helm, but who would go below deck when the views are this astounding. The water has a strange, oily appearance, the endless Arctic day allowing me to get my fill of visual delights without fear of the sun setting. Still, I must focus on steering us safely between the occasional ice floes and mini-icebergs. 78°, six, decimal three minutes North, five minutes, three minutes… one… Hours go by at the helm, the ship eating up miles without a hitch.

Shotgun is essential to scare off polar bears

Crossing the 78th parallel

I cannot believe that I will soon cross the 78th parallel of northern latitude, from the North no less. And there was me wondering if I should fly out here. I am so close to the Holy Grail of sailing life, to complete fulfilment. This is what this latitude means for us sailors. My onboard display shows a seven, an eight, and then nothing but zeros. It’s only an imaginary line invented by human beings, but the emotions which come with crossing it are very real. The heart thumps, my face beams, I am happy.

We approach the entrance to Hornsund Bay. The wind drives us on, past a massive ice mountain floating there. But this one is not the usual white-blue, but a transparent oceanic diamond weighing hundreds of tons. Its interior filters the light to make it glow like a sapphire. We get close to shore. I check the chart, which has thus far not let us down. The coordinates are good.

The rest of our crew emerges from below deck, and then to my right, I see something I have been looking for since I arrived here: two massive mountains, their sharp peaks stabbing at the sky, that I had seen before in an old whaling painting. I feel shivers down my spine. I see the same steep, sharply angled rocks, one of the most unspoilt and unexplored regions of our planet.

The peaks themselves are buried deep in the thick cloud cover. Human foot has never touched these slopes. The waters around here are only ever visited by a handful of vessels. A German yacht moored here last year ended in tragedy for the crew. They anchored too close to an iceberg and a massive chunk of ice dropped into the sea causing a local tsunami that capsized the ship.

Activist and sailor Andrzej Jankowski enjoying calm after a storm

We sail deep into the fjord, stopping a safe distance from a glacier. It looks 100m tall. Majestic, gigantic and eternal, breathing and watching us. It is resting now, watching our temporary human efforts, which it will destroy with its strength in the next tens of thousands of years. I stare at it, unable to believe its mighty beauty. The scientists tell us that the top layer is only some tens of thousands of years old. The base layer of ice has been under great pressure for millions. It is so compressed that its structure resembles a sapphire or a diamond.

The glacier only reveals its true nature when one stands face to face with its massive visage. It doesn’t feel lifeless, it is very much alive. The impression is further reinforced by the constant cracking of the inner ice, air bubbles hundreds of thousands of years old popping.

The Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago. How short is the history of the human race! This gigantic glacier reminds us that even we who dominate today can still go the way of the dinosaurs and vanish just like that.

As we exit Hornsund, I can’t shake off the sense that these sights and adventures belong between the covers of some ancient book of legends. Then an emergency VHF radio call comes through. An American expedition spent the previous night sleeping on the glacier. A polar bear attacked them. One person is dead and two are injured, and as we set course for the comparative safety of Norway, we realise how wild and dangerous this place still is.

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The post An Arctic adventure: ice-bound in Spitsbergen appeared first on Yachting World.

American sailor Ryan Finn has become the first yachtsman ever to sail around Cape Horn in a proa.

Finn completed his New York to San Francisco solo record attempt on his 36ft proa Jzerro on April 21, after 93 days at sea.

Finn set off from Brooklyn, New York in mid January, attempting to set a new record over the historic 13,000-mile course which follows the great California Gold Rush of the 1840s and 1850s from the eastern seaboard to the western United States.

Ryan Finn and Jzerro arriving in San Francisco, April 2022. Photo: Merfyn Owen

Over 200 record attempts have been made over the route, in everything from ocean trimarans to maxis, but it has proved particularly difficult to beat. The clipper ship Flying Cloud set a record time of 89 days 8 hours in 1854, which stood  for a remarkable 135 years.

The course record had never previously been attempted in a proa. Finn’s proa is also the smallest yacht ever to attempt the route sailed single-handed.

A lightweight Pacific proa

Finn’s Russel Brown designed proa is exceptionally light (at 3,200 lbs or 1,450 kgs), designed for fast off wind sailing in the Pacific islands. To sail it single-handed, against the prevailing winds and into challenging head seas around Cape Horn, is a remarkable feat of seamanship.

Jzerro is a lightweight proa. Photo: Merfyn Owen

Finn’s first attempt in 2021 ended after the boat suffered structural damage due to being overloaded with the weight of gear and provisions needed for the voyage. For his second attempt he added a watermaker, enabling Jzerro to sail far less loaded.

For his second attempt, Finn sailed more than 14,000 miles – through Bermuda, past Brazil, and around the fearsome Cape Horn, before passing the Clipperton Islands on his way up to San Francisco.

Damage forced him to stop for repairs in Brazil and Patagonia, meaning his voyage was not non-stop (the single-handed non-stop record currently stands at 81 days) but his arrival in San Francisco is a huge achievement nonetheless.

Cape Horn challenge

Blog posts on his facebook page ‘2Oceans1Rock’ detail the extremity of the challenge.

On 18 March, off southern Chile, he wrote: “I’m scared. What lies ahead is frightening and I’m not looking forward to it.

“The race to get north, well ahead of the second depression is on and honestly at the top of my list of things I fear today is getting becalmed tonight. I’ve been becalmed almost every 24 hour period since getting south of Brazil.

“Normally that would be frustrating, but in this case it’s dangerous. I have a narrow window and I don’t need to be sloshed around in a windless hole for hours, as I was last night and the night before.

“It’s supremely frustrating and in this case terrifying.”

Two days earlier he had rounded Cape Horn, posting: “I sailed past Cape Horn in the early AM hours today. All I could see were the two lighthouses.

“It’s been very tricky getting this far. The rain has only stopped intermittently this morning and I’m still getting overrun by showers with 18 knots of wind, followed by 5. This is slow and kind of miserable.

“It promises to be as hard or harder for at least the next three days. I’m already tired. However, I have to remind myself that this is a privilege and I feel blessed to be where I am.
“I’d like to think that I’m sneaking out of here, but for sure the great Cape is watching my progress. You can feel it down here.”

Ryan Finn is the first sailor to round Cape Horn in a proa Photo: Merfyn Owen

Feat of seamanship

Renowned yacht designer Merfyn Owen, a friend of Finn’s, greeted him into San Francisco. Owen commented: “My old mate Ryan Finn sailed into San Francisco Bay this evening completing what I hope will be recognised as one of the greatest feats of seamanship ever completed by an American sailor. New York City to San Francisco, solo, in 93 days, on a 36′ proa! He looks like he’s just been out for the weekend.

“A more modest sailor you will not meet. He must know, but you couldn’t tell from his demeanour if he knew what he’d just pulled off. I’m in awe.”

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The tireless whirring of my coffee machine brought me back to my senses as I stood, lost in thought, in the cockpit of Mirniy Okean, my 40ft Boden South Sea steel ketch. I watched the sun rise over Bora Bora knowing that today was checkout day: I was about to begin a solo passage to Australia, across the Pacific in full Covid lockdown.

All the islands between Bora Bora and home were closed, except for Fiji, which I’d decided to skip due to the high entry fees to get in. That means sailing 3,400 miles non stop, and I’m not ready for this.

Maybe it’s the more than 30,000 miles I’ve sailed since I embarked on this journey, or the knowledge that after this passage my dream of circumnavigating is over, but something inside me has changed. Going back to ‘normal life’ is not going to be easy. I’ve been living life to the fullest for five years.

I set off from Australia in 2017, having made the decision to sail around the world after competing as a professional tennis player, and then working for the Australian National Tennis Academy. One day, with no previous experience, I sold everything I had, bought a boat and set off. Over three years I crossed the Indian Ocean, rounded the notorious Cape of Good Hope, and transited the Panama Canal before arriving in French Polynesia. Now it was time to complete the circle.

Carlos Cuadrado at the helm. Photo: Linda Terii

I motor my dinghy to shore and start walking to the gendarmerie, but I can’t go in. I’m struggling to come to terms with my journey coming to an end, and I fail to hold back tears. My heart is telling me to stay but my mind is pushing me to go. Somehow I find peace halfway, promising myself that one day I’ll be back and I just have to get the immigration process done. With my passport stamped there’s no turning back.

Pacific immersion

Sailing is the excuse I use to experience the challenge of crossing oceans, but my deeper drive is to integrate myself into the native cultures of the isolated places I sailed into. Researching the history, geography, and culture of the places I have visited became one of my main activities as I planned my circumnavigation.

In March 2021 I was lucky enough to be able to explore three of the eight beautiful islands of the Marquesas: Nuku Hiva, Tauata and Fatu-Hiva. The Marquesas left a lasting impression on me. I relished learning about their powerful cultural dances, skilful artisans, the complex history of their tattoos, and the love and generosity of the people. It will always be a very special place to me.

South seas island anchorage in Moorea.

After spending four months in the Marquesas it was time to start moving westwards, and a weather window of easterlies gave me a perfect wind angle for the four-day passage to Fakarava, part of the Tuamotus Islands. Ten days in Fakarava passed in the blink of an eye. I experienced an exhilarating dive of the famous South Pass with more than 300 sharks, and spent my days diving and learning to spearfish with other sailors.

Next was Tahiti, 280 miles to the south-west. Tahiti was a different experience to the rest of Polynesia: even if it is easy to get away to find unspoilt nature, the centre feels like any other busy and noisy city. The positive of this is there are plenty of shops to restock and buy or fix parts. I also spent six weeks working with the Tahitian Tennis Federation helping athletes and coaches with their high performance programme. I’ve been very lucky in my tennis career to be exposed to great mentors and I loved passing on my experience in Tahiti.

From Tahiti I sailed to Moorea, Huahine, Taha’a and, in what would be my last stop before the big crossing, Bora Bora. Bora Bora had no tourists because of the pandemic, becoming instead one giant playground for sailors. I was going to miss this life.

Scuba diving with sharks in Fakarava’s South Pass. Photo: 1000amares

When the day for departure arrived, I faced this passage like any other, with a spice of fear and respect for the ocean that translates into excitement and caution. The previous days spent getting the boat ready I prepared just as I did for my days on the tennis court: I visualised the problems that could arise and created a game plan, then I made sure I had everything I needed to solve problems ready to go.

Mirniy Okean has taken me around the world without complaint, it has nurtured me and kept me safe. I put my hand on top of the compass and whispered, ‘One more time, baby, one more time.’

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Cruising at Warp Factor 10

Imagine cruising across the Pacific at 40 knots!

Gitana 13 attacks North Pacific crossing

11-man crew leave San Francisco in a bid to reach Japan in record time 31/3/08

I made final preparations for food, gas and water and checked every system on the boat. My competitive mentality loves challenges and once I could put all my emotions to one side, I started to feel excited again for my next ocean passage.

I emailed the Australian Border Force of my estimated time of arrival and port of entry, and made a passage plan that put me well away from the many islands and reefs that dot this route. I studied patterns of weather windows and systems – it looked like the low pressures from New Zealand were a bit higher than normal. That pushed my decision to get away from the rhumbline and give Fiji a wide berth. It would definitely add more miles to the passage, but since I was alone, comfort and safety were top of my priority list.

Heading off

I left Bora Bora on a sunny afternoon at the end of a high pressure, giving me 15 knots of east-north-easterly winds for the next four days. Setting a course for 270° I set off making a pleasant 6.1 knots on a starboard tack. Then, after 500 miles and four days, the wind disappeared.

I could choose to use the engine, or simply float until the next winds pushed me towards my destination. With more than 3,000 miles to go, and conscious of the need to save fuel, I chose the second option. I doused the sails and drifted at 0.3 knots while taking some time to sleep and cook good meals, had a proper shower and made some fresh water.

Taihoe Bay, Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas. Photo: Linda Terii

After floating for 24 hours I made the most of the super-light winds and poled out a genoa, picking up to 2.5 knots speed over ground which, if not very fast, is better than nothing and still gained me 60 miles over the next 24 hours. By day seven, the wind was back, progressively building until it reached a solid 25-30 knots and guaranteed a fast passage for the week ahead. With it there was a 3-5m sea with an eight second wave period on the beam, which made the passage bumpy and uncomfortable.

At night, if there’s no moon or it’s too cloudy to see the squalls approaching, I normally reef from midnight until first light. If a squall comes in before midnight I’m still awake enough to put in a reef in three minutes, and if it comes after first light I’d see it with enough time to reef early. Every time I reefed, I gained in safety and comfort but lost around 0.5 knots of boatspeed, which equates to a lot of time over 3,000 miles.

After 14 days of passage I’d passed Fiji and with a solid high pressure generating consistent winds in the mid-20s from the south-east, it looked a good opportunity to change course to 235°, sailing south-west and aiming for the southern tip of New Caledonia’s Isle of Pines at 7 knots. With a little bit of favourable current I managed to log a few days sailing over 150 miles in 24 hours, and relished the sense of making good progress. It was hard to believe I had been on this same island four years ago, learning to sail as I went.

When conditions allowed Mirniy Okean could achieve 7 knots and cover more than 150 miles in 24 hours. Photo: Linda Terii

Thunderous welcome

Two weeks of solo sailing in, and I was starting to feel tired. Fatigue is something I’m used to from my days on the gruelling professional tennis circuit, but this tiredness was more mental than physical due to the sea state. Mirniy Okean was being hit by huge tropical squalls that hit peak wind speeds of 40-plus knots, and my sleep patterns were all over the place. My alarm was set for every 40 minutes, but I couldn’t manage to sleep even that much. My body didn’t know whether it was breakfast or dinner time, so I ate when I felt like it.

I have to admit, however, that I get excited when things don’t go easily; it must be my competitive personality constantly looking for a challenge. On day 20, somewhere between New Caledonia and the Australian Coast, there was a loud bang and I went out to find the block that holds the vang totally destroyed. I smiled to myself that of course this had to happen at night.

I hove-to, giving myself a few minutes to work out what to do. Then I grabbed my cordless grinder, thankful that I’d remembered to charge it before setting off, took a metre of Dyneema rope and my head torch, clicked my harness to the safety line and prepared to step outside the cockpit. With the boat rolling so much, I had to try my hardest not to cut myself, but managed to round off all the corners of the broken block and reattach it with Dyneema. It worked a treat.

I reset the boat back on course and the alarm for 40 minutes of sleep with a big smile, having realised that I’d not have been able to do something like that four years ago without screaming with frustration.

With 600 miles until Australia the wind disappeared once again. We had averaged 6.2 knots until then, so it didn’t seem fair to complain after the good three week run we’d just enjoyed. After considering all scenarios, this time around I took a different approach. Strong low pressure systems from Australia are not uncommon at that time of the year and one coming my way would be less than ideal. I put the engine on and we kept making progress. Three hundred miles later the winds returned, and I found myself sailing once again at nearly 7 knots.

Cuadrado was able to put in a reef solo in just three minutes. Photo: Linda Terii

There have been just two nights on this circumnavigation when I’ve been scared: the first was the very first day I bought my yacht in New Zealand, facing a huge storm in Cook Strait. The second was the final night before arriving in Australia.

Just 60 miles from land I was surrounded by lightning, the sky illuminated every 10 seconds. Having had a broken radar for two years, I had been facing storms without data since 2019, when I was sailing from Madagascar, but this one seemed like a big one. I told myself one more time that it will pass, but it didn’t.

Although I can’t believe this is happening on my last night at sea, I have to make the decision to avoid it and divert our course. The problem is that I can’t really see which direction it’s moving, and it seems that wherever I go the storm is chasing me.

I hove-to once again, trying to see the direction of the storm and hoping it will miss me. When it becomes clear the storm is heading straight towards me, I make a 180° change of course and simply try to get out of there as soon as possible. I was afraid we’d get hit by lightning so I put all the electronics I could in the oven, hoping the advice I read years ago in a tattered sailing magazine was sound. I reefed the mainsail as much as possible and rolled the genoa away. After four years around the world it was finally time to hoist the storm jib.

I managed to pass right along the edge of the storm, although the winds still reached more than 50 knots. After riding the margins of the storm for six hours, as nothing major was damaged apart from a broken UV strip on the storm jib. I sat down heavy with relief.

The difference between that first night in Cook Strait and the final night is that I wasn’t panicking, which allowed me to think more clearly and make smarter decisions. Sailing makes you earn every mile, and managing stress and fear becomes part of the process of learning. There are no shortcuts, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Cuadrado arrived in the Marquesas in spring of 2021. Photo: Linda Terii

Home at last

Next morning was like nothing had happened, and I was sailing a perfect beam reach on a sunny day approaching the Gold Coast – feeling absolutely exhausted. Just before I went to drop the sails I spotted a splash in the water.

I reached for my camera and saw two humpback whales breaching and slapping their tails just metres from the bow. Whales make those sounds to communicate with others many miles away. I don’t believe in coincidences, but the ocean has made me believe in magic. I felt deep inside that, just perhaps, the whales were sending a message to the ‘other side’, telling my late father of my safe arrival home. In that moment I felt deeply connected to my father, from whom I learned a love for the ocean, and who I know would be proud I followed my dreams.

I finally let down the sails after 28 days at sea: I’d completed the passage single-handed, but realised that I’d never sailed truly alone.

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“In my entire life I have never given up on any of my projects, but… reluctantly I decided to abandon my plans.” So wrote Jimmy Cornell in his most recent blog post, as he explained his decision to abandon his most recent circumnavigation – an around the world loop following in the wake of Magellan on an all-electric Outremer catamaran.

Cornell had been preparing to set off on a project known as ‘Elcano 500’, marking the 500th anniversary of Portuguese skipper Ferdinand Magellan’s ground-breaking voyage, which was completed by Juan Sebastian Elcano in 1521. The circumnavigation, due to be Cornell’s fourth, was attempting to break new ground itself by being a fossil-free voyage.

Unsurprisingly, the experimental technology involved had experienced teething problems and, having initially set off in late 2020 and sailed to the Canary Islands, he decided to return to the Outremer yard in France to improve some of the power regeneration systems on the boat, and wrote frequent updates on the project’s progress.

Where it all began: Jimmy Cornell on the original Aventura

What few knew at the time, however, was that after returning to London for the winter, Cornell had suffered a subdural brain haemorrhage. “One day, while walking to an appointment, I suddenly felt dizzy, lost my balance and fell. My head hit the ground, but with my rugby past I didn’t think much of it, and returned home.

“Later that day, I didn’t feel well and was referred by our family doctor to the nearby neurosurgery hospital,” Cornell reported.

A procedure to drain the haemorrhage was successful, but Cornell was forced to re-evaluate his plans. “What would have happened if I had continued the voyage and this had occurred in some remote location, or more likely on the high seas?” he pondered. At the request of both his doctor and his family, Cornell decided to step back from his Magellan circumnavigation. His Outremer 4 Zero is now in the process of being sold.

“I have a great advantage,” he tells me, “In that I take difficult decisions quickly. I don’t often have doubts about either the decision or what I’ve done because I always tried to avoid regretting things I haven’t done. If I want to do something, I do it – and I would have completed this voyage, but Covid played a part in it. The fact that we were not generating sufficient energy was another thing.

“Eventually a very simple thing happened: when we arrived in Tenerife, one of my crew left and I was thinking maybe we should not sail to the Caribbean, but stay the winter in the Canaries and have some improvements done on the system. Just by chance I looked at Predictwind and for the Canaries there was a forecast for southerly winds, sustained.

“So I said, ‘Well this is crazy, we’re leaving tomorrow. Not to the Caribbean, but back to France.’

“I was right, we had following winds almost all the way to Cadiz, which is amazing in December when the winds are from the north-east. So it’s strange how in life sometimes you take a major decision not by the most important fact, but something which is just coincidence.”

Readers of Cornell’s many books will recognise the trait. While he is a staunch advocate of the need for proper preparation, Cornell also embodies the saying that a true sailor trims their sails to the wind, and his sailing plans have fluttered and flexed with the breeze.

“Maybe because of my Latin side I’m quite impulsive,” he muses during our conversation. An early trip to South America involved a whimsical diversion to Peru because of his children’s love of Paddington bear. His successful Northwest Passage transit followed a last minute decision to divert from a planned voyage to Tahiti but instead ship Aventura IV to Seattle. Cornell’s approach has not always made for the easiest working relationships, but is a masterclass in adapting and embracing every opportunity that presents itself.

Breaking free

Now aged 81, Jimmy Cornell has lived a life that is, by anyone’s standards, truly remarkable. He was born in communist Romania in 1940. Aged nine, he witnessed his father being seized by police for his political beliefs. Aged 19, Cornell attempted to escape Romania by swimming to a merchant ship in the Black Sea, but was shot at in the water by Romanian soliders, and was hit in the leg.

The following year he paddled down the Danube by kayak – not to defect, but to explore, wild camping along its banks. The adventure sparked a love of voyaging that would go on to shape Cornell’s entire career.

A talented linguist, Cornell met, and fell in love with, an English woman; Gwenda. In 1969 the pair married, moved to London, and had a daughter, Doina, and son, Ivan. Cornell found work in the Romanian section of the BBC World Service, and began learning to sail through the BBC employees’ yacht club. He purchased a part-finished Van de Stadt-designed 36ft GRP ketch, and in 1975 the Cornell family set off on a bluewater adventure in Aventura, living aboard, homeschooling their children and sailing the Mediterranean.

Ivan gets an astronavigation lesson from his father

That voyage turned into a remarkable six years spent afloat, during which Cornell became a roving reporter for the BBC World Service, submitting tapes on everything from African history to sustainable farming from all over the world. Aboard Aventura the Cornell family explored the eastern seaboard of the United States, cruised extensively across the Pacific, and returned home via Indonesia, the Gulf of Aden, and even Romania, under Ceausescu’s regime.

Yet his adventurous urge was far from satisfied. In 1986 Cornell launched the very first Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) and formed the World Cruising Club, which was later sold. The following year he published his first of 13 books, World Cruising Routes, and launched his second yacht Aventura II, a steel-hulled Bill Dixon design.

Cornell organised multiple other rallies, including a circumnavigation, which he joined aboard Aventura II. More yachts, more books, and more extreme expeditions followed, as well as the creation of Aventura IV, the Garcia on which Cornell twice attempted – and ultimately succeeded – in sailing the Northwest Passage, in 2015. There is almost no element of modern bluewater cruising which Cornell has not experienced, influenced, researched, or been published on.

Reflecting on his 46 years of cruising, Cornell believes that his background was a driving factor. “I grew up behind the Iron Curtain under a dictatorship in a communist regime, my father died in prison as a political prisoner, when I was 19 I tried to escape but I was shot. I couldn’t get out of the country.

“What is liberty? What is freedom? We really only know what it is when we lose it. Once you’ve tasted freedom – and I hadn’t tasted freedom when I was young – but once I had, I realised that a career is not what matters in life. In life what matters is to take advantage of that hard won freedom. And it’s what I’ve done for the rest of my life.

“I’ve given up things, but I don’t care because I always wanted to be free to do whatever I wanted. I did not want to take freedom for granted.”

It is why he believes he has found recent restrictions, swapping the planned circumnavigation for his flat in London’s Bloomsbury, bearable.

“I’m extremely fortunate to have done this for all of my life. This is why I’ve put up with lockdown much more easily: because I’ve done what I wanted. I wasn’t frustrated, it wasn’t as if I had three or four weeks a year to go on holiday and then come back for 11 months of drudge.

The first Aventura, a 35ft Van de Stadt GRP ketch

“I’ve learned a lot from participants in my rallies. I would say maybe 80% of participants in the round the world rallies were men, over 60, very often retired, very often successful in their careers. Countless times they came to say to me: ‘Jimmy, my sole regret is not to have done this earlier in my life, because my career and sometimes my family took precedence, but I should have done it because I love it.’ And now they are 60, 65, 70… But I can’t say that, because I’ve done it since I was 35.”

Ahead of his time

Cornell has long been ahead of his time. When he and Gwenda completed their first cruise aboard Aventura in the 1970s, foreign yachts were an unfamiliar sight in many of the island nations they arrived in. Entire families cruising and living aboard were even rarer.

Cornell was also a trail-blazer as a travelogue broadcaster. While now the vast majority of cruising yachts will have some form of blog, Instagram or YouTube channel, he admits to being jealous of the ease with which such content can be produced these days.

“I am quite envious. We had to post tapes back to the BBC via diplomatic services wherever we went, and tapes got lost and so on. Now everything is so easy, and that is why we have such a proliferation of information.”

Is there now too much information out there? Besides Cornell’s own comprehensive library of cruising guides (World Cruising Routes, World Voyage Planner and more) and the cruising community website noonsite.com (launched by Cornell in 2000, later sold to World Cruising Club, and still an invaluable resource today), sailors can now access a plethora of social media groups, open source data and much more.

The young Cornell family during an Atlantic crossing in 1976

Cornell thinks not. “No, it makes it easier to plan ahead. Maybe it takes some of the excitement away because you already know what to expect.
“But you should be able to find information you can trust – certainly not on social media.”

Cornell holds robust views on many topics, but says he has always aimed to hold firm to his original BBC journalistic principles of objectivity and trusted sources. “I always stand back and ask, can I justify it?”

His data based approach includes in depth analysis of the routes taken by active cruising yachts, the prevailing wind directions at different times of year for locations all around the world, and the frequency and intensity of tropical storms. Cornell, often working with his son Ivan, updates the information religiously. He has recently completed a new version of his part-biography, part-cruising reference guide 200,000 miles: A Life of Adventure, to include his learnings from catamaran sailing with Aventura Zero, and will next begin updating Cornells’ Ocean Atlas.

World map shows the remarkable voyages of Cornell’s series of Aventura yachts

“This will keep me busy!” he notes, “I want to bring it up to date on the high latitudes and North Atlantic, and what has happened in the last 10 years. If you look at tropical storms and the areas they have covered, you can see now very clearly that every month there are more and more and more, and stronger.
“But this is not work! It’s so enjoyable. I love to do all this research.”

Learn not to panic

Cruisers return to Cornell’s tomes and flock to his seminars because they are crammed with real-life, practical advice on how to prepare for all eventualities, with lists of everything from medical spares to carry to how to avoid piracy. In his five decades of sailing, Cornell experienced many situations that would have rattled even the most experienced skippers, including gear failures in high winds and nearly becoming trapped in an ice floe. When I ask him what, if anything, he feared while at sea, he takes a long pause.

“I’m not a very panicking person,” he muses. “When something goes all wrong I become extremely calm. Something I learned from an airline pilot was to always stop, think through all the possibilities, don’t be rushed.

“Maybe this is where my Romanian side comes into play, it’s a fatalism: if it’s going to happen it’s going to happen anyway – but when things happen, fortunately I can stay calm and find the source of the problem, and ideally a solution.”

Aventura II was a steel-hulled Bill Dixon design

Nevertheless, there was an incident during his Northwest Passage attempt in 2014, when he was sailing with his daughter, Doina, which scared him. While motoring towards Greenland, they picked up a thick rope around the propeller, so Cornell donned his drysuit to dive under Aventura IV to clear the propeller. As he was going to be working underneath the hull he did not add tanks, only a snorkel mask.

But, having cleared the prop, Cornell realised he was rapidly becoming hypothermic in the freezing waters. “I am a qualified diver, and I had a drysuit on, but not a head covering, and I could feel that I was getting cold. I knew that as the blood starts going away from your head you lose your sense of rational thought, and I knew I had maybe one minute to get out.

“I didn’t panic. But when I came behind the boat, I couldn’t take my fins off. I was tethered to the boat with a line, but now I had 12 kilos of weight around my waist and these large fins and I couldn’t take them off. I could see my daughter on the platform and I realise that the worst thing that can happen to me now is that I drown, attached to the boat, with my daughter there. So, amazingly – and I still can’t understand how I imagined to do it – I managed to lift my feet up to the swim platform, and she took one fin off and I took another. Then I climbed up, she helped me up the steps, and then I collapsed. I was incoherent. It was maybe half a minute or one minute, but I was aware of it.”

The around the world rally fleet in Tahiti

Sailing with family has always been Jimmy Cornell’s ideal. While he says choosing a favourite of his yachts is near-impossible (“No, I couldn’t say. The big problem is that they have been an evolution. Every boat was very much based on the previous boat.”), his favourite voyage will always be his first, sailing with his wife and children on a journey of discovery.

“The whole family was all the time on the first boat, a lot of the time on the second boat, half the time on the third. So it was less and less. and I missed my family. Once you get used to cruising with family, there’s no substitute.

“The two most important factors contributing to the success of a voyage are mental attitude or mindset, and crew. Many more voyages have been abandoned because of problems with the crew than because the boat was too small or too large, or equipment failures, or the financial side and so on. If you cannot sail with your family and you are forced to sail with crew, this is more precarious. I found it very, very difficult. But sailing with your wife or family is the ideal – you can be yourself.”

Jimmy Cornell has ‘retired’ several times before. In 2010, at the age of 70, he sold Aventura III and planned to give up long-distance sailing to spend more time with Gwenda and his family, only to go on to launch the Garcia Aventura IV and complete his high latitudes adventures. This time, however, he says he’s hanging up his sea boots for good.

“I never say never, as James Bond said that! But I can’t see myself going cruising. I have to accept it. It’s very difficult because I am very active, I live on the fifth floor and there is no lift. Maybe I might charter something… But I like having my own boat. I have to face up to the fact that I’m 81 years old. I have to stop somewhere.”

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Rudyard Kipling famously wrote that the complete person can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. Most books of the sea end with some sort of triumph, be it a gentle circumnavigation or a race well won. Andrew Halcrow’s Into the Southern Ocean is cut from a different cloth.

Having already sailed around the world through the tropics in his engineless, self-built yacht Elsi Arrub, he felt the need for harsher challenges and set out in 2006 to cross the Southern Ocean single-handed, navigating entirely by sextant.

Having been foiled by a medical emergency, he vowed to do it again, from east to west against the prevailing wind.

In 2013, a dismasting cut short this effort, but the book this Shetland islander wrote about his great voyage is stirring stuff.

In this extract, he has just weathered the Horn, but is now faced with the certainty of a dangerously extreme storm. He has to decide whether to run for shelter or ‘ride it out’. The choice is far from simple and the description of his seamanlike decision-making is exemplary…

Andrew Halcrow on his first Cape Horn rounding; he later returned to the Southern Ocean, navigating only by sextant

Extract from Into the Southern Ocean

The good sailor weathers the storm he cannot avoid and avoids the storm he cannot weather,” (anonymous).

Elsi and I had rounded the Horn but the weather chart showed winds up to Force 9 which, by the way the forecasts had been going, could easily be Force 11. I had to try and make the most of the present fair wind to get offshore as far as I could and get some sea-room before it hit us. I really didn’t fancy being off the Horn in a Force 11 but there was a chance it might ease back a bit as it moved east. Even if it went down a little, I was sure we could cope with that.

But where was the best place to go to avoid the worst of the weather? Almost 60 miles south-west of Cape Horn are a small group of islands called Diego Ramirez.

The islands didn’t offer any chance of shelter and, worse, the seabed rose steeply from the deep ocean to the shallow shelf the islands sit on; probably a perfect place for massive waves to form. If we went south it meant heading more towards the centre of the low and the weather would be worse.

To the north of Diego Ramirez the seabed was very uneven and heading there would also bring us nearer to the coast with less searoom. But I also didn’t want to turn back and run for shelter east of the Horn after having got this far. The fact was there were no good options and I had to make the best of a bad thing.

By midday there was no wind at all. When the storm came in I knew it would blow from the north-west first and Diego Ramirez would be a potential lee shore. Between there and Cape Horn we were literally between a rock and a hard place. The only option now was to go south of Diego Ramirez to make sure we had open water to leeward and hope for the best.

By the time we reached there on late Friday afternoon the wind was north-west Force 6-7 and rising. The early hours of Saturday morning were miserable as we lay hove to under triple-reefed main with a Force 9 howling in the rigging.

Run for cover

The latest forecast wasn’t great. The low had deepened and the forecast winds were now Force 8 to 10, which going by the previous forecasts meant that could be Force 10-12. The seas were about 4-5m high now but were forecast to be near double that as the wind picked up.

Elsi was a strong little boat but there are limits to everything and a Force 12 off the Horn was outside my comfort zone. It would be madness to stay out here with this forecast while there was still a chance to run for shelter.

I remembered advice about Caleta Lennox and decided to head for there. Caleta Lennox is a sheltered bay on the east side of Isla Lennox, one of three islands which lie at the eastern entrance to the Beagle Channel.

Once we had reached the Horn again it would be just over 50 miles from there to Caleta Lennox. At 1430 on the Saturday afternoon I rigged the small storm jib and turned Elsi’s bow to the east. It grieved me to lose all the ground we had sailed so hard to gain but it would be crazy to do anything else.

The wind was no more than Force 8 when we started back. I had to hand steer as the Aries couldn’t hold a straight course. At one stage we had a seal, a dolphin and an albatross playing around us; all of them masters of their element and revelling in the conditions. I was definitely the odd one out in a sea that was building all the time.

Many times during that run-in two separate waves would rush past us and crash together up ahead to leave a jumbled chaos of water to get through. The forecast showed Force 6-7 but it was about Force 9 all the way in. I didn’t feel the cold too badly, partly because the wind was at my back and partly because I had to work the helm all the time to keep us on course .

Menacing clouds

At sunset the sky was split in two. To port, the clouds burned a hazy blaze of angry red, a sky bursting blood vessels from blowing too hard. When I turned to look on the other side a grey mass of sodden air, heavy as lead, had crushed the lower cloud to a menacing jet black. Five minutes later we had a ferocious hail shower that peppered us like machine gun fire and turned the decks white.

I could see a vague outline of the Horn now before the daylight went completely. In any other small yacht I might have been scared but I had massive confidence in Elsi and knew as long as I could keep her pointed in the right direction she would get us there. It was a wild, whitewater ride but we were doing okay.

We got hit quite a few times. The two worst waves broke over us just before we rounded the Horn. The first filled the cockpit to overflowing and the second broke right over us so that all I could see ahead of me was a smother of white foam with a mast sticking up out of it.

I couldn’t see Elsi’s decks at all and before it all ran off I was sitting waist deep in water wondering if we were going to stay upright or not. But the one great thing about Elsi was that she was always dry inside, even after being pretty much completely submerged.

Elsi Arrub making way in the Roaring Forties

We rounded the Horn at 2210. For once the current was helping us and I kept in close to make the most of it. This legendary lump of black rock was silhouetted by a half moon and looked particularly impressive towering over us. Once we passed the Horn I pointed Elsi’s bow north between Isla Deceit and Islas Barnevelt.

Islas Barnevelt lay to leeward and I wanted to be sure we didn’t drift down towards it. The channel is 10 miles wide and in daylight there would be no problem in passing through. But in unfamiliar territory in the dark with a gale heaping the sea up and the current running strongly to the east, it wasn’t so easy to be sure of an exact position.

As we sailed further north we came under the lee of Deceit Island and found some shelter from the worst of the seas. The swell gradually began to flatten out and I was able to set a triple-reefed main. With Elsi now better balanced, the Aries could steer her again. Soon after, the wind eased a bit and I was just letting out the third reef when a sudden vicious squall came out of the blackness to hit us and I had a real struggle getting it back in again.

Elsi Arrub gets some respite on the beach at Caleta Lennox
after the storm had passed

I’d had no sleep and about 0700 I noticed I was doing everything more slowly and taking more time to make decisions. We were out of the worst of the weather now in any case and I could relax a bit, but I had to be careful my tiredness didn’t make me do anything stupid. I made a pot of oatmeal gruel to warm me and washed it down with a mug of coffee. It seemed to give me a second wind.

Going nowhere fast

The gale dropped away to a fine west-north-west Force 4. With daylight and a good sailing wind everything was so much easier. I pulled up more sail and we cruised fine over a flatter sea, but it soon fell to only a handful of knots and we struggled to keep moving. What had been a whisper of wind fell lighter till the air was almost still. As we rounded Isla Luff on the east side of Isla Lennox, and headed for the pass into Caleta Lennox, I sat in the cockpit barely daring to move for fear of shaking what little air there was out of the sails. The sea was flat and that was the only reason we kept moving; any motion and we’d have stopped long ago.

I could see the wind was going to fall completely. We weren’t too far off the shore; in fact we looked to be getting nearer to it all the time. I nipped below and made up a paddle out of the first things I could find, a bread board and a long broom handle.

When I got back on deck the wind had gone completely and the shore was only 200m away. In the night there had been so much wind a scrap of canvas the size of a hanky would have carried us in, but now, a sail as big as a football pitch wouldn’t be large enough. I paddled for about 10 minutes before the lightest of breezes filled in and we sailed slowly into Caleta Lennox.

Anchored off Isla Lennox, the wind starting
to pick up as the storm approaches

At 1450 we anchored in 4m of water. I payed out around 40m of nylon and kept a further length handy in case we dragged. I wrapped some sheet rubber around the nylon where it passed over the bow roller to stop it chafing, then covered that with a towel and tied the whole lot up with twine.

I hadn’t planned on anchoring at all on this trip and had put ashore our usual pile of chain that would have been ideal here. Instead I was putting all my trust in a length of 22mm nylon and was a bit anxious whether it was up to the job or not; with this storm coming in I’d have far preferred to see a heavy length of chain between us and the anchor.

I snugged everything down on deck and lashed the mainsail tight to the boom. The wind began to rise as I finished off securing the boom; we’d got here just in time. I was feeling a bit jaded now with the lack of sleep and was in my bunk by 1800. It felt odd for Elsi to be lying still after 90 days of ceaseless movement on the ocean. I really didn’t want to be here but given the choice between being in a Force 12 south-west of the Horn or a secure anchorage there was only one sensible option. I closed my eyes and fell asleep .

By 1000 the following day the wind was up to Force 8 from just south of west. A small fishing boat came in and anchored to the north of us. By 1100 it was gusting Force 10 and driving spindrift across the water.

I had been up in the night every couple of hours to check on our position and monitor the nylon for chafe but it was doing a sterling job and holding okay.

Caleta Lennox is about 75 miles north of Diego Ramirez, where the weather was far worse. If we had stayed out there it would have been a desperate situation. There was every chance we might not have survived and it was the right decision to come in. At 1430 the wind suddenly dropped to Force 4 and 20 minutes later it was only a light breeze. The storm would continue on east to wreak havoc but it had passed us and I could breathe easier again.

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The post Into the Southern Ocean – navigating by sextant in the south appeared first on Yachting World.

John Passmore is a man unafraid to move with the times. A professional journalist with a distinguished newspaper career, he now hosts a powerful online presence in the guise of his channel oldmansailing.com. The quote at the beginning of his recent book also under the name Old man sailing is from Søren Kirkegaard and it sums up his attitude. ‘Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards’.

When Covid lockdown hit, instead of hunkering down in his office, John, now in his 70s, got on his boat and went to sea. Forty-two days and 3,629 miles later, he was on national radio advising the rest of us about how to live the dream.

In this extract from Old Man Sailing, John re-lives the capsize of an earlier boat as he shares a unique description of what goes through a thinking man’s mind while perched on the bottom – or is it the top? – of his inverted Heavenly Twins catamaran, Lottie Warren, in a North Sea storm. The book is a great read from a professional storyteller who always sees the funny side, even when laughs must have been hard to find.

Old man sailing

Standing at the wheel, I watched the log hit 13 knots – then 16. Looking astern, two white wakes stretched out with the tyres kicking up plumes of spray, and then, behind them, the crest of the wave. It was high, of course, but it was a long way behind so it didn’t seem particularly threatening.

Meanwhile, the little boat continued to track dead straight downwind. I engaged the autopilot, and she continued to thunder along.

I got out the camera and took pictures. Then the boat gave a lurch, flinging me from one side to the other so that I landed painfully on top of the lumpy EPIRB mounted on the starboard bulkhead. I carried on taking pictures, although, I did wonder why the flash kept going off?

But it wasn’t the flash going off. It was the strobe light on the EPIRB – which meant that the EPIRB was switched on. I must have activated it when I sat on it. Now it was firing off distress messages. When this happens by accident, you are not supposed to switch it off – that just confuses everyone. On the other hand, if I didn’t switch it off now, they would launch a full-scale search and rescue operation. I don’t think I could have lived with the embarrassment. I switched it off.

It was too late. At home in Woodbridge, Tamsin received a call from Falmouth Coast­guard. They had received one ‘ping’, they said – but then, nothing. They wanted to know if she had heard from me. In the end, they said they would treat it as a false alarm. If it happened again, they would act.

Of course, I didn’t know any of this. Certainly, I didn’t need rescuing. The little boat was flying dead straight downwind in brilliant sunshine with excellent visibility. And so the storm raged and Lottie Warren rattled on in the direction of Bergen or Tromsø or somewhere and I slept and woke, and slept and woke again until I woke to the sensation of going up in a high-speed lift. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the fruit bowl tipping over, spilling apples and oranges across the table.

Out loud, I said, matter-of-factly: ‘She’s going over.’ And she was. The whole cabin rotated – quite slowly, it seemed – and I found myself on the deckhead. Water squirted in around the door, all sorts of loose objects were floating about, sloshing back and forth as the now stationary boat bobbed quietly upside down.

If she had been a monohull, she would have righted herself, the weight of the keel pulling her up, but Lottie Warren was completely stable upside down. This boat would stay upside down indefinitely.

The first thing to do was to activate the EPIRB. I opened the doors. Hardly any more water came in. I plucked the beacon from its bracket. It was flashing already – activated automatically. I brought it back inside. Now it would have to go in the water, floating alongside the boat with a clear view of the satellites. I tied the tether to the freshwater galley pump and pushed the rest out of the window.

Now what? The boat would not sink – that was the theory. She had buoyancy chambers fore and aft – as well as all the air trapped inside. Of course, everything had fallen to the deckhead, including all the clothes stowed in the lockers under the bunk. Multihull sailors don’t need to secure their lockers against a knockdown or a capsize. Once the boat is upside down, stuff falling out of lockers is the least of your worries.

Where’s the liferaft?

I found the dinghy floating in its bag, but the liferaft? No. It did occur to me that the hatch was hanging open. Was it possible that the liferaft had dropped out? Surely not, they’re designed to float, even before you pull the lanyard to inflate them.

After a bit, I gave up looking. For one thing, my eyes were stinging every time I put my head underwater. That must be the battery acid leaking. Nothing to do but wait, I suppose.

Wedging myself mostly out of the water on what used to be the top of the wardrobe locker, I wondered if anyone was on the way to rescue me. Was someone in the Coastguard centre at Falmouth at that very moment saying: “Distress Message from Lottie Warren? No, don’t worry about that one. That’s a false alarm. We had that a couple of hours ago.”

John Passmore, the ‘Old Man Sailing’

Meanwhile, was there anything I could do to help myself? If there was, I couldn’t think of it. Instead, I reached out for an apple floating past and bit into it. It turned out to be an orange. I can’t tell you how long I stayed like that.

The water sloshing back and forth taking with it plastic cups, a bottle of ketchup, my sunhat. I wouldn’t need that…

Honestly, you would think, in such a predicament, I would consider doing something proactive. Instead of which I think I just became more and more philosophical about what was going to happen to me: maybe someone was on the way to rescue me, maybe they weren’t. Either way, there was not much I could do about it.

This might have been the beginning of muddled thinking. With a flash of recognition, I realised what was happening: The water was creeping up my chest as the boat settled and forced out the air. Meanwhile, I was using up what air I did have. One way and another, if l wasn’t thinking straight now, nothing was going to become clearer by waiting. It was time to get out.

I dived down into the water, found the hatch, through that into the bright, sunlit underwater world below and then, without any apparent effort, found myself at the stern, looking at the name I had so laboriously stuck on back in Chichester. It was upside down. Putting both hands on the underside of the bridgedeck (what had been the underside), I pushed myself up as if getting out of a swimming pool and suddenly I was out of the water and standing up holding onto the stub keel. I had lost my beautiful boots.

It was a different world standing on the bottom of the boat: a brilliant sky and the sea, that deep blue that you get only from an ocean in bright sunshine. And white, of course: white from the breaking waves all around and the long streaks of blown spume. There was a good deal of water in the air as well, flying off the breakers and hitting me in the face like hailstones. I didn’t mind. It felt warm, and this really was the most fantastic scene.

Then a wave broke over the boat and washed my feet from under me. Without boots, my socks slipped on the smooth gelcoat like fried eggs in a pan. This left me horizontal in the water, holding onto the keel while the wave washed over me.

The water drained away, and I stood up. The keel was about the height of the back of a dining chair. I must say I felt very safe up there – the bridgedeck was bounded on both sides by the hulls like a big playpen.

Then another wave came along. In fact, at regular intervals, a succession of waves came along. Each one washed me off my feet and then drained away over the bow, and I stood up again. All I had to do was keep getting up. I could see the tiny yellow EPIRB, its strobe light flashing impotently in the sun. Presumably, it was sending out its coded distress message to the satellite – and then down again to the coastguard station at Falmouth.

And what were they doing about it? Launching a full-scale rescue? Dismissing it as another false alarm?

Crying wolf

How long I stood there on the bottom of the boat in the middle of the storm, getting knocked down and getting up again, I have no idea, but eventually I realised I could not stand there forever. I would get tired. Eventually, when a wave came and washed my feet from under me I would let go of the keel. Then I would disappear over the bow as quickly as a child’s sandal off a Cornish rock when the tide comes in.

And that would be the end of me. The chances of swimming back to the boat would be very slim.

I was not wearing a lifejacket, but even if I had been, that would just have prolonged things for an hour or two.

Every survival manual I’d read said that in a situation like this, the most powerful tool is your mind. What you think about is what you get. If I was going to dwell on drowning, then the likelihood was that I would, indeed, drown. So I had to think about not drowning – not dying. After all, I had a family at home. Besides, if I got back in time, I would be there for the church fete.

So under my breath, to myself, so I’d not be embarrassed by anyone overhearing, I said: “I will not die.”

I gave it some emphasis, put an exclamation mark on the end. I lifted up my head and shouted it. This felt good. It gave me strength in my hands, which was just as well because another wave came along and, sure enough, I hung on until it drained away over the bow and I stood up and shook the water out of my eyes and shouted at the sky: “I WILL NOT DIE!”

And somewhere in the middle of all the drama a small voice crept in and said: “This is bloody good copy!”

Awaiting rescue

The day wore on. The waves kept coming, the wind kept blowing, and I kept picking myself up and shouting again.

Until something made me turn round: I don’t know what it was – just a presence, maybe, but there, hanging in the sky above my head was a beautiful big helicopter.

I would be saved! I would not have to hold onto this keel any more…

The moment Passmore is plucked from his upturned hull by a rescue helicopter crewman

Except, the helicopter stayed where it was – just hovering in the same place. What was it playing at? I mean, they had come all this way to get me. Surely they would want to finish the job and go home for tea.

“Come on, what are you waiting for?” And still, it hung in the sky.

It was only later that the pilot told me that the waves were higher than the length of the helicopter’s rescue cable. If he flew low enough to reach me, the next wave might come along and swamp him. He had to wait for a calm spell and then nip in and out quick.

I decided there wasn’t a helicopter at all. Extreme stress and the mind-­altering effects of exposure had caused my brain to play tricks on me. I wasn’t going to be rescued. The EPIRB wasn’t working, Falmouth Coastguard had put the whole thing down to malfunctioning microchips. I was going to stay on the bottom of my upturned boat until ‘my hands can’t feel to grip; my toes too numb to step’ (who said that? Bob Dylan?) Yes, that was it, I was definitely hallucinating…

And then a small black blob appeared below the helicopter. It dropped fast and became the shape of a man on a wire, dressed all in fluorescent orange. He swooped down like a big bird, splashed into the sea next to me, whooshed up again and then down, falling across the hull. I grabbed him by the legs.
“‘OK?”

I couldn’t hear a word he said. I nodded vigorously. He put a strop over my head and pulled it under my arms, and we were off. I looked down, and already the sea was far below, another wave sloshing over Lottie Warren.

And then everything went warm and dark and I didn’t have to worry any more.

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The post Trapped upside down in the North Sea appeared first on Yachting World.

We glide down the eastern side of El Hierro and leap into the vastness of the ocean as we begin our Atlantic crossing. The island shrinks behind us as the sun melts into the horizon, bathing the waning land in soft orange light.

It’s early January and I’m joined by Harry Scott and Lily Journeaux, two friends from Falmouth, who shouldered their fair share of toil and graft during Elixir’s (our classic S&S Swan 37) year-long restoration.

It’s their first ocean crossing, and as El Hierro disappears into the pink haze, I ask Lily how she’s feeling. “I’m not nervous, but I feel something,” she muses, “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s big – kind of like Christmas, but bigger.”

Harry Scott at Elixir’s helm in the Canaries.

On the first morning, we pole out two big genoas, one on either side. By attaching both sails to the furling gear we can quickly take in sail each time we spot a squall creeping up from behind. The two bulging foresails fill in the steady tradewind, and we accustom ourselves to the downwind romp.

It’s not long before Elixir becomes near-autonomous. The sails and windvane working together to keep course, and the solar panels and tow generator labouring to keep our vegetables cool.

There are a few annoying creaks in the saloon, and an orchestra of thumps and crashes accompany each sloppy crest that shoves Elixir onto her rails.

There is a lingering smell of spilt balsamic vinegar, and it takes a few days to get over the initial spell of tiredness. During the first week, our reconstructed windvane loses control and threatens to give up entirely.

After spending a few hours hanging over the transom, we manage to coax it back into doing its job, and tentatively watch its every move for the rest of the passage.

For 20 days everything is constantly moving, but nothing ever changes. The small, fluffy cumuli are constant, dyed with pink highlights as the sun dips into the horizon. Most evenings we’re entertained with biblical mid-Atlantic sunsets.

Golden pillars spill through gaps in the soft cloud, forging a colander of light that falls on the steely sea surface.

Elixir’s later Caribbean crew Matt, Beth, Harry and Tegan

In the final week, patches of sargassum weed break up the expansive blueness. The wind aligns the mossy weed into rows, creating blue-brown tiger stripes that lead the way to the Caribbean.

We steadily shed layers, and the sun becomes increasingly relentless. The harsh, midday light drains the seascape of all colours, apart from a pale, muted blue. At nighttime, the same sky offers an abundant harvest of blue-white phosphorescence.

During one night watch, an intrepid flying fish surprises Lily by leaping into the cockpit and landing on her lap. It has a little round mouth and wide bulging eyes – we manage to grasp the slimy sea missile and cast it back over the guardrail.

Touch and go

Coronavirus stopped the world, yet in the middle of the Atlantic little has changed – though the usual white streaks in the sky, tracing the route of transatlantic flight paths, are nowhere to be seen.

Days on end of offshore sailing stokes a deep element of human nature. By sailing away from the mental pressures of life on land, intensified by the pandemic, we’ve found a sense of calm.

We arrive in Barbados and, after checking our phones, realise it’s a mistake. Covid restrictions are tightening and a lockdown is imminent. We savour a mug of tea while taking in the bleached island.

After three weeks at sea, the land appears alien. But instead of notifying customs and going ashore, we take the easy option – weighing the anchor and heading back out to sea.

Lily takes in the ocean mid-Atlantic

The next morning we spot St Vincent. The island is a complete contrast to low-lying Barbados, with deep green hills that tumble into the ocean. St Vincent depends on tourism and, as a result, throughout the entire pandemic its doors have remained open.

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The island is home to an active volcano that’s showing signs of awakening, yet to us it appears the perfect landfall. There’s only one port of entry on the island, and despite our 20 days at sea, we still have a mandatory quarantine and PCR test ahead of us.

Blustery tradewinds whistle along the south coast, and a pair of islands lie a stone’s throw offshore. Between the two, a small fleet of cruising yachts fly their yellow ‘Q’ flags. We join the group and grasp a mooring buoy, curtained behind the teardrop Young Island and the lofty perch of Fort Duvernette.

Compared to the constant pace of the transatlantic, everything becomes slower. The sun takes forever to drag itself across the sky. The tide takes all day to come in, and often, forgets to go out at all. A steady current flows through the anchorage, carrying bright red sea grape leaves and empty coconut husks.

Eight days after landfall in St Vincent, we’re given clearance into the country. We gingerly head ashore, unsure as to whether we’ll be welcomed or turned away. We’ve convinced ourselves that we’re doing something wrong by escaping the lockdown to go sailing.

Poles out to catch the Atlantic tradewinds at sunset

The first thing that strikes us is the friendliness of the locals. Despite the sudden exodus of all tourism from the island, we see no desperation. We’re welcomed by every Vincentian we meet, and on inquiring about the previous year, we receive the same notion. “Sure, it’s been difficult, but this moment will pass.”

Wooden stalls line the lively streets of Kingstown. Tuna steaks lie buried under piles of ice, and lavish piles of coconuts fill the back of trailers. Walking down the high street is a sensory journey. The smell of new spices, the offers of ice-cold coconut water, and the constant hum of hurrying buses and street vendors.

The east-north-east tradewinds make sailing south far easier than sailing north, thus it makes sense to start in St Vincent. We make a quick dash down through the Grenadines, before beating back up again to drop Lily off at the airport. Beth and Tegan, two good friends from Cornwall, fill her place, and with the new crew of four we head south for a second, slower tour of the island chain.

Elixir anchored off Isle à Quatre

Greater good

Our first stop is Bequia. A generous stretch of turquoise water is enveloped in a sweeping horseshoe bay. The land wraps around the sea, with both headlands straining to touch each other.

The deep bay provides shelter from most of the swell, and as a result, is a popular anchorage with cruisers.

To the south of Bequia lie a series of small, uninhabited islands. Petit Nevis, across the channel, accommodates the remains of an old whaling station. Stacks of discarded conch shells cascade into the water, and the weathered sections of whale vertebrae scatter the shoreline.

Further south, the long, wild island of Isle à Quatre cradles a lagoon on its southern side. There’s not much colour in the vegetation, a dry, mossy bush; a blend of green and grey. But the colour lost in the land is made up in the water. The lagoon consists of a luscious palette of blues, bottomless cobalt in the deep channel, giving way to the shallower patches of turquoise and the almost teal sections of the reef.

A small beach spreads out beneath a line of coconut palms, gazing out over a channel at Mustique – the Grenadines’ most exclusive private island.

Both Beth and Tegan are new to the world of sailing, and it’s fun to see them find joy in the thing’s we’ve long been taking for granted. The slow pace of travelling, watching land drift by from the water and falling asleep every night to the soft trickle of ripples on the hull.

After Isle à Quatre, we skip down to Union Island. In Clifton, a colourful town in the east of the island, we take our first hit of the AstraZeneca vaccine. The nurse chuckles when I asked her why St Vincent offers vaccines to foreigners. “The more people who have the vaccine, the better it is for the whole world,” she says.

The tiny island of Mopion is barely 50m across

With numb biceps, we load up with vegetables and rice before sailing to Tobago Cays. The marine reserve is made up of a collection of small islands, sheltered by a fringing horseshoe reef. The shallow, seagrass lagoon provides both an anchorage and a breeding site for green turtles.

There are four boats, where there would usually be hundreds. The reef shelves quickly into deep water, and an impossible amount of vibrant reef fish crowd around the sea floor. Nurse sharks weave between coral fans, and from rocky dens poke the heads of lobsters and moray eels.

Windward of the horseshoe reef, a dash of sand provides a platform for a line of palms to dance in the unobstructed tradewinds. Petit Tabac is a painting of a West-Indian island paradise. The island was used as a set for Pirates of the Caribbean and is fondly referred to as Jack Sparrow’s island. We set the anchor inside the sandy lagoon, and enjoy the picturesque island to ourselves.

Downwind of Tobago Quays, Mayreau boasts one of the Caribbean’s most scenic beaches. Saltwhistle Bay is the archetype of Caribbean beauty. A crowd of coconut palms tower over an elongated spit, with a few stretching out over the delicious velvety sand. Again, we’re the only yacht in the bay.

Riding out quarantine at anchor in St Vincent

We pick up another crewmember. Matt is a 20-year-old backpacker from Manchester, who we met in the Canary Islands. I remember thinking ‘Who is this (then teenager), out backpacking while the UK is in lockdown?’. His wide-eyed enthusiasm for adventure is contagious. After hitching a lift across the Atlantic to Suriname, Matt jumped ship and found another boat heading to St Vincent, before meeting us again in the Grenadines and becoming Elixir’s fifth crewmember.

Fire and brimstone

The last stop in the long string of islands is Petit St Vincent. The private island is the most southerly and a luxury resort that doesn’t encourage shoestring cruisers. There’s little need to go ashore, as the anchorage is spectacular and the cloudless, aqua-blue water reveals turtles and eagle rays.

A short distance to the west of Petit St Vincent, a wooden sunshade appears to poke out of the sea surface. We dinghy over to investigate the small patch of green and yellow on the chart, and find a delicate strip of sand perched on top of a shallow reef.

The island of Mopion stretches 50m from shoreline to shoreline and provides sweeping views of Union, Carriacou, Petit St Vincent and Petit Martinique. There’s something special about the tiny island – scarcely above sea level, yet surrounded by an amphitheatre of impressive islands.

Relaxed sunshine cruising between the islands of the Caribbean.

Our cruise of the St Vincent and the Grenadines ends back in Union Island. A convenient customs office in the harbour allows us to avoid the beat back to St Vincent. In the evening before we plan to leave the country, we watch two large catamarans steam out the harbour with an obvious sense of urgency.

The next morning, on our journey to get our passports stamped, we notice a tangible unease in the streets of Clifton. Forty miles to the north, St Vincent’s Soufriere Hills volcano, which has been stirring since before we’d arrived, is showing signs of an imminent eruption.

The customs officers watch live streams on their phones, and as the heavy stamp falls on our passport, we’re told of an explosive eruption, and a colossal ash plume billowing from the La Soufriere volcano.

We leave with an uncomfortable sense of helplessness. The Vincentians, who have been so welcoming to us on their island, were now being evacuated themselves. We have the privilege to sail away, and by lunchtime, we’re anchored in Carriacou.

The clouds open up, and we catch glimpses of the folding layers of grey ash towering over everything. The next morning, we wake to a boat covered in volcanic dust. Despite the disaster, there’s obvious solidarity between nearby islands. The neighbouring countries of the Caribbean come together to help.

In Carriacou, we take another PCR test before spending five more days confined to the boat. From the quarantine anchorage, we can make out the distinctive black and yellow hull of Iron Bark II.

The 35ft steel gaff cutter has been sailed extensively by Trevor Robinson, including overwintering, unsupported in both the Arctic and Antarctic.

A glorious sunset in Bequia

Behind Iron Bark II, we find Trevor anchored in his new boat, Iron Bark III, preparing for a direct, single-handed passage to Iceland. His tales of Antarctica are raw and inspiring, and he sows a desire for sailing in colder climates. We seriously consider ditching the Panama Canal and changing our course to Patagonia.

Instead, we take a sunny, downwind sail to Grenada, deciding the high-latitudes are best left for another day. The colourful hulls of traditional Carriacou sloops decorate the harbour, and the steep island flanks are blanketed in a layer of dense vegetation. Like St Vincent, Grenada offers vaccinations to cruisers, and we’re generously given our second shot of AstraZeneca vaccine.

Joy of solitude

The cruising world has adapted to the new circumstances. The extra rules have forced us to slow down and carefully consider the countries we sail to.

We’ve evolved a slower pace of moving, appreciating empty bays that two years ago would have been overflowing with anchored yachts. In St Vincent and the Grenadines, it was still possible to find the joy of island hopping.

After a short period of boat work in Grenada we plan to head westwards, to Curacao, Columbia and then through the Panama Canal to the Pacific. Coronavirus adds a little complication, yet we’re excited to be part of the slow reopening of the world.

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Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post Caribbean warmth: Cruising the Grenadines in a restored Swan 37 appeared first on Yachting World.

The Edwardian period of English yachting is best remembered for the great cutters and schooners of the racing scene. From Cowes to the Clyde professionally crewed yachts competed for big-money prizes while fortunes changed hands by way of wagers on results.

Albert Strange, Yacht Designer and Artist by John Leather. Lodestar Books, £20

But while this extravagant scene raced on, another world was unfolding. Corinthian cruising, in boats small enough to be single-handed – or at least sailed without paid men in the fo’c’sle – was slowly coming of age.

With it arose a new breed of amateur and semi-professional designers, and many of their craft are still sailing today. Among them are designs from Albert Strange, the son of a shopkeeper who dreamed of the sea and made it happen, becoming an enthusiastic member of the famous Humber Yawl Club in 1891.

He was a trained artist and a notable writer with a delicious turn of phrase. In this rollicking account Strange is sailing Cherub II, a 22ft centre-plate yacht from his own drawing board.

He describes part of a singular cruise from Scarborough in Yorkshire to Brightlingsea in Essex. Having ducked inland via the Humber, he is now on his way to the Wash by way of the river and canal system and is confronting an apparently insurmountable obstacle…

On the banks of the river were many anglers, doubtless enjoying the weather as being the most propitious for their gentle art, and far off awaited us the ruined lock at Bardney and the unsolved problem as to how to get through it.

The very faintest of airs gave us bare steerageway, and it was noon before we finally reached the problem which it was necessary to solve or else retrace our way to Grimsby.

Yes, alas and as foretold, the lock was totally shut up, bolted and barred by big balks of timber. The lock keeper came out and looked at us, shook his head, and said he thought we should have to go back. I had forgotten to purchase dynamite, and it really looked as if all progress was impossible.

We made fast, however, and Fred, my youthful companion, began to fish for perch, whilst I suggested lunch. After this meal had been completed we sat and looked at the forbidden lock again, more in sorrow than in anger, and whilst we were thus engaged a large Lincolnshire man strolled up. He heard our tale of woe, bit a large piece of tobacco off one of my plugs, and then said, “Might pull her over if we’d some help.”

Still going strong, Emerald is a 1938 Albert Strange design. Photo: Gordon Buchanan

“Grand, nay, superbly magnificent idea!” But where to get the help? For no houses were visible. Oh, he’d just look up some friend of his who would come along (it being Saturday) and give a hand if there was anything forthcoming for their trouble!

Good heavens. I would give untold gold rather than go back, and speeded him on his way with large promises and a three-finger nip of whisky as an earnest of good things to come. So off he went, and we began to strip the boat and carry the things beyond the lock.

Haul out

Presently he returned with four other men like unto himself in stature. The five then solemnly undertook to haul the Cherub over the bank, along the lockside, and launch her again for the sum of two shillings (10p) each and a quart of beer apiece, and to exercise all due care in the operation.

We had only the oars to roll her on and our own cables to haul with, but, after much pulling, splashing and sweating, we succeeded in getting that 8cwt (400kg) of bare boat out of the river, dragged her some hundred yards through nettles, weeds and rushes, and launched her into her native element below the lock.

In half an hour or so we were being towed down the river to a little ‘pub’ that must have depended upon the beasts of the field and the birds of the air for its customers, for it stood quite alone, hiding behind the riverbank, and in its modest parlour I settled up with my helpers, the sum of 11s 8d (58p), satisfying all their claims, and, to judge by their remarks, leaving them my debtors.

A little breeze springing up, we went on our way, the five stalwarts lined up on the bank watching us disappear into the rain and mist, and the crew of the Cherub certainly very light-hearted.

We got to Boston next day in a howling gale, a wintry blast from the north lashing the river into wavelets. I saw Fred off at the station, and returned on board after a tramp through the town, feeling that the gods were making sport of all sailors in sending such weather.

I shifted the boat a little lower down to a better berth, and found a smart little steam-yacht to lie alongside of. Presently the owner invited me on board, and I learnt that he was bound out as soon as he could get away, but his skipper had no fancy to tempt Providence by an outside passage in such weather.

I spent a pleasant evening on board, and left with the promise of a tow down the Cut when they could continue their voyage.

It was two days before that happened, and when we left the locks the scud was still flying across the sky from the north, and the day promised to be anything but fine. At a speed of about nine miles an hour Cherub towed beautifully, and we were soon at the lower end of Boston Deeps when they said ‘Good luck!’ and cast me off.

There was more wind than I had bargained for to make the passage to Blakeney. However, it was a fair wind and with two reefs in we were soon scudding through the Bennington Swatch and into Lynn Deeps.

Going across towards Hunstanton the wind hardened and veered a point eastward. If it was going to do this I should find myself on a dead lee shore at low water off Blakeney, and the prospect was not a pleasing one. But it had to be faced as there was no getting back with the ebb tide drying the swatches and making a bigger sea every hour.

When off Hunstanton I came up to a smack or two dredging; they had two reefs down, and were pitching into it pretty well.

Looking for sunk sand buoy

I hailed one of them to ask for the position of the Sunk Sand Buoy, which I could not pick up owing to the lowness of Cherub’s side and the height of the sea, which had grown during the last hour.

A man popped his head above the smack’s bulwarks and, instead of replying to my inquiry, asked me what the ‘Hades’ I was doing off there in a little thing like that and when I told him I was bound for Blakeney he grew almost angry, and tried to persuade me to run for Lynn, whither he was bound after he had made his haul. “Tis no place for any man to go for in weather like this, isn’t Blakeney. You come along arter me.”

The Albert Strange-designed 24ft Venture was built at Oulton Broad in 1920. Photo: Den Phillips

But I wanted to be at Blakeney, not at Lynn, and after he had told me that the Sunk Buoy had broken adrift, but that I was alright for the ‘Bays’, I waved him farewell and left him in a sort of angry sorrow at my pigheadedness.

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Along through the Bays, which is a channel inside the Woolpack Sand, we had much less sea, though the wind kept freshening in squalls. The boat reached along beautifully, easy and dry, and I took the chance to get some food, especially as I felt rather downhearted after the fisherman’s warning, and I always find that things look rosier on a full stomach than on an empty one.

We were now dead to leeward, and when off Brancaster I pulled down the third reef because I knew what awaited us when we should have cleared the Woolpack and be at the mercy of the full fetch of the sea.

I had lost my proper account of the tides, and had no desire to get to Blakeney too soon. But there was no holding the boat; the full ebb seemed to be still with me, and the miles sped away astern, and early in the afternoon I was off Blakeney much too far inside the Bar buoy, and with a young flood tearing up towards the channel bearing me fast to leeward.

Desperate measures

It was now blowing very hard, the surf to leeward was making the air misty, and everything looked as if at least an hour’s wait outside was imperative if we were to get inside safely.

But, with the staggering sea and the strong lee-going tide steadily sucking me ashore, the boat made nothing at all to windward and would certainly bear no more sail in the broken sea that was there.

I tried her on both tacks, but lost ground each time, and things looked very bleak. So, with my heart in my mouth, I pulled up the centreplate and pointed for the place where, amidst all the breakers, there seemed to be most water.

The son of a shopkeeper, Albert Strange dreamed of the sea

On she ran, past the first outer buoy, then the second , and then, as she sank in the hollow of a sea, bang! She touched, and a walloping sea burst over her stern. But in bursting, some of it lifted her along, and, as well as I could, I crawled forward and managed to keep her from broaching to with a long, strong boathook, when she touched aft again. The same business was repeated, but I felt that only a very few more doses would fill her, and our last cruise would have been finished.

Still, the strong flood tide kept her straight on to the sea, as she only hung on her heel, and after one or two more hard knocks she went over the Bar into smoother and deeper water. Intensely thankful to the kindly powers that had preserved us, I ran her into the Pit, let go the anchor, and looked below. The water was just up to the floorboards, but the bed, stowed under the foredeck, was untouched, and the stove in its locker was dry and ready for action.

I have always felt that I owed my escape to the fact that the boat’s greatest draught of water was right aft, and also to the strong (six knot) tide that had held her straight.

With a level keel or more draught amidships she would certainly have broached to and been rolled over by the tide and sea, and, as Blakeney Bar is miles away from all living beings, there was but faint hope of a rescue.

So, after returning the water to its proper place outside, I rested, refreshed myself with hot drinks, and waited for the tide to rise sufficiently to enable me to get to the quay.

When I came on deck to get under way for a really safe spot, the sky had lifted from the horizon and an angry glare spread in a bar above the sea to the westward. And, creeping round the point, there came a little mournful procession – a lifeboat under reefed sails escorting some half-dozen of the Sheringham fishing boats which, unable to beach, had either to be abandoned and the crews taken out by the lifeboat, or run the gauntlet of the Bar as I had done to gain shelter at Blakeney.

The old salts shook their heads and said that this was the worst summer they had ever known, but they always say that, so soon do we forget the bad weather of the past in the bad weather of the present.

If you enjoyed this….

Yachting World is the world’s leading magazine for bluewater cruisers and offshore sailors. Every month we have inspirational adventures and practical features to help you realise your sailing dreams.

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The post Great seamanship: Scarborough to Brightlingsea appeared first on Yachting World.

The ultimate success of a yacht depends on how carefully her original owner defined the boat’s objectives. Jarlath Cunnane (featured in Great Seamanship in the April 2020 issue of Yachting World), built the 50ft aluminium cutter Northabout for high latitudes and ice. He succeeded mightily, successfully tackling the full polar circumnavigation via the North East and North West Passages from east to west with an unstoppable crew of Irishmen.

When Sir David Hempleman-Adams decided to attempt the first British challenge to make both passages from west to east in a single season, Northabout was the boat of choice. He convinced Jarlath to part with her and, to cut a story of careful preparation down to three words, away he went.

Open Water, Breaking Ice is a beautifully produced account of how a man who, by his own admission, is more adventurer than sailor, makes the most of this remarkable boat to achieve his goal. He gives full credit to his skipper Nikolai Litau and his crew of men, women and a 14-year-old boy. We join them as they enter the frozen sounds of the North West Passage, face to face with the closing window of encroaching winter ice.

‘We left a cold and damp Tuk at 8.00am, making our way slowly in light winds back along our inward track. Northabout heads east along the Tuktoyaktuk shelf where you can normally see bowhead whales, but all we saw was great baulks of floating timber washing out to sea from the Mackenzie Delta which meant those on watch had to react quickly to avoid some pretty big logs. Thankfully the autopilot is working like a dream.

From now until we reach Upernavik at the end of this leg we’re passing through waters and past islands whose names resound with characters from history – those early explorers who came to the region in search of the fabled North West Passage. It’s very exciting to see history rolling out in front of us, every cape, bay and headland named after someone significant.

In good seas and with a following wind we have sailed 169 miles in the 24 hours since leaving Tuk, a huge contrast to the hard yards gained against the headwinds in the Beaufort Sea.

Making good time

Johan allows Northabout to show us the best of her sailing qualities by setting the sails goose-winged, and sending her scudding along at 9 knots. However, from the Canadian ice charts it’s apparent that our intended ‘short cut’ through the Prince of Wales Strait is impassable due to the extent of multi-year ice and this means we will have to take a more southerly course through to Cambridge Bay.

And so, Northabout is headed towards the relatively ice-free Amundsen Gulf, the channel that runs between Victoria Island and the mainland.

Cambridge Bay, farther on, is a crucial waymark for, should we meet ice that threatens to block our progress, it represents the last refuge for overwintering. And should we meet ice once we’ve passed that point we’d need to be certain we can retreat to Cambridge Bay as a safe haven.

Points of interest. Photo: by steven.edwards@basteir.com

As if to reinforce the need to be vigilant (and fortunate!) as to our prospects of success through the North West Passage, the Russian ice charts come in that night and reveal just how lucky we had been in getting through the North East Passage.

The charts show that while beyond the Laptev Sea there is clear water, in the Laptev Sea itself the ice has returned right up to the coast blocking any route through it. Had not the timely storm arrived to temporarily push the ice offshore when we were in the thick of all that, we would have been forced to overwinter.

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Skating the North West Passage

Two sailors are leaving Alaska to attempt the North West Passage, including this catamaran on skates....

On 6th and 7th [September] we continue to make good progress and push on through the Dolphin and Union Strait (named after the two small boats used by the naturalist John Richardson who explored here in 1864) towards Coronation Gulf. What I find interesting is the almost complete absence of freighter traffic here, whereas in the North East Passage we encountered a steady stream of shipping. Odd considering the North West Passage is shorter and subject to less red tape.

Beautiful skies all day, different colours, with sun occasionally on the land. You really do feel the history and presence of the past here.

We passed Turnagain Point, named by Franklin as the furthest east on his first overland expedition of 1819/21. On their return journey the explorers suffered great hardship and starvation, surviving on lichen and ultimately eating their boots, after which Franklin became known throughout England as, ‘The man who ate his boots’.

Later, with the wind at our face, we make slow progress along Dease Strait, past Cambridge Bay and into Queen Maud Gulf, very much feeling this was our own ‘point of no return’.

The 49ft aluminium vessel, Northabout, crossed the North West and North East Passages in one season. Photo: by steven.edwards@basteir.com

With Cambridge Bay receding over our stern and the ice charts showing open water all the way up to the Bellot Strait (the narrow channel that separates Somerset Island from the Boothia Peninsula), for the first time I allowed myself to hope that our Polar Ocean Challenge would be successful.

Even the wind appeared to be turning in our favour. Yet the forecast also showed the possibility of ice closing in and I was under no illusion that the luck we’d enjoyed in the North East Passage needed to hold.

A chance encounter

The following day we have one of those chance encounters at sea that have a touch of serendipity about them. In the middle of a bleak arctic sea a small vessel hove into view off our port side, grey hulled with yellow upperworks, looking for all the world like a lost lifeboat. This was David Scott Cowper and his son Freddie aboard Polar Bound, on their way through the North West Passage via the Fury and Hecla Strait.

Ice spotting duties up the mast. Photo: by steven.edwards@basteir.com

I’d known about their intended route but to come within sight of each other was a truly surreal experience, two sailors chatting away over the radio in one of the world’s most remote places.

A legend in high latitude sailing, David was heading into Cambridge Bay for breakfast and invited us to join him but, sadly, with the prospect of ice and storms forecast, we had to decline. As we parted company each sailing our own path through that immense seascape I couldn’t help thinking about ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’!

This is indeed a god-forsaken place if the elements turn against you. One’s thoughts turned again to Franklin and his crew held fast in the remorseless ice. It was about here, off King William Island in 1846, that he abandoned his vessels and here, 170 years later, the remains of HMS Erebus (in 2014) and HMS Terror (2016) were discovered by underwater archaeologists.

Almost to the day, as we sailed close by King William Island, the world’s press announced that the wreck of HMS Terror had been found lying in remarkable condition on the sea bed, her ship’s bell being recovered and brought to the surface.

With all these place names reminding one of the fate of so many explorers who had gone before, coupled with the grey skies and greyer seas, this region draws on itself a cloak of sadness and despair – a gloom that the continuing headwind aboard Northabout does little to dispel.

The Bellot Strait is a treacherous narrow passage of water about 2km wide and 25 in length, flanked either side with barren cliffs. It’s named after Joseph René Bellot, a Frenchman who was Captain William Kennedy’s navigator when they searched for Franklin back in 1851.

Ice allowing, it will lead us eventually into the Prince Regent Inlet, then Lancaster Sound and Baffin Bay. It’s important to get the tides right for our passage in the strait as they rip through at up to 12 knots and any floating ice could do nasty things to a boat’s hull.

Northabout’s crew wrapped up against the cold. Photo: by steven.edwards@basteir.com

There was thick ice when Børge Ousland came through in Northern Passage in 2010, and Jarlath in Northabout found the route blocked. But we had more immediate problems when we approach the strait as the magnetic compass is going haywire and the autopilot seems equally confused.

I recall that Amundsen experienced the same compass problems 100 years back. To add to our worries the ice chart for the days ahead showed ice building up in the Prince Regent Inlet.

Idyllic surroundings

For now, though, conditions could not be more idyllic. We had zero wind, so the surface was like a mirror and the steep cliffs and hills reminded me of Scotland. We had worked out the best time for a transit from the tide tables and at one point we reached an impressive 11.9 knots.

Northabout is tough, built for polar conditions. Photo: by steven.edwards@basteir.com

Throughout the passage we all stayed on deck, transfixed by the raw beauty of this special place. At the end of the strait we slowly edged past the famous Magpie Rock, the foot of which roils with turbulence as the tide flows around it. But, beautiful as it was, I couldn’t stop myself thinking about what this ice-free channel represented in global terms – a part of the world that up to very recent times was pretty much ice-locked – indeed had not been transited until the late 1940s. And now we didn’t see one piece of proper ice, not even a floating ice cube for a G&T.

After exiting the strait we made our way into a little bay at Fort Ross sitting at the southern tip of Somerset Island. Here are two historic huts that were owned by the Hudson Bay Company and now maintained by the Canadian Coast Guard.

Above the huts is a cairn that was built by Captain M’clintock during his search for Franklin and, by happy coincidence, it was his great grandson John M’clintock who performed the naming ceremony of Northabout.

From Bellot we entered Prince Regent Inlet and here we came to our first ice, as forecast, although now so thick that it threatened to seal off the strait. If we didn’t get through, then it would be a long slog back to Cambridge Bay to overwinter.

The ice has changed rapidly in the last few days, thickening and closing the route at the top of Prince Regent Inlet and also to Resolute Bay; winter is on its way.

We plodded on for an hour attempting to find a way through 5⁄10ths ice, too thick for us to go through although we could see clear water on the far side of the floe. Barbara came on watch and by an amazing piece of helming managed to squeeze Northabout between two pans of ice and into open water. Her skill at this point almost certainly meant the difference between reaching Greenland or backtracking with our tail between our legs all the way back to Cambridge Bay for overwintering.

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The post Polar Circumnavigation: An extract from Open Water Breaking Ice appeared first on Yachting World.

Back in the 1960s when the last Thames sailing barges were coming out of trading, a few were taken by bold individuals as yachts or houseboats. The best of them kept the rigs exactly as they had been. Some resisted the temptation to fit engines.

One such was the 87ft, 70-ton Venta, owned by Jocelyn Lukins, who bought her in 1959 for £600. Five years later, under the command of former barge skipper John Fairbrother, she and one or two friends sailed her to Stockholm and, ultimately, home again.

The logs of this remarkable voyage are reprinted, together with a running commentary mainly from Ms Lukins, in the book Sailing Barge Venta published in 2014. The book struck a spark with me, not only because of my long-term passion for Thames barges, but also because the voyage took place in waters I know well.

The extracts I have chosen are very different. The first is the book’s foreword written by the skipper, a professional seaman who makes clear what he thinks about barges for long-distance work. Notwithstanding his opinion, he signs on.

The second section, largely from passage logs, takes the barge from an anchorage in the lee of Fermahn Island, well known to all who venture out of the Kiel Canal, towards the inner Baltic, across the difficult bight between Sandhammeren and Utklippan, and into the long sound between the Swedish Isle of Öland and the mainland.

Halfway up here lies the ancient city of Kalmar, with its castle cornered by onion domes. When you see this come over the horizon, you know you are in exotic country. To sail anything at all into its harbour requires skill and nerve. To manage it in a leeboard barge is special, but Fairbrother makes nothing of it. As we leave him and his crew, it’s all in a day’s work, as you might say…

Article continues below…

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From Sailing Barge Venta by John Fairbrother and Jocelyn Lukins

Skipper’s foreward

I don’t know how many of you who read this have ever sailed in a barge. The facts that set them apart from most other sailing craft are their size and that they are flat-bottomed, which makes them totally unsuitable for really going to sea. I am well aware that they did work down-Channel and to nearer continental ports.

Some men in them were undoubtedly hard cases and drove their barges hard, but to do it they drove themselves harder. After the Second World War the sailing trade ceased down channel but even on the Essex and Suffolk coasts there have been some real hard cases and several barges were lost.

I’ve never worked the channel but it must have involved long, long waits for suitable weather in order to make the next good anchorage or harbour, which is not made much of in books. A barge’s flat bottom gives her stability to sail without ballast: this is the reason, as well as her famous ability to be sailed by two men, she has outworked all other sailing craft on the coast or sea, come to that. It also means she doesn’t draw much water, hence leeboards.

Venta, still then a working boat, sailing off the Isle of Wight in 1928. Photo: Beken of Cowes

A light barge, of these I write, only requires a very moderate swell before she begins to pound each time she comes down on the water. It might as well be a brick wall as it slows her down and can easily make winding (tacking) difficult; not to mention that the more she is knocked about the more the crew will have to pump out.

A round-bottomed vessel under sail does not lift clear of the water or offer such large flat surfaces to it. Leeboards themselves are at risk at sea. Having just winded a barge when there is swell, the weather one can easily be wrenched off by a wave getting inside and under it. The lee one is somewhat safer until the barge starts to jump onto it. This is particularly so in the cases of barges with flared sides.

The sprit is the other hazard of barging at sea. At all times it must be held in the desired position by the rolling vangs. The lee one only is used, it leading from the sprit end outside all the rigging and made fast with a fall as large as the vangs proper, on the bluff of the bow.

The best way to see that there is no movement of the sprit is to slack the sprit just a bit further off than is really needed, take the rolling vang fall in and make it fast, then put the vang fall on the crab winch barrel and heave it in as tight as possible, making the end fast on a cleat at the after side of the crab winch.

Then lift the pawl on the winch so the winch does not bear all the weight – and don’t forget to put the pawl back. As long as the sprit is not free to roll inboard it will not be able to roll outboard again, which is when it could very soon either get broken by the vang, or break the vang if it failed to stop the sprit’s outboard motion. A loaded barge at sea will not pound in the same way as a light one.

There is considerable engineering weakness in the rectangular section of a barge, largely made up for by massive construction. A light barge concentrates all weight down through the sides to the chine, while the upward thrust of the water is all over the bottom.

In a barge there is nothing to hold the bottom down from the post under the mast to the stern post and it is noticeable that in all barges that are hogged, the hump is in the middle of the main hold, some even show a tendency here to hog from side to side. It is by no means unknown for barges to slack the main rigging when the weight of cargoes re-flattens the bottom or for cabin doors to jam.

This is all somewhat by the way, with regard to my tale except to make it clear, I hope, that barges are not now and never were meant for seagoing. I would not have accepted the offer of sailing Venta if there had been any time limit set for our arrival in Stockholm and I had every intention that patience and caution would be the orders of the voyage having no taste for adventure, so called, at sea.

Jocelyn Lukins (pictured above) owned Venta and gathered an intrepid crew to sail the barge from London to Stockholm and back

Ship’s log

23 July 1964

1014mb. Moderate freshening westerly wind. Dull, long showers.

Laid at anchor all day. It began to look better about 4pm and had been finer during the day but was blowing again by 6pm with a small swell making the barge roll as it was right on her beam at 90° to the wind.

It was the swell from the Fehmarn Belt and a good indication as to the conditions at sea. As our next leg is at least 35 miles, it needs to be right to go. The gale warning black ball by day and red light by night are still on the signal mast at Marienleuchte.

24 July

1017mb. Still fresh westerly to west-north-westerly wind. Gale warning still up. Lay all day.

Fined away after about 7pm. A beautiful night, the wind falling to a gentle breeze still from the west and a great full moon showing land and sea like a black and silver etching.

25 July

1018mb. Light south-westerly wind. Sunny.

Underway by 4.45am and were soon heading east with everything set and boomed out that could be set. A small German coaster made two circles round us to take photographs about 11am and left us with lots of waving and horn blowing. Picked up the Gedser Rev lightship 12.45pm. Caught a mackerel. Also fouled the log line with the other fishing line. Sorted it out in half hour and lost about two miles or less on the log.

Passed the last mine field buoy about midnight with 67 miles on the log. Nicholas questioned whether the skipper could catch a fish with a simple line and bait. John caught a mackerel this morning, took it below and set it flapping in Nicholas’s bed with him in it, then cooked it for his breakfast. The skipper had tied a large black pudding to the mizzen stay at the beginning of our journey and usually cut off a piece for his breakfast – probably a bargeman’s tradition from a time before refrigeration.

26 July

1017mb. Light south-westerly wind. Fog midday.

A fair wind, making about four knots so that it was quite easy to leave the wheel to see that the sidelights burnt bright and clear or look under the mainsail. It was good to be quiet with just the barge and the cold black sea. When I was called about 2am just the two of us gybed on the starboard tack. Between then and daylight it gradually came thick so that the colours of the sidelights shone out on the mist. The Sandhaven siren could be heard.

Venta’s comfortable saloon

Ran on as it came thicker but the bob (wind-sock/burgee) was in bright sun above and the beam wind held fair, all sail drawing and us making good headway. We decided to try our lead line of 25 fathoms and I took about half of it right to the bluff of the port bow.

A barge’s lead is always cast from the port quarter, as the boat is in davits on the other side. Made a cast from forward with Nicholas to see it free of the leeboard and I was able to walk aft and reel it in the usual way on the quarter. There was no bottom at 20 fathoms. We tried again every 20 minutes or so until about 2pm when we found nine fathoms with Sandhaven about two miles to the north-west.

At 2pm we saw one ship at anchor and another small wooden one in a clear patch not more than 500 yards away. Could see their masts but not their hulls, then it cleared a little and we saw land abeam, about a mile away. Bore up, that is away from the wind, an expressive survival from tiller-steered barges, and ran parallel with the land.

Passed Skillinge at 3.30pm and reckoned on anchoring near Simrishamn about five miles on, but then decided to continue across the bay to Utklippan lighthouse on its skerry 55 miles to the north-east.

26 July

Off Simrishamn in poor visibility, before any sight of Sweden we smelt her distinct smell of pine trees. Our first sight of Sweden was unbelievable. The barge was enveloped in a thick white sea mist which reached to the top of the lower mast whilst the topmast was in bright sunlight with a blue sky. We saw a line of masts which we took to be yachts but which proved to be flagpoles belonging to the houses on the shoreline.

27 July

1009mb. Variable winds mostly from north-east.

The mainland was now about 20 miles to the north of us and not visible. We had after-supper coffee at the table together, with a hand bearing compass for a telltale while Venta sailed herself. All evening thunderstorms had been building up in the south-west. Called the boys out at 11.30pm with a thunderstorm nearly over our head. Hove half the mainsail up and down topsail, sprit secured almost amidships.

Terrific thunderstorm but, after all our preparations, not much wind. The rain came shortly after, hissing across the water to us. By then there was almost continuous lightning and thunder and it seemed impossible that at sea with an 80ft mast it could not be struck as we were in the middle of the storm. There was still very little wind and although it did puff from odd directions, we were virtually becalmed before the storm passed about 1.30am.

28 July

About 2am we were about one-and-a-half miles south-east of the lighthouse. Nick was at the wheel when the wind came light, at last from the direction we wanted, the south-south-west, about 8.30am after yet another thunderstorm. It freshened and we gybed with care because of the swell. More wind followed until we were running seven knots up Kalmar Sound, foaming along with the sun as hot as can be. After such a depressing night everything was wonderful.

Venta passed up the long sound in fine style and hauled in her log about two miles south of Kalmar, now with jib off, bobstay away and mainsail brailed almost completely up. The channel is very narrow amongst spar buoys and little islets, but we held our gybe and fetched the few hundred yards from the main channel to the harbour entrance. Let go in the warehouse-surrounded harbour and, with the foresail backed, got her close enough to the wharf to get a line ashore in the boat.

Moored up on Elevator Quay by piles of sawn wood in front of a large audience.

First published in the October 2018 issue of Yachting World. Sailing Barge Venta by John Fairbrother and Jocelyn Lukins is published by Chaffcutter Books, RRP: £11.95.

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The post London to Stockholm on an 87ft houseboat: An extract from Sailing Barge Venta appeared first on Yachting World.

It’s far too easy for a retired ocean sailor like me who served his time 40 years ago in a freer, simpler world, to imagine that the age of high adventure, near-zero funding and minimalist boats has gone with the wind. It has not. Humanity doesn’t change a jot, and the good ship Orca and her bold crew are here to spell it out for us.

John A. Pennington is a 22-year-old surfer from California who decides life has more to offer than the beach and another wipe-out, so he goes for a sail instead. He and his girlfriend Kara ship out in a 30ft boat and simply disappear into the Pacific with no particular voyage plan. One improbable scenario leads to another until they find themselves in Western Australia.

Morale has taken a serious thrashing in the Australian Bight, and reading of Kara’s reactions to the idea of further passagemaking whisks me back many decades to my own similar response following a beating-up in the North Atlantic. It’s all so real. The characters they meet are larger than life, the incidents on passage are outrageous and there are laughs even when all seems lost.

John’s book entitled simply Orca is a total blast from beginning to end. The paperback is cheaper than a glass of champagne in a London bar, and it’s even freely available on the internet. Here they are, in a remote Australian outport, watching their fate slowly reveal itself in the form of straight, downtown, feminine logic.

From Orca by John A Pennington

After a week in the village I could walk down the single street and greet everyone by name. After a month, I’d inquire after their grandmothers’ bunions and send my regards to their second cousins, and each day slid by in a fascinating malaise of comfortable companionship, sunny weather, fun surf and new friends.

That all ended when Kara’s little brother, Nathaniel, said he wanted a taste of the sailing life. The fates certainly provided it. Perhaps we all got a little more than we bargained for.

The night his plane landed, an extremely violent cold front swept through Western Australia – meteorologists called it a once-in-a-decade storm. Power was knocked out in much of Perth, lightning flickered across the southern sky, and 17 boats were lost in the vulnerable Fremantle mooring fields.

White-out conditions prevailed in my little haven, with gusts to 70 knots. Orca was ready for storm conditions with double mooring lines and extra chafe gear, but other boats weren’t so lucky.

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How likely is a collision with whales at sea? And how can you reduce the chances?

Our first encounter with whales at sea came while crossing Stellwagen Bank, a vast marine sanctuary off Cape Cod when…

Whale encounter – there seems to be an increasing number of collisions with whales as yachts get faster

  The first I heard about a sailing boat colliding with a whale mid-ocean was when the 49ft sloop Peningo…

At 3am an unmanned sloop went flying by, pushed by the sustained pressure of 50 knots. With a dinghy rescue rendered impossible by the 4ft whitecaps rolling through the harbour, I threw on my wetsuit and dove overboard, striking out to save the boat before she crashed into the breakwater. Scrambling aboard, I searched frantically for an anchor, the engine start switch, or any other way to avert disaster—but there was nothing.

I braced for the shipwreck and a resounding boom set the mast vibrating and triggered an avalanche of gear down below. The cabin lights flickered, electrics knocked loose by the impact. I leaped overboard and scrambled up the breakwater to where the rest of the village had gathered. With the boat pinned to the rocks by wind and waves there was little to be done.

As a testament to the strength and durability of fibreglass, the boat hammered against the rocks for hours before being towed off after the storm – still afloat. This gave me some much-needed confidence for what happened to Orca the next week.

Evening watch as the sun goes down

I felt recovered and ready to proceed, aside from a pronounced limp. I’d walked across town in search of an oil-pressure sensor for Orca’s engine soon after arrival. My withered walking appendages had not been pleased, and a tendon on my starboard side had rebelled by seizing and swelling; it refused to heal. Otherwise, I was ready to continue the voyage.

Kara had recovered – but only physically. After her collapse in the Bass Straight and subsequent battering in the Bight, she was struggling with a crisis of confidence. Weather discussions gave her an unpalatable mixture of symptoms – sweaty palms, uncontrollable shallow breathing, heart palpitations, and general attacks of anxiety.

Her nightmares were of waves, storms, and sinking; she’d often wake screaming and in tears. Panic struck at odd times, even under fine weather in port, unexpectedly reducing her to trembling silence and tearful stillness. Looking back, I now realise that I was dangerously, horribly close to losing my first mate.

After the storm front, I stubbornly loaded Kara and Nathaniel aboard and set out for Shark Bay, 250 miles up the coast. The storm’s leftover slop and onshore conditions made for fast but miserable sailing. Nathaniel was confined to his bunk, groggy and nauseous. At night, the cloud cover and new moon plunged us into complete darkness, the horizonless night causing even me to feel the early symptoms of seasickness.

The shallow offshore reefs along this coastline bend the seas in strange ways, and occasionally the refracted swells combine beyond an unpredictable and uncomfortable motion into breaking crests – one of which ploughed into us amidships and sent several gallons of seawater cascading below. Nathaniel groaned and buried his head in the now-wet pillow.

Kara slogged down the companionway from the filled cockpit and I took the watch. I was huddling in the dubious protection of the dodger, aflood of icy rain running down my sleeve, when there was an awful crash. The bow lurched upward as Orca ran up onto something. The rigging shook, the mast flexing and oscillating with the shock. There was a second thud under the keel and the stern flew above the bow. Then, we crashed back onto an even keel in a crater of spray. The whole incident was over in an instant.

Orca at anchor in the south-west of Tasmania

I leaped to my feet, eyes on our wake but there was nothing in the darkness. Kara wrenched open the bilge covers and reported no water. I grabbed the wheel to feel for feedback from the rudder – hopefully we still had one. I spun the wheel, concentrating, when a deafening blast and a jet of water erupted alongside Orca.

I felt a huge, violent, and terrifying presence in the blackness: a whale, close enough to touch. We were sailing among a pod of them, invisible in the murk. They couldn’t hear Orca, sailing silent in the blackest of moonless nights. We’d collided.

Nathaniel groaned, still uncomprehendingly and uncaringly seasick, and rolled over in his wet bunk. Kara, shaking with panic-tinged adrenaline, snapped through the charts looking for the closest port. A freighter terminal was close; we diverted. Under the cover of darkness, Orca found anchorage in a rolly corner behind the dubious protection of a submerged and derelict breakwater.

Landfall in the South Pacific

The following morning I dove under the boat to inspect the hull. Despite a distinct whale-textured impression in the antifoul paint near the bow, everything seemed fine. The propeller and rudder were present and accounted for, and our fibreglass looked solid and unfractured.

Since Orca’s keel was already battered from the reef in New Caledonia, I mentally led the whole thing away as a great experience for Nathaniel, who let out a snore. Kara, however, understood exactly how fortunate we’d been. “I don’t know, I don’t think I can do it. I can’t go back to sea.”

She needed encouragement; I provided. “You can do it, we can do it. Look, the weather forecast is still good,” I said. A tear tracked down her cheek. “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.

“Sorry? Why should you be sorry?”

“I’m weak. I’m letting you down, I know. I’m letting Orca down, but I’m just so nervous. Something bad always happens at sea.”

I sighed. This was typical. I’d kidnapped Kara from a happy life in California and ordered her to sail into a series of storms in the Southern Ocean, and she thinks all this is her fault. I tried a new tack.

Anchored up in a South Pacific atoll

“You call last night something bad? This is great! We just crashed into a freaking humpback whale and survived without a scratch! Imagine the free drinks at the next pub!” Her mouth quirked, but the tears still ran.

She sniffed. “Well, I guess you’re kind of right, which is pretty unusual. We did get swatted by a whale. What could be worse than that?” She giggled.

We went back to sea. Kara’s confidence began to recover during two gorgeous days of sailing. The humpbacks followed us up the coast, spouting and breaching and sounding. The sunsets flashed green, skies were clear, and the first sliver of moon shone brightly – the whales kept their distance. Nathaniel gained his sea legs and stood several night watches, freeing me to catch up on some sleep.

John and Kara exploring ashore

Inside massive Shark Bay, the water was clear, the sailing smooth, and the weather settled. While sea life was plentiful, the land was eerily barren. Other than stunted brush, skeletons, shipwrecks and ruin, only vultures circled above the endless sand dunes. Reef sharks prowled the shallows. Nathaniel was game to spearfish among the sharks, but the 8ft sea snake that snuck up behind him was more than he could handle; I’d rarely seen anyone swim quite that fast.

We ate lobster, fish, and giant clams cooked on an open beach fire. Nathaniel speared squid in the shallows, butchered a tuna, and battled a sizeable black-tip reef shark before tackling it into the cockpit. After, he even used his teeth to pull the cork on a bottle of rum; he was turning into a great sailor.

Time rushed by once we were safe in the Bay, and soon it was time to find a bus stop to send our guest home. At the north end of Shark Bay, another mangrove-fringed mudhole oozes stench adjacent to the town of Carnarvon.

We bounced our way over the bar and got ready to say goodbye to Nathaniel. He was not looking forward to an 18-hour bus ride to the airport and then a 20-hour flight. Kara packed him snacks and sent him off. The boat suddenly seemed very quiet. Kara and I looked at each other.

What now? We were anchored at the westernmost harbour in Australia.

“Kara, we’ve got three choices. The new one-year plan is to sail north to Southeast Asia. Visit Indonesia, Thailand, maybe South Korea and Japan. Then we can use the high-latitude westerlies to cross the North Pacific back to the States.” Kara shivered and frowned.

“Second, we can keep sailing west, in the trade winds, out into the Indian Ocean. This is a two or three year plan. There are serious pirate concerns along this route, as well as a lot of offshore sailing.

“Third, we could sail the boat up to Darwin and sell her.”

“Sell Orca?” Kara was shocked I’d even mention it. “I won’t consider it. Not after all she’s done for us, not unless we have to. How are the finances?”

Finances were very good. Aside from buying fresh vegetables, cans, rice, and noodles in strategically inexpensive countries, we’d been hunter-gathering and living rent-free at anchor for two years now. We hadn’t even dented the $20,000 we started with. I calculated that for every day I’d worked back home, I could afford the sailing lifestyle for 20. We could go on practically forever.

Kara considered. “So, really it’s a choice between two years in the trades or a one-year dash into the stormy North Pacific. Seems obvious to me. After what we just went through down south, I want to stick to the trades.”

“What about the Somalian pirates?”

“Pirates? I’m more scared of weather. Let’s go west.” Thinking back, I realised we were about to experience something truly magical.

The tradewinds are a band of tropical easterlies that encircle the globe, and if we continued to sail west – downwind and downcurrent – we would eventually arrive upwind and upcurrent of where we started. Few acts of laziness are as richly rewarded as sailing around the world.

First published in the September 2018 issue of Yachting World. Orca by John A Pennington is published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. RRP: £6.99 in paperback via Amazon, currently free to read on KindleUnlimited.

The post Sailing with humpback whales: An amazing extract from Orca by John A Pennington appeared first on Yachting World.

The dense silence is broken only by the sound of snowflakes landing on my protective clothing, as my eyes struggle to adjust to the landscape that surrounds me. It is so beautiful, so diverse, and so beyond anything that I have ever previously seen. I am standing on the top of a small, low lying, snow capped island that is skirted by open ocean, islands and wide bays.

Looking seaward, there is a cluster of huge icebergs that stretch north towards a horizon that’s now entering twilight. Below me lie wooden rowing boats, abandoned in 1915 and preserved under snow for the majority of the year but, for now, clearly exposed. These are small iceboats that originally serviced the whaling ship Governoren, which lies in the backdrop, wrecked in the shallows of Enterprise Island. Our yacht is tied alongside her decaying steel hull.

The Governoren’s fate was determined nine days after Shackleton’s famed Endurance was wrecked, when she was performing her duties around Foyn Harbour as a floating whaling factory. On this particular voyage, the crew threw a party, a lamp was knocked from a table and the ship caught fire. The Governoren was full of whale oil and the fire quickly grew out of control. The captain grounded the ship and all 85 crew escaped without injury, to be later rescued by another whaling vessel.

I’m standing in a place that I once promised myself to do all that I could to visit: I am in Antarctica.

Ocean Tramp moored to the wreck of the Governoren at Foyn Harbour, Enterprise Island. Photo: Caesar Schinas

Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and driest continent on Earth and these elements create amazingly diverse snow and ice formations. White, soft snow dunes pile in one corner, while other edges are marked by an array of sharp peaks and ridges, so steep that the ice and snow cannot settle, revealing stark black unburied rock. The land evokes a sense of remoteness, of emptiness, and a deep respect that is difficult to explain. I am a well-travelled man, yet this was a place like no other.

As a seafarer, I have seen many contrasting seascapes and landscapes among my several passages around the world, but nothing as diverse or as dramatic as the relatively short transition from the islands of the South Shetlands to the Antarctic Peninsula.

My preparation for this trip began many months prior, and was an agonising build up to a voyage that I was simply never sure would actually happen. The core of this journey would be in February 2020, the month that is deemed the closing window of the Antarctic summer season and the end to most expeditions to the region. As with many projects and key moments in my life, I was relying on nature and the elements to align.

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My first real contact with those who I was to share this experience with was in Punta Arenas, a city near the tip of Chile’s southernmost Patagonia region. It is on the Strait of Magellan, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. We would fly from Punta Arenas to King George Island, but not before ‘kissing the toe’ at the Ferdinand Magellan statue in memory of this great explorer. This tradition is said to assure your return to Punta Arenas, to ensure safe onward passage, and even to cure seasickness.

In a hotel in town we had our safety briefing and picked up the sanitised footwear that could only be worn on Antarctic landings to protect the natural ecosystem. We then entered a standby period, where we basically sat by our phones waiting for the call that a weather window had opened for long enough that we could fly the 75 minutes from Punta Arenas to land on Antarctica’s most northern airport, a gravel strip on Fildes Peninsula.

Besides a modified aircraft parked on the stones and a few lights along the levelled landing strip, it bore no other resemblance to an airport whatsoever. There were just 20 passengers on our flight, seven of whom were heading to the same vessel as me. The remainder was made up of researchers, scientists and a photographic tour that was mapping whale sightings.

We landed at King George Island at sunset. My first impressions were of the shocking cold, and the most amazing light piercing the cleanest of air. While I was gathering my emotions, a sudden pat on my back broke my reverie.

It was that of my dear friend, and legendary Irish yachtsman, Damian Foxall. We hugged and laughed at the fact that we were about to share this moment, almost 20 years after we had started The Race together onboard the maxi catamaran Playstation.

Friends reunited

Damian was skippering the 66ft ketch Ocean Tramp. My time with him and his team would be the final phase of their three month immersion in the Antarctic region, working with scientists, marine biologists, animal and landscape photographers, writers and nature lovers. Damian was supported by his wife Lucy, and Niall MacAllister, who are both marine biologists.

Each individual in our group had a different purpose for being there, but were united by a common goal to commemorate the 200th year anniversary of the discovery of Antarctica, an epic story of bravery and pioneering. The first credited discovery of mainland Antarctica is not free of controversy.

Given that three of the four in command of our vessel are from Ireland, there was an understandable focus on recognising the role that the Irish explorer Edward Bransfield played in this particular page of history.

Author Nick Moloney stands a night watch at the helm

Bransfield logged his first recorded sighting of mainland Antarctica, a sector now known as the Trinity Peninsula, as “Such was the discovery of Antarctica” on 30 January, 1820, and submitted it to Admiralty on his next port arrival in Valparaiso, Chile.

Unbeknown to Bransfield and his crew, on 28 January, a mere two days earlier, Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen had logged the coordinates of a possible land sighting, as ‘an icy shoreline’. Later, on the basis of the coordinates noted in Bellingshausen’s logbooks, he was ultimately credited with the continent’s mainland discovery, an area now known to be part of East Antarctica.

From King George Island we mapped a course around storms, weather systems and wind directions to visit and explore the South Shetland island cluster prior to crossing the Bransfield Strait to the Antarctic Peninsula. The following days rewarded us with endless encounters with wildlife, navigating waters with little datum records, and landing on some of the most remote earth on this planet. The sense of remoteness was made clear by the complete lack of other human interaction or even vessel sightings.

Intact whale skeletons litter the beaches of Goudier Island

Man’s impact

The South Shetland Islands are layered in base colours: black volcanic terrain that is the foundation of ice capped mountains, peaks of bright white ice, with deep blue edges. The beaches appear to be moving from a distance, as waves of grey extend from the base of the hills into the sea. This, of course, is the march of the penguins.

Although not threatened by, but certainly curious of, our presence, seals cruised the shallows of the shoreline while penguins sought the open water. Both animals were searching for their next meal. Unfortunately for one, that meal is the other. Leopard seals snarled as we landed ashore on the Shetlands and dragged our dinghy across the shoals. This is their world, not ours.

A visit to Whalers Bay on Deception Island offered a stark reminder of the devastating toll that whaling has had on the region. Deception Island is now a scientific outpost and Whalers Bay is a protected cove that is the caldera of an active volcano. Landing on the beaches, where the thermal heat of the volcanic activity causes steam to rise through the gravel surface, we found ourselves surrounded by the broken skeletons of industrial buildings and large holding tanks.

Damian Foxall reviews the charts with the expedition crew

The remains of the original whaling station, like the wreck of the Governoren, are ghostly echoes of the past two centuries of human encroachment. It is a period that resulted in the decimation of virtually all of the world’s whale species, most of which are still at a small fraction of their pre-whaling levels.

Fortunately there are many efforts in motion in the fight against illegal whaling and the protection of wildlife and resources in the region. Part of the reason for our journey south was to support a collaboration between my watch sponsor, Delma, and The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) in their mission to protect the wilderness and wildlife.

Foxall at Ocean Tramp’s helm station

It is approximately a two-day sail across the Bransfield Strait from the South Shetland Islands to the deep Antarctic fringes, and we sought shelter from an isolated gale at Trinity Island before pressing on. Sheltering in a yacht near glaciers to find protection from strong winds takes a different set of knowledge and skills to any other situation I have exposed myself to at sea.

I quickly realised the value of land anchor lines on deck spools and was genuinely surprised by the load generated by the force of the wind transferred onto the mooring lines. The process of anchoring and running land fixed lines in strong winds is potentially one of the most dangerous tasks in this environment, and the cold and rapidly changing conditions call for heightened safety considerations.

Paradise Bay

Anchoring near the point where glaciers meet the sea also provides plenty of time to contemplate the unpredictable nature of these huge blue pillars. The columns are unstable, their fragility regularly demonstrated by frequent collapses of parts of the wall. This is calving, and it sends a loud roar that breaks through even the howling winds, followed by the thunderous entry of tonnes of ice breaking the water’s surface.

When a glacier calves and the ice falls into the sea, a wave is forced outwards. I frequently lay in my bunk at night, woken by the sound of falling ice before feeling the boat rocking as the plunge wave rolled beneath our hull. That ice then breaks up into smaller pieces and begins to drift.

These chunks of ice would make their way past Ocean Tramp, often scraping along the waterline of our hull. I had a small porthole next to my bunk and among my fondest memories is watching this beautiful sight as growlers scraped past my window in the night.

Mirror-calm conditions and growlers in Paradise Bay

Leaving Trinity Island in strong but abating winds, we sailed past an iceberg aground in 40m of water. The further south we travelled, the more intense the weight of remoteness became. The most common word used to describe the environment was ‘wilderness’, by definition ‘uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable’. Antarctica is pure wilderness, by every measure and in every sense.

To reach Antarctica held deep emotion for me, a feeling that I’d honoured a personal promise to myself. On my previous passages around Cape Horn, I’d often looked towards the south and longed to one day connect with the nature and elements that make Antarctica so unique.

The Antarctic region is a sanctuary, home to its native wildlife. We are guests there and privileged to witness the individual adaptation of each species, and their pure fight for survival. I have never before felt more responsible for my actions than during my time in Antarctica. My conscience has an overwhelming sense that this place should be simply left alone, yet in my heart I have a strong sense that only through knowledge and experience comes a strong will to protect.

Spools of hefty land mooring lines used to secure Ocean Tramp

Exploring the peninsula

The passage between the snow covered islands in the Gerlache Strait is littered with varying sized icebergs. Those with low, flat, horizontal sections generally offered a resting spot for a lone fur seal. While the South Shetland Islands are home to huge penguin colonies, most of the Peninsula coast is steep and penguin numbers thin out to small groups.

Paradise Harbour was a true highlight. The bay is a wide expanse of calm water in a naturally sheltered and protected cove. It is a place of abundant wildlife and thick silence. Mirror reflections of snow covered hills lie on the still water surface, surrounded by the most diverse range of icebergs sculptured by the elements. It is quite possibly the wildest, yet most peaceful place that I have ever visited. In this bay I felt strangely embraced by Antarctica.

From Paradise Harbour we headed to Port Lockroy, a small natural harbour on Goudier Island. During World War II, the British military established Station A here and the outpost was a research station until 1962. Today, the United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust manage the facility which also functions as a museum.

Posting letters home from Port Lockroy

We were the only visitors that day, and spent time chatting to those who had manned the station over the last four months. I must admit that I was envious of their experience and opportunity to live in this amazing place, to experience the season shifts and the cycle of receding and returning snow.

On Goudier Island we came across skeletal whale remains along the shoreline. It was here during Zodiac transfers from our yacht to shore that a leopard seal bit into, and deflated, the stern section of our semi-inflatable. It was also here that we realised that the next few days offered the only foreseeable weather window between strong southern ocean storms in the Drake Passage, the gap we needed to make safe passage to the Falklands.

From Port Lockroy we headed to the famous Lemaire Channel. The Lemaire Channel is also known as ‘Kodak Gap’ for its photo opportunities, making it a must-visit spot for cruise ships. While I had heard many stories of cruise ship encounters tarnishing the connection with nature in Antarctica, we had been lucky. For most of our time in the South we were alone, and fortunately remained so in Lemaire.

Heading into the Lemaire Channel

The Lemaire Channel is genuinely breathtaking. It is a still body of water, protected by the sheer rise of the Kiev Peninsula and Booth Island on either side. A mass of icebergs densely fill the channel, making a passage through often difficult, even impossible.

This is where we encountered the most dense ice flows and got a taste for what the area must be like in winter months. From the Lemaire Channel, we began our departure from the peninsula.

The rugged mountains of Anvers Island

As I have done so many times, I found myself on deck for long periods simply staring at the landscape falling away in the distance. I, for one, experienced genuine heartache as we set sail away from Antarctica. My connection to the ‘final continent’ was very brief but my memories are precious and cherished.

Exiting Antarctica was rough going. Seasickness overwhelmed several on board, and going into our first night in open ocean we were continually faced with enormous ice formations drifting in the currents. The 850-mile sail across Drake Passage, from Lemaire Channel to Stanley in the Falkland Islands, took around five days.

Approaching the Falklands. “It was a long journey but passagemaking without racing is a rare treat for me, particularly not having to push hard in the Southern Ocean made the place almost pleasurable.” commented Moloney.

As we reached the latitude of Cape Horn I recall reflecting on my three previous roundings of this iconic landmark; how before I had felt so incredibly vulnerable, isolated – and so cold. Yet by the time we reached 56° South, having come from our lowest parallel of beyond 65° South, the southernmost headland of Tierra del Fuego felt almost pleasantly warm.

About the author

Nick Moloney is a sailor and adventurer who has sailed around Cape Horn three times; in the Whitbread, Vendée Globe and while setting a Jules Verne around the world record on Orange. His next aim is the Olympic double-handed class in 2024.

First published in the November 2020 issue of Yachting World.

The post Sailing Antarctica: Vendée Globe veteran’s memorable return to the frozen south appeared first on Yachting World.

When the Great Seamanship series was planned back in 2004 it was about giant waves, dismastings, amazing rescues and the like. Research, however, led me into a wonderland of nautical literature with so much to give that discounting it for lack of stormy seas would have been a lost opportunity. Over the years, the result has been a mix of inspiring accounts, some in line with the original brief, others diverging, but all with tales to tell and lessons to be learned.

This article falls into the latter category, because the actual sailing only occurs at the beginning and end of the voyage. The fact those miles are logged off Arctic Russia and through the Sea of Azov is almost by the bye.

The book in question is Sailing through Russia by John Vallentine and Maxine Maters. In 2013, with crew comprised of a rich variety of pier-head jumpers, friends and family, they take Vallentine’s Formosa 46 Tainui from northern Norway to the Black Sea via the inland waterways of Russia.

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Tainui is the first western yacht to achieve this under her own colours. The Volga leads them far east of Moscow and, despite having their mast on deck for most of the time, the trip remains a captivating adventure. I read the book at a sitting and was very late to bed.

Most of John’s and Maxine’s book appeared first on Vallentine’s blog, but it is now beautifully presented and bound, with noble images. It is half pilot book, half cruising yarn, with both authors and some of the occasional crew contributing to the narrative.

Maxine signed on via a crewing website. She and her skipper considered the risks associated with this and decided to go for it anyway. Her expertise on Russia and its language proved critical to the success of the enterprise. Vallentine is a semi-retired doctor from Australia with a dry, Aussie humour which he really needs, as one crazy nonsense after another gets in his way. He is an unsung hero of ocean sailing.

From Sailing Through Russia

Into the white sea: John

We have 18 hours to go until Archangel’sk, gods willing, and should take our pilot on board tomorrow. The pilot is one of the many bureaucratic burdens we are having to put up with. Reporting in to the Navy and the Russian coastguard every six hours or so by radio, to operators who have no English and are generally unwilling to respond to our calls, has been wearisome.

It has been gloves, beanies, scarves, and three-layer thermals cold. It’s 2°C with wind chill. The Barents Sea is a lonely, grey place and it is good to be into the White Sea. Exactly the same view from the balcony, but psychologically a relief. It has been a long trip from Norway, made worse for me by low-grade, non-vomiting seasickness. Miss Perfect does not suffer from that vile malady, needless to say. Winds on the nose and slow progress.

Maxine had been terrific on navigation and radio communications and is eternally enthusiastic and cheerful. On board she is a bloke, really, and a good one. This afternoon I hove to to reef the main and then flopped into the cockpit for a rest.

Tainui’s mast lowered and stowed on crutches for the passage through Russian canals

Up came Max rugged up to the nines with a bottle of Jacob’s Creek chardonnay under one arm and two glasses in the other hand. A delight, until she started complaining that Tainui’s toilet compartments don’t have under-floor heating.

Still, in bright sun the seas now sparkle and the whitecaps are dancing. It is good to be here.

Solovetsky arrival: Crewman Pasha

We came to the Solovetskiy Islands and enter Blagopoluchnaya Bay. The great walls and domes of the Solovetskiy Monastery are slowly rising from the fog.

Oh, these walls could tell a lot. About builders who hand-laid huge stones in the 14th Century. About the spiritual leaders of the Russian people who lived here.

About the heroism of monks who defended the monastery against attack of Norwegian and English fleets in the 18th Century.

About human injustice and cruelty in the 20th Century, when the monastery was turned into a political prison.

But now we want just to sleep. All around is quiet, no person, no sound, only the silent stones of the monastery are watching us.

Finally going to bed, but woken after half an hour by the sound of screams from the wharf. The local guard had slept through our arrival, and now has threats and promises the arrival of a commercial vessel, to which this place belongs. He whines that he is responsible for this place and he would be fired if his boss sees us. OK, we understand. Going elsewhere.

Maxine’s bad hair day: John

It has been difficult. There is too much salt in the bloody Mary, the March flies are too aggressive, the toilet paper is too sandpapery, in Belozyorsk they don’t sell the right cheese, the music’s too loud (Janacek Sinfonietta too loud? For heavens’ sake!), the VHF charger isn’t working properly – there seems no end to it.

She deals with each new March fly in gladiatorial fashion. Her shouted Dutch expletives sound like physio sessions in a TB ward. She seems unable to learn the languid Australian wave, which is just as effective and far less emotionally draining.

I cluck, fuss and coddle. I do my best to appease. I even pretend to like the grits she offers me for breakfast. Nothing works. Then, bless her heart, Maxine apologises for being such a pain. So she should, I think. But I graciously accept her apology and we move on out of White Lake.

Onion domes and minarets on the banks of the Volga

A stately church ruin stands sentinel. We are again alone in our little world. The March flies are few and die bravely for Maxine’s peace of mind. It is warm and there is the gentlest south-east breeze. I think it is great and she reluctantly accepts that the world is a moderately acceptable place.

Madam mellowed later, but punishment is always necessary and she was banished to the foredeck with her bloody Mary to sit in the sun and learn contrition. Alone in the cockpit, I float away.

Female sailors: Maxine

Of course, I knew that sailing in Russia was not developed at all. What I had not realised, though, was a female sailor is an unknown concept for most ordinary Russians, in whose minds boating is strictly for men only. In the north, where sailing is almost unheard of, I found it difficult to establish my authority and competence. Three occasions stand out.

In Vytegra, I had to go climb to the top of the mast before the crane workmen accepted that I was capable of any more than just making coffee.

In one of the Volga-Don locks, a lock-keeper thought that there were no males on board and remarked on the fact over the radio. I asked him whether he thought that mattered. He giggled and did not know how to reply.

In the Sea of Azov, negotiating our way into Kerch, I had to provide the port authorities with crew details by radio. When I told them there were two people on board, the skipper and the first mate, they then asked who I was! They did apologise though, when I gave them an earful.

That being said, these episodes were only a minor irritation, never a real problem. Once we got south into sailing territory most people we dealt with were sailors. Even if they were male, they were emancipated.

Impressive lock entrances on the Russian inland waterways

Sviyazhsk: John

This morning I got up at 5am to watch sunrise. Tainui is anchored meekly in the lee of Sviyazhsk Monastery. It is a beautiful, cold, clear morning with drifting fog banks. The onion domes loom silent, imperious, with a full moon and mist on the water adding needless extra theatre. Sviyahzhsk is a remarkable collection of buildings dating back to 1600, with that familiar history of Bolshevik sacking, gulag prison, psychiatric hospital and now, finally, treasured archive.

Happy hour last night was extended by the skipper’s indulgence (starting time noon, closing time 10pm) because we had passed the halfway mark in our Russian journey. Inexplicably clumsy, one of us spilled a bag of crisps in the cockpit.

There is no need to mention the two glasses of red wine that might have been kicked over during the same session. So this morning I lifted the teak grates to sweep up the mess while the girls sat by, sipped coffee and gave useless advice.

The best thing about having Dutch people on board is that, carefully managed, their deep-rooted compulsiveness can be exploited usefully. And so it was this morning. Our new crew Lieve (she’s actually Flemish, not Dutch, but, hey) felt she had no choice but to take control of the cleaning process. With the grates up, an intense, noisy and endless process of Flemish surgical sterilisation has begun. Wisely, I retreated below.

John as second fiddle: Maxine

Poor John! A skipper with so many years of sailing experience, totally used to running his own boat, managed to get this woman on board who is not used to playing second fiddle, not used to translating every word being said, explaining every step being taken – someone who is more used to getting things done, conveying the results, then expecting them to be accepted without discussion.

John’s usual crew had always had English as their first language. It took me a while to realise that he had never sailed before with someone he found through a crewing website, someone whose first language was not English. Whose background was not Australian or even Anglo-Saxon. And he’d never sailed with someone who could speak the local language in non-English speaking countries.

So John had to get used to someone from a culture he did not know, who instantly took over all negotiations regarding the boat and failed miserably to keep him updated at each step.

Culture clashes one way or another happened all the time, – not only between us, but between John and Russia, where a simple question to a local, which technically could be answered with a yes or no, would always be followed by an endless discussion. This would drive John absolutely desperate. In Saratov he retired to the foredeck to sulk. I often found it easier to exclude him – I really didn’t want to have to translate and explain everything at the same time.

Looking back, it’s just astonishing that the two of us managed so well together. But there was commitment, focus, in nite mutual trust and perhaps, most important, a shared love for this unique journey.

Sailors and authors Maxine Maters and John Vallentine

Man overboard: John

One of the more testing jobs I have each day is choosing the title for the web post.

Today’s choice was easy. I was enjoying an ale in the cockpit in celebration of something or other, while Maxine was hosing mud off the foredeck. Suddenly the hose nozzle burst from the hose and went over the side. Before I could put down my ale, Maxine had stripped off and dived in after it. With not so much as a ‘by your leave’.

Never mind the 25 knot following wind and the associated chop. It was left to me to disconnect the autopilot, find somewhere to put my glass of beer, execute a Williamson turn, prepare the boarding ladder, heave to upwind and manage the controlled drift down to her. It was a textbook man overboard recovery.

Now I am finishing my ale while the deck continues its ablutions. And Maxine? Well, I’m not sure about her, but that nozzle was a vital piece of equipment.

Sea of Azov: John

The short stretch of the Don below Azov is just as beautiful as the waterway above it.

Looking back at Azov as we motored downriver I was sad to be saying goodbye. Needless to say, we cracked a bottle of chardonnay at the river mouth and solemnly saluted. There is a 20-mile long, very narrow dredged channel from there out to sea. It is well buoyed but not wider than 30m, at times less. The depths are 1m or less on each side. Ships pass with difficulty.

It was in mid-channel that our salt water inlet suddenly became blocked with weed. Maxine announced that a large bulk carrier was approaching through the gloom of the dusk. She called it up to warn we were NUC (not under command) while I scrambled to clear the hoses and somehow we got to the side of the channel to allow the oncoming ship to pass.

The 200-mile passage Azov to Kerch’ in Ukraine is divided into two equal parts. The first leg was a gentle square run with everything poled out, warm sun, good food and wine. An endless parade of ships passed us to starboard.

With a splendid sunset we dropped the pole, rounded the corner and turned south to Kerch’. Under starry skies and with a freshening breeze, Tainui danced through phosphorescent seas with a bone in her teeth. All night we rushed south with a steady beam wind. Dawn brought relief from the constant vigilance required by the huge volume of commercial traffic, but we are both buggered. To put it mildly.

First published in the August 2018 issue of Yachting World. 

Sailing through Russia: From the Arctic to the Black Sea by John Vallentine and Maxine Maters is available via Amazon, RRP: £24.95.

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The post Extract from Sailing through Russia: From the Arctic to the Black Sea appeared first on Yachting World.

I’m always delighted to find a book about high adventure undertaken with no sponsorship and nothing out of the ordinary in way of funds. The Sea Takes No Prisoners, recently written and now published by Bloomsbury, tells of voyaging in the late 1960s and early 1970s in a 16ft Wayfarer dinghy.

Peter Clutterbuck is a classic example of the understated seaman. When reviewing the book, John Mardal of Florida wrote: ‘The events described and the hardships not described are so extreme as to seem suicidal’.

Clutterbuck’s voyaging takes him to all manner of venues in the British Isles as well as such far-flung cruising grounds as the Mediterranean and the Baltic. Less famous than Frank Dye, whose Wayfarer exploits have also featured in these columns, Clutterbuck is at least his equal as a survivor.

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With only the shipping forecast on which to base a passage plan, things turn rapidly to the bad, leaving them torn between staying at sea to face probable disaster and running onto a lee shore where they may yet have a ghost of a chance. What follows is seamanship of the highest order.

From The Sea Takes No Prisoners by Peter Clutterbuck

On 15 August we managed to sail round from Port Maria to Port Haliguen, a rough passage in the turbulent waters off the Quiberon Peninsula. This was the first we saw of the Atlantic seas which were to trouble us nearly all the way to Bordeaux.

Lining up a wave ready for Calypso to surf off the crest

The waves kicked Calypso onto the plane, and she was often surfing along, throwing up sheets of spray from her bouncing bows. She was packed to the gunwales with equipment and provisions, so she did not lift onto the plane easily. The big waves helped.

When we arrived, we were dragged off to the yacht club, where the champagne flowed amongst much cheering and congratulations.

We were later interviewed and photographed by the newspaper Ouest France, and they titled their story ‘Deux jeunes Anglais sont venus de Southampton sur ce 5 metres.’

Our friends in Quiberon wished us bon voyage and we set off on a fast broad reach. We passed lle de Houat and lle Hoedick with sails flogging in a squall and shortly afterwards had to reef as the wind came round on to the beam and freshened.

The RDF was being temperamental and Peter could not pick up the 1355 forecast. All he heard was that there was a hurricane off Spain! This was disturbing, as there were a lot of cirrus streaks sweeping across the sky, heralding a depression.

However, as long as we kept well offshore we were in no immediate danger. Visibility was excellent, and the land was below the horizon, so we were well off the dreaded Atlantic shore.

All this gear had to fit into Calypso for the voyage

Soon there was a large swell running, very long but steep and breaking at the crests so that Calypso often had to be luffed into them. The spray cover really proved its worth, thwarting the progress of the heavier seas as they swept over the bows.

The increasing swell worried us. It was a warning. We were about 20 miles off the French coast, getting ready for sailing on through the night. But something was ominous, not right.

Peter was normally unflappable, but he looked worried. He asked loudly, above the sound of the rising wind: “What do you think’s going to happen?”

Peter Jesson plotting their position

“I don’t know. There’s a big swell running, so there must be bad weather coming at us.”

The sky was black to the west, and it looked like a huge, menacing squall. This had every aspect of the Atlantic in an ugly mood. The shipping forecast was imminent, so we hove to. I unstowed our waterproof RDF, which we also used for the weather forecasts, and tuned in.

At 1758, the forecast started. But I could hear nothing except crackling noises. And then, when sea area Biscay came up, I could make out just one word: “seven”. That meant a Force 7 gale, way more than our little boat could survive.

I gave the RDF to Peter to re-stow, and set the boat back to sailing on a beam reach. The black sky was upon us. What was going to happen? White foam was being blown off the waves as the wind picked up to our weather side. Suddenly, it hit us like a rugby tackle.

We were knocked down, and I let the sheets fly on both sails. The sails were flogging uncontrollably now, and shaking the boat violently. I could not luff up, as the wind was too strong. I dared not bear away, as we would take off like a rocket out of control.

We could not stay as we were — we would be blown over, and we could never right the boat in such conditions. Night was coming, and if we capsized we would not survive.

“Down main!” I yelled.

The halyard had been carefully stowed so that it would run out with no delay. This precaution paid off. Peter got the sail down and into the boat in seconds.

We now had just the jib up, but the rising wind still forced us over, with water washing into the boat. If the boat filled up, we would lose our stability and be rolled over. What to do now? We let the jibsheet fly, and it flogged ever more violently.

It was too rough to risk going onto the foredeck to take it down. It was either going to shake the mast to pieces or tip us over. We were at the mercy of the sea. This time, it was merciful, and the wind dropped a little.

Peter hauled the jibsheet in, and we sailed on. But the seas were getting rapidly bigger, and the wind was blowing the tops off the waves in sheets of white spume. The noise went to a high-pitched shriek. What options did we have?

Dangerous after dark

Sailing on like this, with the waves on our beam, would be very dangerous after dark, as we would not be able to see them coming, and could be filled up or rolled over. Running for shelter was risky, as we would be surfing huge waves in the pitch black of a stormy night, and closing a lee shore without any shelter, and the risk of being wrecked on rocks or reefs.

We could try to ride it out, lying to our small sea anchor, but this was also risky. If the weather got worse, the sea anchor would not save us. Also, we would drift onto the same lee shore about twelve hours later, without being able to choose which bit we wanted to be wrecked on. On this l00-mile stretch of coast, there was no shelter that we could reach.

“What do you think?” I yelled at Peter.

“We’ve got to get to shelter before it gets any worse,” he said.

“But there isn’t any shelter,” I reminded both of us.

I looked at our chart inside its waterproof case. There was an island to our lee: Ile de Noirmoutier. It had a bay on the side facing the mainland. But we would have to sail past the island, and past many rocks, before we could alter course for the bay.

We would then have to beat into the gale to get into the shelter of the island. By then the waves would be huge, the night black. A Wayfarer could not beat into a Force 7, even in flat water. In big seas, at night? We could never do it.

I looked again to the west, where the Atlantic weather was coming from. The western horizon was still darkening and the rest of the sky becoming uglier every minute. We had to get out of this. It would be dark by the time we were near Noirmoutier. The waters between the island and the mainland were strewn with rocks and reefs.

But there was a lighthouse on the lee side of the island, and beyond this a beach. If we kept in the white sector, we would be clear of the rocks. We would have to head up hard on the wind and drive into this gale.

We had never done anything like this before. If we could not, we would be smashed to small pieces on the reef in the dark. We would not be able to swim to land on such a stormy black night. We would probably not survive.

There was another problem. The boat would not beat with just the jib. To beat, we needed the mainsail. But we could not set the mainsail when the wind was this strong, even if we reefed it to a quarter of its size.

Clearing French Customs. The Wayfarer Calypso seems a very small boat for long distance adventure

I had made what I called a ‘trysail adapter’ to cover such a situation — where we needed to beat, but could not set the mainsail. It allowed the jib to be hanked onto it, and then hoisted up the mast as a small mainsail, or trysail.

But it had never been used. Would it work? Our lives would depend on it.

“We’ve got to get into the lee of Noirmoutier,” I shouted at Peter.

“That means the trysail adapter. We’ve got to set it up. It’s our only chance.” We unstowed it and lined up the holes with the jib hanks, to make sure we could set it up while effectively blindfolded in the dark.

So at 1850 we bore away and Calypso began surfing down the steepening waves in the fading light towards lle de Pilier, which guarded the north end of Noirmoutier. Soon we were surfing up waves as well.

Calypso was in danger of driving her bows under, or being pooped by the large seas. The wind was rising inexorably. I was expecting the jib to be split in two any moment.

The sky was black to windward, above us were red streaks of cirrus, and to the south it was a sickly green and yellow. Soon, some ragged brown clouds scudded low overhead and the rain began as the light faded. It was a frightening sky.

Calypso was planing continuously up and down waves like a speedboat under only 46ft2 of canvas, and the safety line on the rudder blade was screaming. We could not risk going any closer to the rocks. We had to try to beat off them now. Everything depended on being able to sail to windward into the lee of the island. It was dark now. The sea was breaking around us on rocks and shallows.

The Sea Takes No Prisoners by Peter Clutterbuck is published by
Bloomsbury, RRP: £13.49

Ahead were more breakers. We had to turn and try to beat. Would the trysail adaptor work? Could we escape the rocks downwind of us? Could we control the boat on this stormy night? Would we be able to see the lighthouse and its white sector light? Could we point high enough to get to the beach? Would we capsize? Or hit a rock?

When we headed up, I was amazed to find Calypso would point towards the lighthouse, flashing at us through pelting rain. She was driving through sheets of spray in the howling wind, and the self-bailer was working overtime.

The flashes of the light loomed higher and brighter in the rain, which was by now heavy and pelting horizontally. Soon we were round the back of it, where we found a mooring, got the tent up, unstowed sleeping bags and slept.

First published in the January 2019 issue of Yachting World.

The post Storm sailing in a 16ft open boat: Extract from The Sea Takes No Prisoners appeared first on Yachting World.

‘Rounding the Horn – Being a story of Williwaws and Windjammers, Drake, Darwin, Murdered Missionaries and Naked Natives – a deck’s eye view of Cape Horn’. So reads the front cover of Dallas Murphy’s book of the same name. Settling in for a good long read of this work is a pleasure a sailor doesn’t come across every day.

Murphy signs aboard one of Skip Novak’s yachts, Pelagic, under Captain Hamish Laird and his mate Kate Ford to cruise south from the Beagle Channel. He is a journalist and a novelist, so you’d expect his account to be well written, but this remark, as bland as a school report, does not begin to do him justice.

The construction of the book, its widely varying content and the descriptions of personal experience are a rare class act. Meticulously researched historical references are blended with hands-on accounts of present-day action in these remote seas. We join Dallas and his shipmates soon after dark, bound from Puerto Williams towards the archipelago of the Horn.

From Rounding the Horn by Dallas Murphy

The haze that had materialised with full dark suddenly lifted – maybe it had never been there at all, another atmospheric trick. The taut horizon distinguished water from air, and the sky filled with stars we’d never seen before except on charts. A strange, indistinct brightness arced over our masthead light like a scattering of luminescent powder – from Puerto Williams to Caleta Martial.

Dick stood up on the side deck and looked aloft. “I wondered if we’d see them.”

“What? See what?”

“The Magellanic Clouds.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, maybe it’s only one cloud. I can’t tell. It’s another galaxy, you know, that orbits the Milky Way. It’s only visible in the Southern Hemisphere.”

We all went forward for a better view.

“There are two, actually, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.”

As we stared, they seemed to expand, smudging the entire southern sky with dusty white light. Hamish joined us, peering up nearly vertically, losing our balance every now and then in the swells, scrabbling for handholds.

“Do you see two clouds, Hamish, or just the one?”

“I don’t know. I can never tell.”

Dallas Murphy’s Cape Horn archipelago adventure was aboard Skip Novak’s Pelagic. Photo: Silvia Varela

They are indeed two separate galaxies, I later affirmed from a volume in the Pelagic public library. The Large Magellanic Cloud, which contains fifteen billion stars, is nearer to earth, 179,000 light-years against the smaller’s 200,000 light-years. It dawned on us then that we were seeing the Southern Cross just below the arc of the Magellanic Clouds. Most of us had never seen either before, and again we stood staring in silence.

It was nearing midnight when land appeared ahead, first a single ragged black point rising over the horizon, then another away to starboard, the high points of the Wollaston Islands. The next time I looked, 15 minutes later, solid black land loomed in irregular clumps against the lighter sky until land entirely blocked our way.

We seemed to be going like a freight train toward a mountain range. It’s remarkable how the sensation of speed increases when a boat is approaching a featureless coast at night. The mood changes.

I slipped below to plot our position for my own edification, and when I returned topside, I listened to Kate and Dick talking about what a suicidal move it would be to attempt Paso Bravo in the dark if we couldn’t know precisely where we were. But we could.

We’re essentially the first generation of sailors in the history of ships who have the luxury of a dead-accurate fix at the press of a button when­ ever we want it. Our global positioning system knows where it is on the surface of the earth within a few yards, and reports it to us in the age-old language of latitude and longitude. A machine that knows where it is from moment to moment also knows how fast it’s moving over the bottom.

We are, therefore, the first generation in thousands to know where the current is setting us without visual references. Drake, FitzRoy, Cook, and the other artists would never have attempted to nail a narrow cut like Paso Bravo in the dark. And we probably wouldn’t be doing it if we had to rely on the GPS alone, since, as Hamish said, the chart isn’t all that accurate.

In other seas, the navigator can be fairly certain that the land and other obstructions are accurately charted. But you can’t bet the boat on it down here. A spot-on position fix isn’t much use if the land is drawn in the wrong place. The radar would show us exactly where the land was located.

Black cliffs closing

We were in the jaws now, and everyone was alert, bright-eyed, standing lookout for dangers impossible to see as the black cliffs closed in around us on port, starboard, and dead ahead. We had to crane our necks now to see the remaining sliver of lighter sky, still smudged by Magellan’s galaxies. The navigator grows edgy in these circumstances, pencil tapping, now that he’s committed to this hole in the wall; doubts can cloud his logic. What if this is the wrong hole? What if this turns out to be a cove, not a channel?

Only known things, numbers and angles applied with practised technique, can assuage the anxiety. In Magellan’s day, sailors suspected that navigators practiced necromancy, for how else could they know their way? I was glad not to be responsible for tonight’s nav.

Hamish called something from below. David leaned into the doghouse to relay instructions from the captain. “He said slow down.”

Driving, Kate pulled off several hundred rpm. “Tell them to come right ten degrees.” Hamish meant to clear his angle of approach, take it right down the middle.

I relayed the order to the helm, then came back to watch the course adjustment take shape on the screen. Hamish was using dividers to measure distances right off the screen – nothing is as accurate as a radar range if you read it right. He drew circles of position on the chart. “Now come back left those same ten degrees.”

When I returned to the screen after passing the message, I saw the bottleneck gap at the bottom of the channel about one hundred yards ahead, and we were on it. All we had to do was hold our present course. He’d set it up beautifully. We had almost reached the open water of Canal Franklin when we struck bottom. Hard. That sound is appalling. A high, hollow thunk with the pitch of finality about it.

Now I don’t want to seem an expert on groundings, saying that the sound causes every muscle in the body to contract simultaneously, adrenaline gushing. Then everything turns sharp-edged with a terrible clarity, and events slow as the crucial question ­– “How bad is it?” – floods in. Has the inrush begun? Are my feet still dry?

It took a moment, while the dreadful sound was still bouncing around the inside of the hull, to understand that Hamish was gone. I recalled a blur shooting up the companionway that must have been him.

I snatched a headlamp from a hook on the bulkhead above the nav station, scurried forward into the cold workshop compartment, and pulled up the floorboards to look for water. There was none; her innards were dusty dry. It would take a torpedo to hole Pelagic’s hull. But her hull hadn’t hit, I realised, because we were still moving, or more precisely because we hadn’t come to a spine-snapping halt. She’d run right over the rock.

Sense of relief

I went topside. Kate stood clutching the wheel with both hands, eyes flashing in the red glow of the compass light, and when I clapped her lightly on the shoulder, she giggled and shook her head. The others were all crowded onto the foredeck, leaning outboard stabbing at the waterline with beams of white light as they moved aft, chattering, laughing at their own dark jokes, because they knew they’d find no holes, dents, or dings.

It was clear to us now what had happened. The keel had struck a deeply submerged rock, and the impact had kicked the keel back up into its box, as designed, harmlessly. Had the keel been fixed permanently to the bottom of the boat in typical fashion, one of two things would have happened, both bad.

The keel would have been torn off completely, leaving a big hole in the bottom, or else it would have been driven up through the cabin floor, making a somewhat smaller hole in the bottom. But even if neither of these worst-cases had been obtained, Pelagic would have come to that vicious sudden stop, and only the lucky would have escaped injury.

Rounding The Horn by Dallas Murphy is available from Basic Books, RRP: £9

“There was only one rock, right?” asked Hamish. “We only struck one.”

“No,” said Kate, “I heard two thunks.”

“You know what we should do, Kate? We should go back and find the rock with the keel and plot it on the chart.”

“Nooo.”

“Then we’d have the discoverer’s right to name it. Pelagic Rock… Sorry about that untoward bit, gentlemen.”

We didn’t mind.

“You know, I’ve been through this pass a dozen times in daylight and never hit that thing. I was just ten feet one side or the other.”

“Where am I going?” Kate asked. “Could I have a heading, please?”

Calera Martial on the east end of Isla Hermite lay only three miles away across the narrowest part of Canal Franklin, but it took two hours before we had Pelagic securely attached to the bottom. Bleary-eyed but unready for sleep, we slouched around the ship’s table, and after passing a bottle of Bermudan rum, Dick proposed a toast to lifting keels.

The conversation shifted fluidly, fragmented and reformed, settling on near-disasters and marine absurdities we could laugh at because they were past. So I didn’t realise at first when Hamish was talking in his understated mode about this young Norwegian sailor called Jarli, a friend of his and Kate’s, that he was missing. It wasn’t going to be a funny story, we realised. We discontinued our own to listen.

Dangerous adventure

Kate and Hamish had met Jarli in Ushuaia. He was just 18, and, Kate said, he looked like the Hollywood version of a Viking. In this 26ft cheap plastic boat powered by weak, blown-out sails and a tiny outboard mounted on a rickety stern bracket, he’d sailed down the east coast of South America to Ushuaia.

He meant to cross the Drake Passage bound for the Antarctic Peninsula in that toy boat ‘to see the birds and seals.’ He’d picked up a young California surfer dude, Dave, who had no sailing experience, hanging around the docks looking for adventure. After politely thanking old hands like Hamish and the Poncets on Damian II for their warnings against it, Jarli and Dave sailed south.

Six weeks passed, and when Pelagic returned to Ushuaia, Kate and Hamish searched the harbour and asked around town, but no one had seen Jarli. “You mean you think he’s dead?” asked Jonathan, right to the point. Hamish shrugged, paused, and said: “I wouldn’t want to cross the Solent in that bloody Clorox bottle.” Kate peered silently into her empty glass.

Up on deck, we saw black islands and the Magellanic Clouds, but the Southern Cross had set. There has of late been much talk in boating circles (and mountaineering) about responsibility, because if you go missing in other seas, someone is going to search for you, perhaps at risk to their own lives, and therefore you have a responsibility to your would-be rescuers.

You own the broad right to commit reckless acts in boats only if they don’t endanger others. Trouble is, people expect to be rescued. That wasn’t an issue down here. No one would launch a search for Jarli. A faint glow was visible in the east when we went below.

First published in the October 2020 issue of Yachting World.

The post Sailing Cape Horn on Pelagic: An extract from Rounding the Horn by Dallas Murphy appeared first on Yachting World.

There are a number of advantages to doing this, as well as saving around 3,000 miles of sailing, but the passage from the doldrums is predominantly upwind against the trade winds.

Some of the gain in distance will be lost in the extra miles sailed from being hard on the wind. However, this also needs to be offset against the fact that few passages sailing from the Caribbean to Europe are on a direct course as routeing takes us around the Azores High, with most boats stopping at the Azores.

Weather in the South Atlantic mirrors that in the North, with sub-tropical high pressure driving the trade winds of both hemispheres. On the pole side of the highs are disturbed westerlies, where depressions cross the Atlantic from west to east bringing fronts and stronger winds.

The ITCZ varies in size and can be anything from a few miles to 500 miles in width

Between the high pressure centres are the doldrums, which we usually refer to as the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone). This is the area where the south-easterly trade winds of the southern hemisphere meet the north-easterly trade winds of the northern hemisphere.

The ITCZ can also be described as the thermal equator of the world. It follows the sun to the north and south, depending on the season, but generally lagging behind it. Despite following the sun, the movement of the ITCZ is not as extreme over the sea as it is over the land, and generally stays north of the equator on the eastern side of the Atlantic.

The ITCZ is a product of converging trade winds, and where we get convergence we will also get rising air. Add the heat of the sun into the mix and we get a band of large cumulonimbus clouds producing the typical doldrums conditions of light winds and squalls.

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In general, the ITCZ is narrower on the western side of the Atlantic and wider on the east with a fairly large triangle of more variable wind close to the African coast. This is why round the world racing yachts and record attempts, cross into the southern hemisphere close to Brazil, then get south of the high pressure before heading east.

It is also why there can be significant gains and losses coming back up the Atlantic after Cape Horn as racing yachts try to minimise the distance sailed while keeping in the strongest and most favourable wind – not an easy job.

Trade winds

The route from Cape Town to the Caribbean is relatively straightforward, although it is long. It usually sees trade winds all the way except for when passing through the ITCZ. This is best done near the north-east corner of Brazil where the light winds zone is generally quite narrow and the currents are also favourable making for fast passages.

With St Helena, Brazil and the islands of Fernando de Noronha on the way it is a pleasant passage and as the South Atlantic is hurricane free it makes an easy transition from the southern hemisphere summer to northern winter. This also ties in with most round the world cruises and rally schedules, as we need to be away from the Indian Ocean tropical cyclone season, which starts in November.

Together, this makes Cape Town a natural Christmas break point before continuing north. It also brings us to the Caribbean ready for a return to Europe before the hurricane season starts in June.

But not everyone can neatly fit into this timetable. Back in 2000-2001 the BT Global Challenge raced from Cape Town to La Rochelle, which was the first time I looked at this route in detail. Since then I have provided weather support for an increasing number of yachts on a direct passage to Europe – yachts built in South Africa to be sold in Europe, and owners that either don’t want to go to the Caribbean or whose schedule doesn’t fit in with this route.

Heading north from Cape Town is the same if heading direct to Europe or to the Caribbean as we are in the southerly or south-easterly trade winds driven by the St Helena High. These will generally hold (although they tend to back) all the way past St Helena to Ascension Island. The winds tend to be quite strong in the south but will ease further north, and can be very steady in speed and direction.

North of the Ascension Islands is the ITCZ; precisely where depends on the time of year but tends to be north of the equator. On the eastern side of the Atlantic this can be a wide band of variable wind sometimes from close to the equator to 10°N or even further north in mid-summer. Statistics show that close to the African coast the wind can come from any direction and there is likely to be some thunder.

As we move into the ITCZ it’s worth trying to set up for the north-easterly trade winds; the further east, generally the better the wind angle as you leave the ITCZ. However, this will be restricted by how comfortable you are in closing to the coast in this area. Personally I’d stay at least 200 miles offshore.

Once out of the ITCZ the approach to the Cape Verde Islands will be hard on the wind on starboard tack. A few port tacks may be necessary depending on wind angle and how hard you beat! The Cape Verde Islands are realistically the only place to refuel and provision. Then you are ready for the hardest part, heading into the trade wind belt.

Infra-red image of the ITCZ seen from space

The trades do vary and it may be worth waiting for them to ease, but if you delay for perfect conditions you’ll be waiting a long time. Although you could find lighter wind close to the African coast, from the Cape Verde Islands to Europe will entail a long starboard tack towards the Azores some 1,300 miles away.

I’ve had some yachts make for the Canary Islands, but this generally entails a lot of motor-sailing into the trades and Canaries current. I did see the track of one boat that beat to the Canaries; the tacking angle was not good and this was a boat that beat well, but with adverse current, big seas, and leeway it was disappointing progress.

So we’ll normally have to sail hard on starboard tack until into the Azores High, or into the westerly/south-westerly winds on the north of the High. We can usually turn east before the Azores if heading to the Mediterranean, however the Azores is a good place for a break and a bit of a recovery. From there, the rest of the passage will seem easy!

The Azores High will generally be a little further south in the northern hemisphere winter, so too will be the ITCZ. At the same time the north Atlantic storms and cold fronts will extend further south and will be more aggressive, which will displace the trades to the south. However, the Azores can see some very strong conditions before April, with a 6-8% chance of gales in March, dropping to 1-3% in May.

So when is the best time to go? My suggestion would be to aim to be in the Azores after the beginning of May and before the increasing chance of Cape Verde hurricanes in July.

The later you leave it the further north the ITCZ is expected to be, making getting to the Cape Verde Islands easier, but the trade winds north of the Cape Verde Islands tend to increase from about mid-June.

The direct route

Advantages

• A shorter distance and faster passage
• Allows a wider departure time from Cape Town with the main risk of hurricanes reduced to a few months near the Cape Verde Islands
• Arrival in the northern hemisphere winter can be managed by staying south of the Azores

Disadvantages

• Hard on the wind from north of the ITCZ, to probably near the Azores
• Beating into the trade winds is never easy
• You will sail against the Canaries current in the north Atlantic
• A lot of motoring through a wide ITCZ

There is the alternative of passing west of the Cape Verde Islands, heading north-north-west towards the centre of the Azores High, but this will give a long passage without breaks and would require greater care for hurricane season.

The real question is how will your boat, and crew, take to a hard beat?

Cape Verde hurricanes

In the North Atlantic the hurricane season starts in June and lasts until November. On this route we are generally east of Atlantic storms but there is the possibility of Cape Verde hurricanes. These are hurricanes that develop close to the Cape Verde Islands or even between the Cape Verde Islands and Africa, before tracking west across the Atlantic.

They’re not very common and will generally be late in the season, however particular attention needs to be paid to the forecasts from June onwards as the possibility of Cape Verde hurricanes is one to be taken seriously. Typically Cape Verde hurricanes are most likely in August and September but there have been some in late July and October. North of the Cape Verdes hurricanes are not likely, unless you are a long way west.

First published in the October 2020 issue of Yachting World.

The post Sailing from South Africa to Europe: Chris Tibbs’ top tips for a smooth passage appeared first on Yachting World.

“It’s still a long way to get home,” Carina Hammarlund muses. My partner Weitze van der Laan and I nod. Between us and our home ports in northern Europe it feels like we have to sail half the globe.

In the New Year yachts from all over the world gather in Phuket, Thailand, for the last legs of their circumnavigation. For yachts from northern Europe, there are three options to get back to their home countries.

The first is sailing across the Indian Ocean and rounding the Cape of Good Hope before sailing back up the Atlantic. The second is to sail around India and then head up the Red Sea, across the Mediterranean and then home. The third is to ship the yacht home from Thailand and jump on an aeroplane.

Sailing via the Cape of Good Hope costs around £47,000 and you need to allow 18 months

Every option has its advantages and disadvantages, and making the right decision depends on a lot of very personal factors. We spoke to cruisers who had chosen different solutions.

Shipping home

“We ran out of time,” Conny Hammarlund says. “We enjoyed four years of glorious cruising and found ourselves in Thailand, trying to decide which way to go back to Sweden.” An enticing job offer for his wife, Carina, made the decision simple: their Amel 56 Ultimo was going back on a ship and they would fly.

“For us it was a simple business case,” Carina says. “The cost of the shipping versus the time we would save to get home and get back into a great job was better than using at least another six months to sail her through the Red Sea.

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“We prepared the boat in Phuket in March and in April she was picked up by the transport ship. Four weeks later she was offloaded in Copenhagen. We made the decision in January and were back home in April. She is our home, so we went to Copenhagen straight away to pick her up and sail her to our home port of Stockholm.”

Carina continues: “The advantages of shipping are simple: it is a quick and safe way to move the boat if you need to get back home relatively fast.”

Conny adds: “Of course there are disadvantages. Preparing the boat for transport is something you don’t do often in your sailing career, so you have to learn fast. Apart from that, it is expensive at first sight. But the comparison with the wear and tear of a long ocean crossing was not too unfavourable for shipping Ultimo.”

Slings are attached to Ultimo’s chainplates…

There are three main elements to the cost of shipping a yacht. First the Hammarlunds spent two months preparing to ship, which cost around £5,000 (if we assume an average cruising cost per month to be £2,500 for fuel, maintenance, insurance and living costs). This was done at anchor in Thailand. The actual cost of shipping was £40,800, plus the two flights home from Thailand.

After Ultimo was relaunched in Copenhagen, the couple sailed straight to Sweden that same day, so they incurred no additional harbour costs.

The third minor cost was insurance: “We signed a third party insurance via the transport company which was £160. During the transport there was no insurance cost, because the boat is covered by the transporter,” Conny explained.

… before she’s hoisted aboard the transport ship

The couple did a lot of research before Ultimo was loaded onto the transport ship. “We compared prices, but also the experiences and feedback of other cruisers.” They based their choice not only on cost, but on customer references.

“We invested a lot of time in communication with the shipping company and the agent right from the start. This proved to be vital, because in the first stages a lot of information needs to be exchanged fast.

“During the transport they kept informing us and sent us all necessary details. You need to be flexible; schedules change, pick up dates and even locations can change because of regulations and delays.”

The Red Sea question

For a long time, sailing to Europe via the Red Sea was a definite ‘no go’ – yachts have been hijacked by Somali pirates, yachtsmen kidnapped and sometimes murdered. The efforts of the international maritime community have decreased the risk of piracy and past years have seen more and more boats successfully making this passage.

The Trintella 49 yacht Blue Roger in Port Ghalib, Egypt

In the 2019 season 53 boats travelled through the Red Sea in both directions. Among them were Frank Mulder and Sandra van Manen, who sailed their Trintella 49 Blue Roger through the Red Sea and Mediterranean en route to the Netherlands.

“For us the most important reason to travel through the Red Sea was the limited time we had,” Van Manen said. Her work commitments as a doctor and, even more importantly, the birth of a grandchild, urged them back home. She adds: “We didn’t feel like doing long crossings again and wanted to sail the shortest route back home.”

“And it was a quick passage,” Mulder says. “We left Thailand mid-January and were back home in the Netherlands at the end of May. It took us a month to travel the 1,000-mile track up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal.

Frank Mulder and Sandra van Manen arrive safely home in the Netherlands

“There we left Blue Roger for two weeks in Egypt to fly home and be with our grandchild. After that, we sailed the passages in the Mediterranean, Bay of Biscay and North Sea at leisure.”

In Frank’s opinion: “Safety is not really an issue any more, especially with the help of UKMTO (United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations). In the Gulf of Aden there is the biggest risk of piracy though.”

For Mulder, the disadvantages are: “The weather. You have to think of the Red Sea as a chimney: the hot deserts on both sides with the cooler water of the Med on the north. The wind blows from the north with a Force 6-7 all the time.

“The wind shifts make it very hard to tack. We’ve had days that we only moved forward with 1.8 knots. It’s very frustrating, and you have to be on your guard all the time.

“There are yachtsmen who anchor under way in between the reefs but they are poorly charted and we considered the risk too high. In that respect it was one of the most dangerous parts of our circumnavigation.”

For the five months it took Blue Roger to sail from Thailand to the Netherlands, the total cost was £12,500. “In addition to that,” Van Manen comments, “you need to budget for the transit of the Suez Canal (£450) and for a lot of small cash payments. At least £1,800 is needed to pay for all these expenses while you transit the Indian Ocean and Red Sea.”

Having access to good and recent information is vital. “We used the Red Sea Pilot and we were members of a secret Facebook group of Red Sea crossers. That was very helpful. And the contacts with UKMTO were invaluable,” Sandra says.

Cruisers sharing resources

“In Thailand an informal flotilla formed,” Frank explains. “But because of our time pressure, we didn’t join them. These flotillas have advantages, but there are disadvantages too, especially when some boats are a lot faster than others. There is a sense of security when travelling in a group. We went alone and never felt unsafe.”

Transiting the Red Sea is not a decision to be taken lightly and would require very thorough research. The reduction in piracy attacks reflects the greatly reduced number of vessels passing through the Gulf of Aden or venturing close to the Somali coastline, but the political issues which created the piracy problem remain, combined with increased instability in Yemen. Nevertheless, for those considering it, Frank Mulder has the following tips and suggestions:

• Take cash: at least $2,500 USD in small notes.
• Stay away from Saudi Arabia; they are not used to yachts there and treat (and charge) you like a large cargo ship. There are also security issues.
• Make sure the boat is ready to tackle strong upwind conditions; prepare for significant wear and tear and carry lots of spare parts.
• A satellite phone is useful in the Gulf of Aden: you cannot use your radio to contact UKMTO. If there is an issue with a vessel approaching you, call UKMTO and they can send a plane to fly overhead.
• Most insurance companies will not cover sailing in the Red Sea. Start talking to alternative insurers at an early stage.

noonsite.com has additional advice from Wade Alarie, who runs the private Red Sea Facebook Group and transited the Red Sea this January. It includes carrying substantial fuel.

“You must be able to motor at least 1,200 miles,” says Alarie. “Every year several unprepared sailors run out of fuel, food, and money. Some end up begging for diesel from the Coalition Forces while sailing slowly in the High Risk Area (HRA). This ends up being a distraction to the hard working Coalition Forces, one that Somali pirates may use to their advantage.”

How to sail across the Indian Ocean

We chose to sail Anna Caroline across the Indian Ocean for two reasons. First, we were not sure that we wanted to tackle the headwinds and potential danger of the Red Sea. But more importantly we wanted to visit the wonderful islands in the northern Indian Ocean and then sail around the Cape of Good Hope. As part of our itinerary we have already sailed around two of the three big Capes, so this third one was still on our wishlist.

Choosing to cross the Indian Ocean means adding a year to your circumnavigation. To avoid running into cyclones, you need to leave Thailand in January, make a stop in Sri Lanka and arrive in the Maldives in March. You then have over six months to spend in the Maldives, Chagos, Seychelles, Mauritius or La Réunion until the southern summer starts and you can round the Cape of Good Hope, so it is a relaxed schedule.

The other option is to stay longer in Thailand or Malaysia and cross in September straight to Madagascar. Either way, cruising to Europe via South Africa will take around 18 months.

The advantages of crossing the Indian Ocean include having the time to pick relatively benign weather, and the ability to visit some groups of islands that are still not overrun by cruising yachts. You might also choose to make some interesting land trips ashore in Africa.

The authors’ yacht Anna Caroline in Thailand

The disadvantages are mainly the time that is involved in getting back to Europe, and the extra wear and tear on the yacht caused by sailing many miles (for us on Anna Caroline it will be around 16,500 miles from Phuket to the Netherlands) in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.

If you take this option, there are two major cost factors. First there is the additional cost of living, maintenance and insurance. Given the earlier assumption of £2,500 per month, this amounts to £45,000 for 18 months. On top of that, there is the cost of hiring agents, clearance and cruising permits.

Chagos and the Maldives are expensive with an average cost of between US$1,000-1,500 each. For other countries, the cost is lower, often much lower, but you should allow another £2,000. Depending on your insurance company, you may also see an increase in premium or deductibles.

Because cruising in the Indian Ocean is still relatively rare, sources to find information are scarcer. The Indian Ocean Cruising Guide by Rod Heikell is helpful, as are numerous Facebook groups and forums. There are some older cruising guides for specific destinations like the Seychelles and Maldives, but they are very hard to find in hard copy. We found that it is a good idea to start selecting agents at an early stage; a lot of countries require you to have an agent and there are quite large differences in fees.

“For everyone dreaming of crossing the Indian Ocean the way we did, I would recommend that you do a very thorough check of the boat and all your spare parts while you are still in Thailand and close to resources,” Wietze van der Laan advises. “Most boats are at the end of their circumnavigation and the many miles that have been sailed by then have taken their toll.

“Your boat needs to be in mint condition, because it is very hard to get spare parts in most parts of the Indian Ocean. You need to be independent.”

COVID-19 update

The scenarios mentioned are for a ‘normal’ cruising season. The 2020 season has been anything but normal with COVID-19 causing lockdowns and restrictions.

At the time of going to press many countries, including South Africa, required arriving yachts to undergo COVID-19 testing and quarantine. The Maldives and Tanzania are relatively unrestricted, while Madagascan authorities are limiting yacht movements heavily. Social upheaval caused by factors like rising unemployment and the collapse of tourism is also impacting on the safety of destinations in the Indian Ocean.

Red Sea updates

“The coalition forces don’t encourage cruisers in the area but they will tolerate us – particularly if we try to follow their guidance,” says Wade Alarie, moderator of the private Facebook group for Red Sea crossers.

Organisations issuing guidance include the Maritime Security Centre for the Horn of Africa (MSCHOA) and United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO).

About the author

Dutch couple Janneke Kuysters and Wietze van der Laan are sailing around the world in their Bruce Roberts 44 Anna Caroline, returning home via the Indian Ocean.

First published in the October 2020 issue of Yachting World.

The post How to sail across the Indian Ocean: Everything you need to know appeared first on Yachting World.

“In 2017-18, sailed from New Zealand to the Antarctic Peninsula by way of Cape Horn (60 days). Spent three weeks pottering around old haunts in the Peninsula then north to the Falkland Islands to re-provision. Departed Stanley on 4 March bound up the Atlantic. Arrived Bantry, Ireland, on 8 June (96 days).”

For Trevor Robertson, a single-handed epic such as that is taken in his easy stride. His boat of over 20 years has been Iron Bark, a 35ft steel gaff cutter drawn by Nick Skeates on the lines of his own Wylo II, a boat with too many distinguished passages astern for most of us to count. With Iron Bark Trevor has racked up an impressive list of achievements, but the time comes to nearly all of us when a change is called for.

This story, taken from Roving Commissions, the journal of the Royal Cruising Club, tells of a highly experienced mariner finding a suitable replacement for his well-tested vessel. On the face of things, the yacht Trevor buys would seem a perfect long-range cruiser, but his pithy comments as he jockeys her down to the Caribbean for a major refit tell a different story. Anybody thinking about sailing off soundings will find this narrative an eye-opener.

Extract from Roving Commissions 2019

When I launched Iron Bark in 1997 I said that I would move on to another vessel before I turned 70. In October 2018, with that birthday looming, I sailed from Ireland for the West Indies to look for her replacement. After crossing the Atlantic by the tradewind route, I hauled Iron Bark out of the water in Carriacou to prepare her for sale.

I wanted to replace Iron Bark with a similar vessel but built of fibreglass for reduced maintenance in my dotage. I decided on an Alajuela 38, a fibreglass version of William Atkins’ Ingrid built in California in the 1970s. There were several for sale and I flew to Tampa on Florida’s west coast to look at the nearest one.

Under previous owners, Diva, had covered quite a bit of water, but her sailing seems to have been entirely short hops with no ocean passages. She was fitted out to maximise comfort at anchor or in a marina with little consideration for functionality at sea and her motor had seen far more use than her sails.

Article continues below…

Finishing a solo circumnavigation: An extract from Solitaire Spirit by Les Powles

If he hadn’t chosen to write a book, Les Powles could well have remained one of the unsung heroes of…

Exumas to New York in a 33ft boat: Dick Carter’s extraordinary east coast voyage

In 1965 a young American designer, Dick Carter, met up with Bernard Hayman of Yachting World in the cockpit of…

She was basically sound and although much of her equipment and fittings were unsuited to ocean voyaging, I believed the surplus systems could be discarded and the missing ones added at a cost I could afford, so I bought her.

Florida marinas are expensive so I did the minimum necessary to get her seaworthy enough to sail to the Caribbean where I could transfer my tools and gear and get on turning her into an oceangoing vessel.

Diva’s hull and rig were well built but her interior had a boat show layout with too many open spaces and far too little stowage. Her sails were in good condition but intended for the light conditions of the American coast and barely adequate for an ocean voyage. The mainsail lacked a deep reef and there was no proper high-cut sea-going jib. However, with care and patience I believed I could make the passage south with the sails as they were and sort out her deficiencies in the Caribbean.

Diva after she was bought, hauled out in Florida

Making seaworthy

Most of the locker doors had only friction catches that would burst open in a seaway so I bought a roll of duct tape to restrain them. The galley had no bar in front of the stove or strap to hold the cook in place, there was no usable manual bilge pump, the cockpit was huge and its drains small, the non-skid was designed to be easy to clean rather than to keep the crew aboard and there was a maze of plumbing in the bilge with the potential to sink the vessel.

I removed as much of this piping as I could along with five electric pumps and hoped the rest would last a month at sea without sinking her. There were various bits of fancy joinery that would look well in an article on a finely finished yacht but also looked as if they would not survive long on a seagoing vessel.

The beautifully built teak butterfly skylight amidships fell into that category, as did the dainty platform on the bowsprit, an elaborate folding table in the saloon and the huge hard dodger that covered the entire cockpit. I hoped they would stay in place until I got to the Caribbean where I could address their shortcomings.

Trevor Robertson is a highly experienced seafarer

Setting sail

More urgently the cutless bearing needed replacement, the anchors were inadequate and there was no wind vane steering, only an electro-hydraulic autopilot. We arranged that Sailor’s Wharf, the yard that was to haul Diva for survey, would replace the cutless bearing while she was out of the water. They made no attempt to do the job, or even offer an excuse for not doing it, but still charged savagely for a short in-slings haul.

The defective cutless bearing meant limited motoring at low speeds only. I bought a Monitor windvane and, having no wish to deal further with St Petersburg’s yacht yards, fitted it afloat by hanging precariously over Diva’s stern. I added a 33kg Vulcan anchor and replaced the battery system. I bought several reels of rope and replaced much of the running rigging. I should have done the lot; almost everything I did not renew failed on the voyage south.

There was also a persistent air leak in the diesel fuel system that stopped the motor at unpredictable intervals, and until I could simplify and rebuild the system, I had to accept the engine was unreliable.

On Saturday 30 March 2019 I sailed from St Pete for the West Indies. The motor lasted long enough to get me around the marina breakwater and out of sight of my well-wishers before dying. I cursed, anchored, thereby blocking the channel, bled the system and motored into open water where I thankfully made sail. It is a long time since I have set off on an ocean passage on a vessel so ill prepared, but I would have gone broke if I had stayed in Florida until all was done.

The voyage from Tampa to the eastern Caribbean divides into three legs. The first 500 miles is a coastal passage around the Florida peninsula, south down its west coast then north up the east coast. Once far enough north to clear the Bahamas I would turn into the open Atlantic, sailing east when I could and north when headed by the wind.

On this leg I intended to stay between latitudes 28°N and 30°N until about 63°W, a distance of about 900 miles. It was likely to be largely to windward. Having made my easting, I would make the final 1,000-mile leg by arcing south-east to find the trade winds then south to landfall in Martinique. I expected the voyage to take about a month.

The 500-mile leg around Florida and into the open Atlantic took a week in generally light headwinds. There was predictably a lot of traffic; pleasure craft by day, fishing boats and cargo vessels both day and night. I slept in 20-minute catnaps, which soon became tedious. Although I had no difficulty getting enough sleep with this regime it left little time for cooking and cleaning and nothing for reading a book, watching birds or enjoying life at sea.

I reached the northern end of the Straits of Florida before dawn on the seventh day and, with the wind in the east, hardened the sheets and steered north-east towards the Atlantic. It was a relief to be in the open ocean after five days of dodging around in coastal waters. I turned in for a long sleep, confident that I was now clear of coastal traffic and that the AIS would alert me to any large vessels.

An ominous calm

Five days of moderate, sometimes fresh, winds got me well clear of the Bahamas, initially sailing north-east close hauled with an easterly wind that slowly veered to south-south-east and let me make easting with the sheets just started. As always, it was a joy to once again be clear of land and its encumbrances.

I spent the days on deck occupied with bosun’s work, whipping rope ends, splicing and generally tidying up. If there had been more birds I would have been perfectly content, but the tropical oceans are a poor place for birds.

The compass had extensive sun crazing of its acrylic dome and a large air bubble that made it unreadable. I spent hours polishing the dome to reasonable, if not perfect, clarity then refilled it using baby oil. Baby oil is excellent for this, being clear, miscible with compass oil and of similar viscosity. Baby oil is also an excellent lubricant for marine toilets and for treating wood cutting boards; I believe it can also be applied to infants’ bottoms. Every vessel should carry this elixir.

Twelve days out and five days after turning into the Atlantic, the breeze died away to an ominous calm. When the wind returned it quickly hardened to north-east Force 6-7, a strong to near gale head wind. With a deeper reef in the main and a smaller jib I would have carried on, but with the sails I had there was no choice but to heave-to.

Roving Commissions 2019 is
published by the Royal Cruising Club.
To order email: rovcom@rcc.org.uk

For 32 hours I lay under double-reefed main with the helm lashed down, fore-reaching slowly and with leeway making a square drift. When the wind moderated to east-south-east Force 5 at dawn on 13 April I set the staysail and half the genoa and crashed off close hauled, making a course a little north of east.

The wind remained south-east or east-south-east for several days, allowing me to work to the east without being forced much to the north. Then a fresh south-west breeze gave us a great shove. At 63°W I hauled the wind abeam and headed south-east to look for the trades.

Bashing on

The sea was covered with great rafts of Sargasso weed that repeatedly fouled the self-steering paddle. While clearing the paddle with a boathook I hit the spinning wind generator with the boathook handle, breaking off one blade and rendering the generator useless.

I was now entirely dependent on the engine for charging. It would be inconvenient but not catastrophic if the engine failed. For the first time in my life I had gone to sea without a sextant and tables. If the engine stopped, the batteries had enough charge to give me a GPS position every day or two. This would let me make a landfall and I could do without or bypass the rest of the electrical equipment.

The fair south-westerly backed to a squally easterly headwind. I bashed on close-hauled, until, on 21 April, 22 days out, after two and a half days under the staysail only, the wind eased to east-north-east Force 6, only exceeding 30 knots in squalls. I set the main with both reefs tied in and crashed off with the wind half a point free. A couple of hours later the lifelines went slack.

When I went forward to investigate, I found the bowsprit platform had wrenched free from the bowsprit, taking the pulpit and thus the lifelines with it. The hex-head fastenings that held the platform and pulpit down were not through bolts, as I believed, but merely coachscrews. The force of a few not very large waves had pulled them out, leaving pulpit and platform dangling.

I lashed the platform and the pulpit down to the bowsprit as best I could. Before venturing down the bowsprit to do this I hove-to and trailed a line astern to give myself a chance of regaining the boat if the platform collapsed. Wearing a harness was pointless, as it often is when single-handed. If I went overboard a harness would merely leave me dangling.

Shortly afterwards the wind died completely, leaving us lurching in the left-over sea. For two-and-a-half days we lay becalmed and drifted 40 miles east. This all or nothing wind rather aggrieved me as in this latitude, 19°N, I expected steady trades.

In the early hours of 26 April a gentle north-north-east breeze slowly hardened into the trades, sending us rushing joyously along for 300 miles in just over two days to anchor off St Pierre, Martinique, 29 days from Florida. Next comes a few months’ work converting Diva to a voyaging vessel.

Iron Bark icebound in Greenland

Life of adventure under sail

Australian-born Trevor Robertson is quietly one of the most extraordinary sailors of our times. In his lifetime, he has sailed over 400,000 miles. In 1976, at the age of 27, he sailed from Western Australia to east Africa then round the Cape of Good Hope to the West Indies in a 34ft wooden sloop, then worked in the charter business in the Caribbean and later on oil rigs to earn enough money to buy another boat.

Robertson is perhaps best known for his voyages in the 35ft steel gaff cutter Iron Bark, which he built himself. He spent many years sailing with his wife, the author Annie Hill, whose book Voyaging on a Small Income is a study of the economics of continual travel and self-sufficiency.

Trevor Robertson has undertaken many long single-handed voyages, including overwintering in the Antarctic (Iron Bark is still likely the only vessel to have done so unsupported) and, together with Annie Hill, a winter frozen in the ice in Greenland at 72°N.

In 2009, Robertson’s and Hill’s voyages were recognised by the Cruising Club of America, which awarded them jointly the Blue Water Medal, an honour reserved for the most daring and adventurous exploits under sail.

First published in the September 2020 issue of Yachting World.

The post Solo Caribbean sailing: Trevor Robertson on 38ft Diva’s memorable maiden voyage appeared first on Yachting World.

Our Great Seamanship series tells stories of supremely difficult epic voyages, interspersed with tales of the humdrum that excel by virtue of being beautifully written. Australia The Hard Way by David Pyle (republished from the original 1972 version by Lodestar Books) falls well and truly into the epic category.

David Pyle was a young sailing instructor who’d crossed the English Channel in a Wayfarer; then he designed and built a 27ft yacht to compete in the 1968 OSTAR. All this turned out merely to be a prelude to the great adventure that was to come when he and Dave Derrick sailed an 18ft open Drascombe Lugger called Hermes to Australia.

In his foreword to this new edition, Pyle notes that the two young men made the trip for no better reason than to prove it could be done. Rather than going by conventional yacht, the Drascombe would allow them to use rivers and harbours impossible for other craft. An example is that, rather than entering the Indian Ocean by way of Suez and the Red Sea, they cruised instead through Iraq down the Tigris and into the Persian Gulf.

This is a book not to be missed in its entirety, but for now we’ll share with them the passage across a stormy Aegean at the height of the Meltemi…

The Drascombe Lugger could sail rivers and enter harbours too shallow for deeper draught craft

From Australia The Hard Way by David Pyle

The local fishermen of Amorgos confirmed our suspicions. The etesian winds had begun and we had still 60 miles to go before Kos, an island off the south-western corner of Turkey. It was also the worst stretch if a north­erly was blowing, with no protection from any islands except one, Levitha, which was very small and uninhabited except for the lighthouse keeper.

For 300 miles north there was nothing, a long enough fetch for a northerly gale to produce a considerable sea. We had to take a chance and attempt the crossing now, before the seas really built up.

The wind stayed light until sunrise the following morning, when once more a stormy north-westerly began. Levitha was only half a mile off the bow; within half an hour we were sailing into a cove on her southern shore, the most perfect natural harbour in the Greek islands. We dropped anchor and both turned in for a fitful slumber on our now leaking air beds.

Article continues below…

Sailing the Southern Ocean in a 27ft boat: Extract from Captain Bungle’s Odyssey

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Later that morning we awoke to the noise of the wind howling through the rigging; Hermes was perfectly sheltered, but we still had another 40 miles of open seas to cross before we were out of danger.

For three days and three nights it blew a full gale. On the fourth day I decided that we had been on the island long enough. For a few hours the previous night the wind had moderated, and might do so again tonight. The seas, with the long open fetch northward, would be quite large, but 40 miles to the east lay Kos.

Its harbour was a farther 15 miles on its eastern extremity, but to its north lay Kalimnos, and a few other smaller islands, giving some kind of shelter. All movable objects were lashed down; our external buoyancy tanks were fixed around the gunwales but left deflated; by nightfall we were ready and, with only the genoa up, we crept out of our little cove.

The thin tiller snapped off during the storm described in this excerpt

For a while all seemed well; the wind was from the north-west and Levitha offered some protec­tion from the seas. But as we came out from under her protecting shores, it soon became evident that we had a rough passage in store.

The seas were running in onto our quarter, and I kept glancing over my shoul­der with a wary eye, estimating their size and potential danger. They were hitting Hermes 10-15° off the stern, which was preferable to a direct run, where she’d career off on either tack while surfing down the front of the waves.

But it meant a continuous strain in one direction on the helm, trying to prevent her rounding up into the seas and being hit beam on. It took all my strength to keep her on course and the thin laminated tiller often bent at an alarming angle.

Foaming seas

Within half an hour of leaving Levitha, the wind suddenly increased and the seas began to break and foam past us. “Get the genoa down and change it for the working jib,” I yelled, trying to make myself heard over the roar of the seas and the screaming wind. Dave was now highly profi­cient at changing headsails, and the working jib made helming that little bit easier. Meantime my brain was working full-time, trying to work out the most practical solution to our problem.

I thought of lying to the sea anchor; but this would be completely impracticable, as the rocky shores of Kos were to leeward of us, and in time we would have been driven upon them. The only solution was to run before the wind and seek shelter farther on.
After an hour the wind subsided from a full gale to 25 knots. I was extremely tired, with pains in my arms making it almost im­possible to grasp the tiller. I handed over to Dave. Ten minutes later another squall hit us.

I could sense that Dave was having difficulty in handling Hermes. Suddenly a monstrous wave came up astern like a car on a big dipper, Hermes was picked up in a welter of foam and surfed down the face of the wave, skidded sharply to port and was then hit beam-on by a break­ing crest.

David Pyle and the recently-built Hermes during the boat’s fit-out

We both clambered frantically to windward, to try to keep her on an even keel. My mind was reeling. Certain that we were going over, I gasped for breath and swallowed a lungful of water.

Coughing and splut­tering, I instinctively grabbed the helm to try and bring her back on an even course. But when I caught hold of the frail wooden stick, it fell to the bottom of the boat, broken off at the rudder stock.

The post Sailing around the world in an 18ft boat: Extract from Australia The Hard Way appeared first on Yachting World.

A voyage around the southern tip of the Americas, will always be a mix of heaven and hell. If you’re prepared to take on the abrupt and unforgiving weather systems, then the pure remoteness of Patagonia, with its marine life and unspoilt deserted coastlines, all await.

In the southern hemisphere winter of 2020, Pumula was docked in the small marina of Punta del Este in Uruguay. It had been decided to curtail cruising plans for South America and bring this 37m/123ft Royal Huisman sloop from Uruguay to the warmer climes of the South Pacific.

Once that call was made, we then had the choice of sailing all the way around Brazil into the American armpit of Panama, going through the cumbersome formalities of the Panama canal and onto the regular fair wind trade route to Polynesia, or taking the more logical yet challenging option to save thousands of miles by ‘simply’ passing through the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America.

Photo: Oliver Hervé

Pumula was designed by Dysktra for global cruising and has been down south before. I’ve sailed her there on previous passages and know that such a voyage is not to be taken lightly. So as soon as the decision was made, the crew and I started preparing the yacht for all it might face.

All weather systems approach from the west across the wide southern Pacific before clambering and streaming over and through the southern Andes. We were heading to the south and east into the face of this. Traditionally the winter and spring seasons offer lighter weather than the summer, even though the temperatures may be lower, but in my experience all seasons anywhere near the Horn of South America offer a full scope of weather, ranging from idyllic calms to raging tempests.

The latitudes nicknamed roaring forties and furious fifties always seem to live up to the sailor’s worst expectations.

Article continues below…

Sailing around Cape Horn on the world’s largest ketch Aquijo

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For any captain contemplating a passage to the region of Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego, I’d advise studying (and being amazed by) the passage transcripts of Ferdinand Magellan, who first passed there to the east in the 1500s, and the famous Joshua Slocum with his ordeals aboard his tiny sloop Spray. In my childhood I’d always dreamed about sailing there and after the first time knew I both loved and hated the place, but above all that it offered zero tolerance for complacency.

Our passage to Polynesia would be broken up in three stages. The first leg would be to the Punta Arenas in Chile, lying at the gateway of Patagonia just after the entrance to the Magellan Strait. The second would be through Magellan and up the Chilean channels to the sheltered Puerto Montt, where the yacht could be prepared and resupplied for the third long leap to Polynesia.

To start with I needed a good team. We can normally sail and maintain the yacht with four crew: our first mate Ollie, who had sailed with me through many a storm; Abbi, our seaworthy crew chef; and deckhand Tom, who’d only recently joined the yacht but had already proved himself to be steady in a blow. However, it’s easy to become short-handed on such a voyage, so we increased the crew to seven, which included flying in my good friend Rob, who I knew to be a seasoned sailor and dependable watch leader.

Except for Ollie, none had been down south before, so it was key to prepare them for what may lie ahead.

Prep for the worst

It was important to go over all mechanics as well as update and revamp the spares list. Once underway we’d need to be very self-sufficient. Whatever we could not find in Uruguay, we needed to fly in from Europe and we only had a few weeks to get the yacht ready.

The rig was checked and double checked, and all deck fittings were extra secured as we added a spiderweb of straps and lines to help keep all in place in the event of a storm. Abbi stocked up for the first leg, doubling up some supplies just in case and pre-cooking several comfort meals for the expected cold and rough weather.

Once we completed customs and immigration formalities the sun was already setting, so I decided to anchor off just outside the port for the night to start the passage with a rested crew on a fresh morning.

Next day, the wind had picked up to a stiff breeze, blowing out of a dark grey front at 30 knots. Not a nice overture, but the crew were alert as we motored out of the mouth of Rio del Plata. The weather settled once we made our way from the murky brown delta into the open sea.

Some main and staysail was set in a lighter breeze but, as often, the wind veered south onto our bow. After trying a high angle with a full main and full blade, we finally had to give up sailing all together with a dying 12 knots directly on the nose.

Sailing upwind in the furious fifties east of Argentina, looking out aft from the port quarter. Photo: Pepo Subiranas

After another 24 hours of trying to keep the yacht moving in varying winds, we picked up a steady system of wind. The passage plan would be to cruise reasonably close to the Argentinian coastline. Any heavy weather would be from the west and the further out to sea, the wilder the sea state would become. The large ocean bay Bahia Grande, stretching down to the entrance of the Magellan Strait, was something to get especially right, as this was where the toughest conditions were expected.

Stormy waters

My plan was to hug the cape and use the lighter weather to get as far west as possible. Unfortunately, as we were beating upwind a few miles offshore the breeze picked up to over 30 knots and the swell in the relative shallow water became quite uncomfortable, also hampering any boat speed. We had to change plans and head out to deeper water straight into the oncoming waves.

As often, these kinds of situations occur in the darkness of night. The crew in the forepeak were thrown out of their bunks. After a few bumpy miles, the sharpness of the swell decreased to a normal storm level, the crew resettled and normal passagemaking resumed.

Skipper and author Michael van Bregt stands watch on the aft deck. Photo: Pepo Subiranas

With no relative calm to work with, it was now a matter of heading straight for Magellan. A big blow was on its way, so it was important for the watch to be extra vigilant. In this region things can change at an enormous pace. Several years ago, in the same area, I’d been taken by surprise and was determined not to let that happen again. I was on watch when the storm announced itself.

During steady coursing, a strong gust blasted through the rigging. It only lasted about ten seconds, but it made all the stays and mast hum with excitement – a dark rumbling sound. There was no time to lose in shortening sail. In the regular breeze that resumed we went straight down to four reefs in the main and furled away the jib.

Just after resetting the sails the wind arrived in earnest. A new regime had now come into place. With a minimal main and the engine pushing us over the waves we managed to progress southwards. We needed to course about another 300 miles south to reach Magellan.

If not over, then through the waves. Photo: Michael van Bregt

I knew we had to make it by the end of the storm, so we could navigate due west through the Strait to Punta Arenas. If we waited to move until the next calm we may well have been hit by the next storm at the entrance or when moving west through Magellan.

Motoring directly into something in the region of 50 knots of wind in the narrows of Magellan would not be possible. And if we chose to bear away and make for Port Stanley in the Falklands, we’d later have to pay the price of a direct westerly course with all weather on the nose.

It didn’t take long for the swell to build, and with peaks of over 70 knots of wind, we were soon riding up and down 7m waves in a fuming sea. Progress was slow and extremely uncomfortable. The 115 tonnes of Pumula were being thrown around like a drunken sailor and even with minimal mainsail the 50m rig on its own produced a pronounced heeling.

Engineer Pepo enjoying the wild spectacle. Photo: Michael van Bregt

At first the crew was looking a little worried in the howling conditions, but after a while they got used to it and maybe even enjoyed the challenge. Tom especially, being a keen surfer, loved it all – the waves were majestic and powerful. Abbi was happy with her pre-cooked meals, as were the hungry crew. The temperature had plummeted down to just above freezing and watchkeeping was hard work.

I was happy sailing a very well-built Royal Huisman yacht. Pumula has proven herself to manage even the most adverse conditions over the years. Despite the very stylish Spirit of Tradition freeboard, the designers at Dykstra had drawn a modern underwater hull which functions well in extreme ocean conditions, either downwind or beating up against it all.

Although moving slowly, we managed to keep course without too much drift. The crew gained confidence, more grins appeared on deck, even though everyone, including myself, really longed for it all to end as soon as possible.

The term ‘beating’ takes on added meaning in these conditions. Photo: Michael van Bregt

It took us three days to finally spot the lighthouse at the entrance of the Strait. As if by magic, conditions lightened, and we motored into a calm and flat Magellan Strait. It was so nice not to be thrown around, to eat, drink and sleep in a fine, stable and upright yacht.

It was another 100 miles to Punta Arenas. With a large tidal difference between there and the entrance of the strait, tidal streams can run up to 8 knots against any vessel on the approach, but with 450hp and little wind it posed no real problem for Pumula.

We contacted Tomas Miranda of SASYSS, a dependable Chilean agent I’d worked with before, to set up the welcoming committee. Working with an agent is essential when travelling to and through Chile. It’s very bureaucratic and a local man to streamline procedures definitely pays off.

Captain and first mate enjoy the calm of Magellan’s entrance. Photo: Pepo Subiranas

Magical Patagonia

The port of Punta Arenas does not amount to much. It has one large commercial jetty and all yachts must anchor off with little shelter from the weather. Fuel was to be delivered by truck to the dock, timed with the army of officials to board simultaneously.

The weather window to continue west was looking good, so I was eager to get going as soon as possible, but allowed the crew one day of relative rest and a little sightseeing ashore.

The next morning, fresh supplies restocked and with fuel tanks brimming, we set off on the next leg. It would be another thousand miles to Puerto Montt. The first part would be some south followed by due west through the Magellan Strait and after a few days, we’d turn north for the passage through the Chilean channels.

Pumula safely tucked away in one of the many bays in Patagonia. Photo: AS Photography

We couldn’t have wished for a better start: no wind to speak of and clear bright skies. Spectacular landscapes emerged. The approach to Punta Arenas from the east is very flat and lifeless, but soon after this port it becomes a wilderness of the wind-beaten southern Andes.

This is the separation channel between Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego and on both sides of the sea strait are clear, wide views of enormous peaks and extensive glacier fields. It was the end of winter so there was a lot of snow, reflecting the crystal sunshine with a deep blue backdrop. It was absolutely stunning.

We made good progress south and west and left the Strait of Magellan. Within only a few hours a new depression closed in on us. While we were cruising in the relative shelter of the narrow channels going north, storm winds blasted eastwards through the strait.

A hike rewards the crew with the view of Patagonia’s beautifully deserted wilderness. Photo: AS Photography

If we’d been headed by that system there would have been no choice but to find some shelter, to anchor in a bay with a spiderweb of shorelines and sit it out. The area is famous for williwaws. In severe weather these katabatic winds have been recorded to locally exceed 130 knots. As the cloud base scoured the mountains and we were pelted by icy wind and driving rains, we were fine to motor on with relative ease.

It would take another four days to reach Puerto Montt. We were missing the poetry of using the wind and waves: motoring for 100 hours is no fun, but the amazing scenery around us wiped away most boredom.

Sparing pages of superlatives, to summarise, Patagonia offers the peak of raw beauty and wilderness. The remoteness and savage feel drew us back in time, to a wide and largely uninhabited world that has disappeared from across most of the globe.

Pumula plodded along dependably mile after mile. Hours of bright calm were alternating with seemingly longer hours of storm and cold. We reached Puerto Montt on a clear night, anchoring outside until morning. The compulsory pilot took us safely past the shallows on the approach channel. We docked at a small marina, again with officials and their elaborate paperwork to greet us.

The log showed around 2,500 miles since we left Punta del Este – a 16-day passage never to forget.

About the author

Born and raised in the Netherlands and UK, Michael van Bregt’s first yachting experience was a Mirror dinghy in the Bristol docks. Since then the boats have become larger and destinations more exotic. van Bregt helped with the commissioning of Pumula and has skippered her to both polar extremes.

First published in the July 2020 edition of Yachting World.

The post Heaven and hell: Sailing the Magellan strait on 37m superyacht Pumula appeared first on Yachting World.

If he hadn’t chosen to write a book, Les Powles could well have remained one of the unsung heroes of the ocean, men and women who dare to do in secret what others make a loud noise over. 

Les is now 92. He still lives aboard Solitaire, the 34ft yacht he built himself for £7,000 and launched in 1975. After setting out with eight hours’ sailing experience to circumnavigate the world, he went and did it again successfully twice more. The second voyage was executed non-stop via the Great Capes of the Southern Ocean. 

Les was never one to save up enough money to do things according to the book, he just got on with it in his inimitable way. Solitaire Spirit is required reading for all who might feel the inclination to cock a snook at convention. In this extract, he is almost home after 11 months of circumnavigation number two.

His remarks about what food he has left and his refusal to put in for provisions say a lot about this quietly unstoppable character. The final sentence gives a rare insight into a surprisingly sensitive nature. A few months later, no doubt to his complete confusion, he received the Yachtsman of the Year award. 

From Solitaire Spirit: Three times around the world single-handed

Land’s End was 1,030 miles away on Wednesday 20 May 1981. The wind dropped, the sea flattened and Solitaire glided through banks of fog, a ghost ship returning from the dead. For dinner I opened another tin of mince and took out my rationed third. Solitaire made 82 miles in silence. 

Thursday saw us glide 113 miles, drifting in peace more or less in the middle of the Gulf Stream. Dinner: mince and rice. 

On Friday we bit off another 121 miles despite a stormy night reduced to working jib only. During the morning the weather cleared, leaving a high swell behind. I left Solitaire to do all the work while I sat contentedly below as we rolled along under the smaller genoa, thankful for the luxury of a following wind. For dinner, the last of the mince with, you guessed it, rice.

Les Powles built his 34ft Bruce Roberts design Solitaire himself and has lived aboard ever since

Saturday saw us bowling along in rough seas under broken cloud, content to sit below out of the flying spray while Solitaire chopped off 130 miles under working jib. For dinner I had a change, one third of tinned beef and…

Sunday 24 May. Gale force winds and high breaking waves made sights impossible but good progress with just the working jib on a broad reach. Log shows 125 miles in the last 24 hours. Dinner: guess.

Monday 25 May. Squally winds from the north as we reached with working jib and three-reefed mainsail. I picked up the BBC last night for the first time in nearly 11 months. Batteries, like the crew, were nearly worn out. Dinner: minced beef and rice served with curry powder.

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Tuesday saw 801 miles for week 46, which Solitaire could have bettered with more help from me. We still had the working jib up with three-reefed main as the winds gusted from the north. Were I not so tired we could have been tearing along on a reach with a single reef.

I was feeling the cold, perhaps because my blood was so thin. Better that I kept what strength I had for the English Channel with its heavy shipping. Land’s End was now only 420 miles away. Soon I’d be with parents and friends, I thought — may they please feed me with anything but rice, bloody rice.

Wednesday. The winds died during the night but still we managed 90 miles. When I tried to start the motor I found the tank had rusted and lost seven gallons of fuel. Luckily I had eight gallons in plastic containers so I disconnected the fuel line from the tank and fed it directly into one of these. Warmly wrapped, I settled in the cockpit listening to BBC music before starting my last tin of mince, after which I would have only rice.

Les Powles was awarded the Yachtsman of the Year title in 1981

Just before dark the wind strengthened and the main started to slam. Instead of dashing on deck I dithered and a seam ripped open after 28,026 miles and only a few hundred miles from home.

I replaced it with the mainsail from our first world voyage rather than waste time with a repair. Wednesday had not been one of our better days, what with the fuel tank and then the sail. Dinner consisted of curry powder on mince. Land’s End was now 240 miles away.

Friday 29 May. Becalmed since dawn and all I have left is half a gallon of water, half a tin of mince and less than two cups of rice. And I’m worried sick about my family. All morning I have been trying to catch the attention of fishing boats, asking them to contact them.

They come within a few hundred yards but when I start Solitaire’s motor and try to close them, they pull away and I lie lonely in a world of mist and lifeless sea. Dead reckoning shows Land’s End approximately 160 miles away bearing 075°, with Bishop Rock on the same bearing 30 miles closer.

Had I a good directional radio there would have been no problem pinpointing our position as we were now well within range of British and French stations, but mine was playing up.

Friendly arrival

Donning my warmest white sweater I sat in the cockpit while the boat idled on an oily sea. I was attracted by movement at the bow which at first I thought was a butterfly but, as it neared, I could see was a small land bird, black with bright blue markings.

For a while it performed acrobatics then, having sung for its supper, landed on the foredeck and walked towards me hesitantly, bowing shyly as if unsure of its reception. I slipped below for food. There was little with which to tempt him but a few grains of rice and sugar, which I put on a piece of paper, filling a saucer with fresh water.

Back in the cockpit I feared it had flown away until its head popped from around the mast as though it had been playing hide and seek. The bird took an age to reach the cockpit, then it flew directly onto my knee, stared at me, then ducked under my sweater and worked its way up until it lay above my heart, demanding care and protection.

Nothing could have made me move, neither storm nor tempest. For hour after hour I sat, unmoving, worried about my family but strangely comforted. For the first time in nearly 11 months, Solitaire and I were no longer alone.

Photo: PPL / Peter Smailes

Shortly before dark it came out of its hiding place and flew into the cabin. I made a nest of cotton wool and placed the food and water beside it. Then a faint wind sprang up and Solitaire started moving, trying to hold a heading for home.

With thoughts of more fishing boats in the area I switched on our running light, lay on my bunk and to the faint accompaniment of passing waters, slipped into a restful sleep.

I awoke to find Solitaire’s cabin pitch black. The wind had strengthened and we were moving quickly but the sea was flat so nothing was straining. I checked our course and looked around for shipping before remembering my new shipmate. Finding a torch I searched the cabin, only to discover a fluffy mound on the chart table, head to one side, its eyes finally closed.

Saturday 30 May. No noon sights possible. Since raising sail yesterday we have been beating hard on a south-easterly through drizzle and fog, trying to head eastwards but slowly being pushed too far north. It’s going to be a bad night. To prove it, I dine on half a cup of rice and the last of the mince with curry powder. All I have left now is half a cup of rice.

Monday. Logged 81 miles with more tacking into strong gusting winds from the east-south-east accompanied by heavy rain. Solitaire is sailing as close to the wind as possible but water is very short and unless I turn and run with the wind, there’s no way I can catch any.

Noon position by faint RDF and dead reckoning shows us ten miles beyond and 30 miles below Lizard Point, with Lymington less than 150 miles away. For dinner another quarter cup of rice mixed with curry powder to make a weak soup, a terrible recipe!

First sight of land

With dawn the outline of land appears, the first I have seen for 326 days. Since noon yesterday conditions have been ghastly and the radio is reporting the worst storms for 20 years with lightning turning night into day. Our deck and running lights vanish in heavy downpours of rain as a blinding zigzag destroys my night vision. I imagine Solitaire being found, her mast struck by lightning, a burned, shrivelled figure at the tiller. 

Scenting she was nearly home, Solitaire moved effortlessly over a flat sea as the mist lifted. Then Lyme Bay fell away from us and we could no longer see the land. As we neared Portland, the Royal Navy started to appear. By noon we were 20 miles from Portland Bill but land was still invisible.

Solitaire Spirit: Three times around the world single-handed by Les Powles is published by Adlard Coles, RRP: £12.62.

Late that afternoon the wind dropped completely and the sun emerged. For the first and only time in the English Channel I took a sun sight, which put us east of Portland, time to come on course for Lymington. No matter what happened I wanted to be home the following day.

For dinner I had eaten a spoonful of rice with powdered milk and sugar. Now there was nothing. As the sun set we picked up a faint breeze from the west and Solitaire crept home like a runaway child uncertain of its reception.

I started the motor, reduced the throttle until it throbbed in a contented tick-over, and held a close-hauled course for the Needles, 25 miles away. The three knots we were making meant a dawn arrival. Perfect. I spent the night in the cockpit watching the shore lights to port and ships’ navigation lights to starboard. I was tired and the slow beat of the engine made me feel sufficiently secure to nod off from time to time, only to jerk upright. 

Just before the dawn I must have drifted into deep slumber for on awakening all signs of life had disappeared. Solitaire’s engine still held its constant beat as she pushed through banks of fog but our course had changed slightly, taking us farther south into the shipping lanes. Without a trailing log I had no idea how far we had travelled, but when I tried the RDF I heard a weak signal from St Catherine’s Point, halfway down the Isle of Wight, and decided to home in on it.

Breaking out of fog

With dawn the sky lightened and the fog eased. When we broke out of one bank St Catherine’s lay off our bow, and the greens and golds of patchwork fields greeted me for the first time in 329 days. In the small, box-like homes ashore well-fed people drank water that flowed from taps, talking together with faces that showed love and kindness.

After so long with only the background noise of wind and sea and the expressionless front of a portable radio, we were close to the old sounds, of a footstep, the bark of a dog. When the wind blew, it would no longer start the blood racing; we would hear only the rustle of leaves in bending trees.

I turned Solitaire north-west to the Needles Channel ten miles away. Tipping the last of my water into the kettle, I washed my face and boiled the rest for a final cup of tea with my last tea bag. Now we had neither food nor water, just half a cup of sugar and a quarter tin of condensed milk.

At 0915 on Wednesday 3 June 1981 Solitaire entered the Lymington River, nodding to the line of mooring buoys she had last seen on 9 July 1980. In the yacht haven a solitary figure awaited us. Keith Parris had been the last person I had spoken to when I left; it was appropriate he should be the first to welcome me home. “Where the hell have you been?” was his greeting.

As soon as practicable I rang my family. My father, over the moon, spoke first, having long since given me up for lost. Then I asked to speak to my mother, only to learn that she had died eight weeks earlier. I returned to Solitaire and made my last entry in the log:

Wednesday, 3 June 1981. 0915 GMT. ‘The end of week 47 after 329 days and 28,496 miles at sea. Arrived Lymington Yacht Haven and learned that my mother has died.’

Solitaire had shown me the world. Now I was lost.

First published in the March 2019 edition of Yachting World.

The post Finishing a solo circumnavigation: An extract from Solitaire Spirit by Les Powles appeared first on Yachting World.

The rule of thumb when doing these tricky inflatable beach landings is to hang in above the surf line for a good ten minutes to watch the sets coming through. Maybe we were a bit premature, but I gave Thomas, the boat handler from Pelagic Australis, the thumbs up to drive the Bombard C5 ashore.

We surfed into the cobbled beach and before we could turn the boat around it was flooded by the next breaking wave. Our survival gear in dry bags floated to the surface and, waist deep, we snatched them out and ran them up above the surf, stumbling like drunks and slipping and sliding on the football-sized boulders.

The term beach was definitely a misnomer. Having bailed out the C5, we pushed Thomas into a backwash but he was caught by a breaker beam on and came close to capsizing. Only his aggressive and expert boathandling saved the day and he made it back out to Pelagic Australis a half-mile offshore, rolling heavily in mist in the wide mouth of the bay.

Turning the inflatable around immediately is the only way to prevent flooding. Dry suits are de rigeur

Clearly this stretch of the coast was a non-starter for getting the rest of our team and equipment ashore. We watched as big breakers came in one after another. Even with the line system we had developed to pull gear in and back out from the dinghy, the chance of someone getting dumped on their heads on rocks was too great.

We had tents, food and fuel, which is always first in and last out, but although three of us had their personal gear drybag with clothing, mine had mistakenly been left on board, slated for the next trip. I was in a dry suit, hoodie and booties and felt slightly vulnerable in what was looking like a stranding ashore. As I ripped off the hoodie and felt the chill wind, I realised the lack of my ‘lucky hat’ was an unwelcome portent.

Below the Polar Front

We had landed on the very open beach of Kraken Cove on Candlemas Island, which lies in the north central section of the South Sandwich Islands chain. Here, it is all about plate tectonics. The 180-mile long arc of 11 volcanic cones, some active, along with outliers demarcates the eastern margin of the Sandwich Plate. This balances on the edge of the 7,400m deep abyss of the South Sandwich Trench.

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The trench is a subduction zone – the South American Plate to the east is diving under the Sandwich Plate and creeping west at an average of 70mm per year. This dynamic interface releases magma from the earth’s crust, which rises and gives birth to these volcanic islands and associated sea mounts.

Zavodovski Island, the northern most and most active, is 300 miles south-east of the southern tip of South Georgia. We were truly deep in the Southern Ocean at 57°S, well below the Polar Front.

The South Sandwich Islands Expedition had sailed with us from Port Stanley in the Falklands on 30 December. Specialists for volcanology, climate change, penguin biology and whale identification and acoustics were on the team, plus two filmmakers. Candlemas Island was on everyone’s hit list with its smoking crater to be studied, chinstrap, Adélie and macaroni penguins to be counted and vestigial glaciers waiting to be drilled for ice cores.

Professor Paul Mayewski and Mario Potocki from the University of Maine Climate Change Institute drilling ice cores on South Georgia

Now it was already mid-afternoon and we had no choice other than to walk the kilometre around the length of the bay on those awkward boulders to the spit named Demon Point that defines the eastern side of Kraken Cove, in hopes of finding doable surf. This meant several trips to bring the survival gear around and by the time this was accomplished it was obvious we’d have to abort the landing. Time had run out.

Luckily, the surf under Demon Point was safe enough in between huge sets that ripped around the spit to get a throw line ashore from the C5 so we could be towed back out, one by one, with a gear bag each.

Back on board we had a debrief and were convinced that if the swell did not increase next day we could get a slimmed down version of Team Volcano ashore with a few of us in support. Under the circumstances we had to scrub taking Team Penguin ashore; they could fly the drone from the deck to census the colonies. Also, Team Ice would have to take a pass with their heavy drilling gear.

We were 14 on board, more than a full house, which meant elbows tucked in at the main saloon table while eating our dinner as usual from bowls – not plates – in the unpleasant roll. This had been a feature of every anchorage we had been to thus far.

As always, optimism had run high when we set sail from the Falklands. As soon as we cleared Cape Pembroke, Ted Cheeseman, the co-founder of happywhale.com, was letting out his 400m of Spectra with the acoustic probe to log whale noise. These data files would be translated by algorithms to identify the species heard.

This was a passive bit of research, until it was time to reel in to download the chip. That took 40 minutes of grinding on the three-speed winch. We all had to pitch in to get some exercise. On this trip, Ted would log 33 humpback tail fluke photos for his global database.

Ted Cheeseman deploying the acoustic probe to record whale ‘noise’

We’d sailed 1,000 miles to reach the islands but that would be the easy part, running before the prevailing westerlies in a spell of fine weather, often double poled out with the mainsail down. It was settled enough for Dr Emma Liu and Dr Kieran Wood, of University College London and Bristol University respectively, to rig up their drone on the saloon table.

This was a quadcopter big enough to carry their ad hoc gas sensor. This device was to be flown in the gas plumes of the craters to measure CO₂ and SO₂. They were slightly shocked when firing this gizmo up that the level of CO₂ in the main saloon was somewhat above the recommended background level. I dutifully opened a few hatches.

Although this was a charter it was clear in order to pull off the objectives that our sailing crew would have to help facilitate the science and the scientists would have to help us sail and run the boat.

Researchers learning the ropes on the way to South Sandwich

Captain Chris Kobusch and his mate, Sophie O’Neill, on their first season south and fresh from Clipper Ventures, knew how to build the team. Thomas Geipel, a Pelagic veteran of many seasons, was seconded in specifically to do the boat driving, which would be more than challenging. These three got everyone, including the landlubbers, busy working the sails, cooking, washing up and lending a hand where needed.

My role was over-arching expedition leader in charge of safety and calling the landings in addition to mountain safety for Team Volcano. Coordinator of the science disciplines was Dr Tom Hart, a penguinologist from Oxford University and the mastermind of this project.

Tom, Jo Feldman, an A&E doctor from California, and Gemma Clucas, a post doc from Cornell University working with Tom (Team Penguin) had all been to the islands before. Tom is possibly the only human to have landed on all the main islands during his three previous expeditions. So we had plenty of chiefs, but luckily still enough Indians to go around.

Chinstraps share this stretch of beach at Ferguson Bay on Thule Island with Adélie penguins

Citizen science

Tom had been working on a plan for this project for the last three years. Of particular note was that in the southern autumn of 2016, Zavodovski had violently erupted so the fate of the 1.3 million pairs of chinstrap penguins, recognised as the largest vertebrate colony of any species in the world, was unknown. Were they buried in ash, or had they already moulted and gone to sea for the winter? Tom was dying to find out.

Tom is a pioneer of using hunting camera traps to record activities at penguin colonies throughout the year. This is impossible to do by researchers for reasons of climate conditions, cost and time.

Over the last ten years through his Oxford-based project he and his collaborators have placed in the order of 150 cameras at sites all around the Southern Ocean. These are downloaded and batteries changed annually, if possible. The team is supported by cruise ship and yacht logistics.

Drone flight above the chinstrap colony on Nattriss Point, Saunders Island. Photo: Tom Hart

The millions of images are then collated by the penguinwatch.org citizen science programme. It’s popular with school children, but anyone can log on to help count penguins. Historically, penguins were counted with boots on the ground by hand with a clicker or, if the colony was too vast, estimates were made by density calculations from photographs taken.

With geo-referenced drone flights, large and awkwardly placed colonies can be recorded and now recognition software does the counting. The accuracy and time efficiency are a gamechanger.

The southernmost island group aptly named South Thule is 200 miles south of Zavodovski and sits just above 60°S on the edge of the winter sea ice band around the Antarctic continent. The South Sandwich Islands are not in the Antarctic Treaty territory but the UK, which owns this stretch of hostile real estate, is strict in its governance.

Managed from Port Stanley the islands, along with South Georgia, are officially called the UK Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

To visit South Sandwich is a hoops and ladders exercise of bureaucracy and visits are limited to scientific expeditions.

The land masses are a Specially Protected Area and the waters in the maritime zone include a Marine Protected Area and specific No Take Zones for licensed fishing in the wider maritime zone. This is critical to protect krill stocks for seals and penguins.

Pristine islands

A rigorous permit process is in place. The two top items on the government’s agenda are biosecurity and safety. You have to document and demonstrate you will not be introducing alien species to these otherwise pristine islands, and you have to ensure you can conduct the expedition safely and be self-sufficient.

Before we left Stanley we inspected everyone’s clothing, footwear and equipment, vacuumed out pockets of jackets and trousers, and painstakingly picked seeds out of Velcro. We disinfected boots, ski poles, tripods and anything else that could touch the ground.

We had to be hard on each other, and it’s amazing what you can find if you look hard enough. Before setting sail, we were visited by Sammy, the official four-legged rat catcher in Stanley. She jumped back ashore still hungry.

As we approached Saunders Island after the five-day transit, I remembered what one pundit in Stanley who’d been to these islands twice before said to me: “You have too many people and you’ll be lucky to get 10% of the objectives done.”

An attempt to climb Mt Belinda on Saunders was thwarted by savage weather

He had good reason to be pessimistic. I was bracing myself for days hove to offshore in gale conditions among growlers and bergy bits while waiting to land, with time running out and a boatload of anxious researchers suffering from cabin fever.

Late in the evening of 4 January we ghosted around the northern end of the island. At daybreak we anchored in 15m in the open roads of Cordelia Bay. While searching for the terra incognita of Antarctica in 1775 Captain Cook and HMS Resolution fetched up on a group of islands to the south, which he aptly named Southern Thule.

Sailing north, he went from island to island up the chain to Candlemas, assuming, in the thick weather, that he was looking at promontories of a landmass.

Skip in his ‘lucky hat’ directing the line system to pull gear and people into the beach on Bellinghausen Island. This keeps the inflatable outside the surf, but it’s still a risky manoeuvre. Photo: Mariusz Potocki

Not until 1819 when Captain Thaddeus von Bellingshausen discovered the northern three islands and then sailed south along the eastern side of the southern islands was Cook’s theory of a land mass discredited. Various sealing expeditions came and went up to 1830 with not much profit, and then it was not until 1908 when Captain Larsen, who developed the whaling industry on South Georgia, landed on Zavodovski.

They were now firmly on the map, but all attempts at whaling and sealing failed due to the harsh weather and lack of any natural harbour, so they stayed pristine.

Following the footsteps

Following in the footsteps of only a handful of previous scientific parties that have landed, we wasted no time to get ashore. Our first ‘wet landing,’ jumping out of the C5 Bombard in waist-deep water to turn the boat around and offload, was an easy one.

Mario Potocki strolling up to the crater rim on Bellinghausen Island to assist Team Volcano

With 11 of us all ashore, the scientists took off in different directions with me in hot pursuit of the two young volcanologists, Emma and Kieran. Tom, Gemma and Dr Jo were flying drones over the penguin colonies, satellite tagging 20 chinstraps to record foraging ranges and taking faecal and blood samples for DNA analysis.

Pelagic veterans Professor Paul Mayewski and Mario Potocki from the University of Maine Climate Change Institute went in search of ice with their drilling gear, and also water and snow samples to demonstrate levels of pollution. Don’t believe it? In the Antarctic this team has discovered levels of uranium in melt water conclusively linked to an open pit uranium mine in Australia.

Ruth Peacey and Hamsa Yassin, our film team, had a lot on their plate to cover. We all kept an hourly radio sched while Chris on board kept us informed of any changes of weather, which meant we would have to call in the troops and evacuate in double quick time.

Dr Kieran Wood and Dr Emma Liu on Saunders Island

The strange thing was, the weather was fine that day and lasted two days more, giving us all ten hour days on shore and loads of data in all the disciplines. Tom was particularly pleased as one of the three camera traps he’d serviced in December 2014 had survived the eruption in 2016 and when he downloaded the chip the series of images had gone black, which narrowed down the time of eruption to the first week of April.

The only downside was because of gale conditions above 500m we couldn’t access the crater on Mt Belinda where a lava lake was rumoured to be. This was one of the Holy Grails of the expedition – unfinished business.

During the next eight days we kept pinching ourselves as the weather held fine so that we could move from island to island at will. We landed on Thule, Bellingshausen and Candlemas. On Cook, Bristol and its outliers and Zavodovski, Tom flew the drone from the deck with Gemma launching and catching – no mean feat in swell and wind. The good news was Tom knew the eruption on Zavodovski in 2016 had spared the colony.

Job done: the assembled team in the cockpit of Pelagic Australis on their return to Port Stanley, Falkland Islands

After eight days of fine weather on the South Sandwich we high tailed it to the relatively tropical coastline of South Georgia. Here we cherrypicked other objectives on foot and by drone in the time that was left. Back in Stanley after five weeks in the field, Pelagic Australis’s job was done, but the scientists’ work back in their labs was yet to begin.

About the author

Skip Novak is a veteran ocean racer who has spent the last three decades sailing in Antarctic waters with his Pelagic expedition yachts. As well as running adventure charters he regularly facilitates and provides support for scientific field research.

First published in the June 2020 edition of Yachting World.

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Captain Bungle’s Odyssey by Paddy Macklin is a great sailing book belied by its humble title. Extraordinarily self-effacing, Paddy makes light of a remarkable circumnavigation executed in truly Corinthian spirit, without sponsorship or hype of any sort. He sets out in mid-winter 2009/10 to sail a non-stop circle, which will involve him in traversing the Southern Ocean in mid-winter. This used to be a daunting prospect in a pre-war 5,000-ton steel four-masted barque, let alone a 27ft yacht.

The good ship Tessa is a long-keeled, wooden Clyde Cruising Club sloop designed by Alan Buchanan and built in the 1950s, but there is little standard about her. Reading of Paddy’s preparations for the voyage, one realises that just about nothing was left to chance. When Tessa is put to the ultimate test described below with so little fuss, she comes out with flying colours, a living example of what a straightforward man can achieve by foreseeing trouble realistically and tackling it head-on.

Paddy’s attitude throughout the book is one of self-help and can-do. When asked why he was sailing in winter, he replied that if you thought too much about what you were taking on, you’d never go. A lesson for life in general, and this book is full of them.

From Captain Bungle’s Odyssey

My log reads, rather tersely: ‘Strong gale, 4 knockdowns, two 360° rollovers, damage occurred but rig OK. Position 43° 29S 37° 50E.’ The following is therefore a description of the events of August 11, 2010 from memory.

So there we were, lying to. This was all that could be done in the circumstances, as to re-reeve the broken tiller line was not feasible. There were heavy seas breaking over the boat and I might well have been washed overboard in the attempt.

Up to this point, my Southern Ocean heavy-weather tactic had been to keep the boat moving through all the gales. The wind by now had reached a sustained mean of 45-50 knots. By this time I was quite adept at judging wind strength and sea height, having been subjected to almost continuous heavy weather since South Africa, 5,500 miles away.

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The seas had become enormous, the day wore on and night closed in. This was, after all, midwinter in the Roaring Forties, so nights were extremely long and days very short. I was totally exhausted. This was the worst yet.

It’s hard to describe the conditions. By now the gale had raged for 48 hours, with the high-pitched scream of the wind in the rigging wires, and the continual rumble of the huge breaking combers all around the boat. Before the onset of dark I had been too scared to look out of the dome of the main hatch, the entire vista was so terrifying.

The seas had become monstrous mountains 40-60ft high, huge tumbling breaks collapsing down their fronts. Awe-inspiring doesn’t describe it. The blackness closed down on this scene from hell, I wedged myself across the cabin, wrapped in my bedding. Sleep was out of the question in spite of exhaustion. I just lay there and waited.

Tessa is a 27ft Alan Buchanan-designed sloop

Without wishing to sound in any way heroic, it never once occurred to me that I wouldn’t get through, or to ask for any kind of rescue. Complete trust in my little boat was essential and in the event she repaid my faith. We didn’t have to wait very long. The growling ‘thrump’ of the huge breaks all around meant it was only a matter of time.

The first knockdown was of course the most shocking. There was an almighty roar like an express train, then an explosive crash as the break hit the side of the boat. In a split second, Tessa was on her side, with the mast horizontal. Everything in the cabin that could fly flew fast as we were smashed sideways at high speed.

Apparently if you break up an ants’ nest, their first reaction is to wash their faces. I guess I was like an ant. My immediate reaction was one of indignation, and I set to putting everything back in its rightful place.

This was a Shackletonian discipline that had evolved over the months of Southern Ocean sailing. I had to know where everything was or chaos would ensue and endanger the ship. The old sailor’s prayer, “Lord, thy ocean so vast, my ship so small… Guide me”, was very fitting at this point.

It is not the huge seas that damage a strong, well-found yacht; it’s the breaking tops of the seas – several tons of very fast-moving water – that present the greatest danger. An hour later, the same again. Indignant swearing as I put everything back once more.

By now all the stowage cubbies were being stuffed with any available spare clothing, cushions etc. The galley cubby was blocked off with a sheet of plywood so that, in the event of a repeat, at least all its contents were contained, rather than flying jars breaking on the other side of the cabin, leaving a trail of jam or chutney and a lot of dangerous broken shards of glass.

Nothing in its place… aftermath of a knockdown

For me this was a night of reckoning, as I was already exhausted. Two more of these violent knockdowns occurred. They were frightening because of the sheer vicious force, first the roar of the break, then the terrifying impact, a 5-ton sledgehammer.

Double rollovers

Shortly after, the rollovers were almost benign by comparison, as they were relatively quiet. The mast was horizontal again, but instead of stopping there, it just kept on to 180° (i.e. upside down) then on round and up the other side. In the space of about 40 seconds I was thrown out of my bunk, onto the deckhead, then back to my bunk again.

The whole rollover happened quite slowly because 5 tons of ballast keel and a 32ft mast are being pulled in a 360° circle. Throughout the time I spent upside down, the most noticeable thing was the complete silence.

Enormous seas were a part of everyday life in the Southern Ocean

As Tessa righted herself, the raging, thunderous black maelstrom started again. My first reaction was to shine the torch through the dome to check the mast. Phew! Still there. Losing the mast was my greatest fear, and although I could see other damage, mast and rig were still intact.

There followed a second 360° rollover, though not much flew about this time, as I had chocked, tied and stuffed pretty much anything that could move, and surprisingly most things returned to their original stowage, more or less.

I had always been fastidious about keeping the bilges as empty as possible, using a cheap little hand-operated siphon pump (£5 from Halfords), as the larger, main pumps couldn’t clear the very last of the water. So when the boat was upside down very little water escaped from the bilges; if it had, it would have made me and my bedding wet. There was never more than one or two litres at most.

Stern view off Uruguay

The importance of keeping salt water at bay cannot be stressed enough. Every time I’d been on deck I would wash my hands and face in fresh water afterwards. Clothes or bedding wet with salt water do not dry and salt-water sores are a constant danger.

The bilges would fill from the condensation that prevailed most of the time. A surprising amount would work its way down and back to the well to be sucked out into a 2½-litre plastic container I had rigged up to the pump and emptied through one or other of the opening cabin ports, depending on which side the seas came from. It became quite an art to eject the bilge water without letting the sea in at the same time.

The next quick check with the torch through the dome hatch gave me a rough idea of all the other damage incurred. When daylight finally arrived it was easier to see the full extent. The plywood wind vane was snapped at the base; it was designed to do just this and Starr, a good friend in Falmouth, had given me three spares. The radar reflector on the backstay was torn to pieces; all the instrumentation at the masthead had been wrenched off and was gone.

Paddy Macklin is a proper Corinthian sailor

The big 60W solar panel, lashed to the dinghy on top of the cabin, had been ripped out of its frame, like the open top of a tin can; the wind generator’s pole was bent to 45°, and so were its supporting struts; and the plastic surround of the main bulkhead compass had been torn off – a design fault.

So there was a lot of ancillary damage, but the mast was still there, which meant we were not out of commission yet. My relief about this was profound, although the gale was far from over. It had already lasted for over 60 hours. Playing on the radio was the song Good Riddance by Green Day with the ironic final chorus refrain of ‘I hope you had the time of your life!’

It would be a lie to say it wasn’t all very frightening. But when you are exposed to prolonged danger, there is a kind of locking off, and the heart-thumping adrenaline and fear transform into apprehension and anxiety.

I still had to cut free the solar panel that had shattered into tiny pieces like a car windscreen. I changed the plywood wind vane and the tiller line, hoisted the 50ft² storm jib and started sailing. Then I finished trying to restore the cabin to a semblance of order, made a cup of tea, smoked a cigarette and wondered what to do. The rising pressure indicated that the weather would moderate, though the interludes between gales were sweet but very short.

Mmm… I unwrapped the satphone and rang a dear old friend in the UK who, although not a sailor, was very empathetic. At a time like that the satphone came into its own. What a relief to hear my mate’s clear, objective voice after all I’d gone through.

I was about 450 miles south-west of Tasmania and realised that the project of sailing non-stop was now compromised, mainly because the charging systems were depleted by two-thirds. All that was left was a small old 25W solar panel that had miraculously escaped being wrenched from the pushpit.

Macklin managed to keep smiling

All the thought that I had put into the rigging was now paying off, though there is never room for complacency. As Amundsen wrote: ‘Victory awaits him who has everything in order – luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time – this is called bad luck.’

Backup for backup

What to do next? I phoned my sister at our appointed time, explained what had happened and told her we would have to put in to Tasmania for repairs. Apart from the fact that I was battered and exhausted, with toes like fat chipolatas, I was close to suffering from frostbite, as up to this point I had been doing all deck-work barefoot. I was finally forced into the tedious business of wearing socks and deck boots.

I had backup for backup on Tessa. The hybrid three-way generating system consisted of sun, wind and a towing turbine. The Aquair towing generator was the one charging unit left, which up till now had remained lashed down in the forepeak, buried under all the sail bags.

Captain Bungle’s Round The World Odyssey by Paddy Macklin is published by Podkin Press. RRP: £16

Although the bracket to the pushpit was already rigged up, I had never had cause to use it. I ferreted it out, along with the towing turbine plus 120ft of unused 12mm towing line. This generates power, according to the boat’s speed, at the rate of 1A per knot. The job took all day, as doing anything had to be thought out in advance like a military operation.

Finally the big moment came. Over with the turbine, pay out the line very fast, then wait for the snatch and – bingo – Aquair spinning! Check battery regulator: 3-4A going in… Yippee! This meant the batteries started to charge up again.

It dawned on me that I could make it to New Zealand, to my old friends Graeme and Jules Donaldson in Timaru, who have a good slipway and a pressure washer. I had friends and family in New Zealand but none in Tasmania. After all, what was another 1,700 miles across the Tasman Sea in winter between old friends? Decision made.

The Southern Ocean doesn’t change, of course. These are the log readings:

13/7/2010: ‘Rain, wind shifted to north-west 8 and dropped. Sea chaotic. Shattered, feel like we’ve been in a gale for ever.’

14/7/ 2010: ‘As above, more endless gale, exhausted.’

And the next 22 days were more of the same.

First published in the May 2020 edition of Yachting World.

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