In an earlier post, I wrote about my interest in doing some sailing–real, blue-water, open-ocean sailing. Well, now I’ve done it, and it was an amazing experience. In that earlier post, I wrote about sailing in the Bahamas with Janez, a Slovenian skipper who had bought a catamaran, Le Bel Air, that had been ruined in a hurricane. Janez spent two years repairing and refitting Le Bel Air and had advertised on Crewbay.com, one of the websites that matches boat owners with crew, that he was looking for crew to cross the Atlantic with him. My January trip to the Bahamas was an audition of sorts, where I could learn something about sailing and we could both get a feel for whether we’d be likely to want to kill each other on a transatlantic crossing. When I left the Bahamas, Janez told me that he had several other potential crew members who were interested in crossing the Atlantic with him, and that he wanted to cross with the strongest crew possible, but that he’d let me know. We stayed in touch, and in early April, Janez contacted to say that he had a spot for me for the crossing if I wanted to go.
Goodbye land–see you again in a few weeks
So, on April 26th, I flew back to Marsh Harbour, where I met Linton, a Brit, who would be coming along, and we got Le Bel Air provisioned with food and bunkered diesel fuel and fresh water, while we waited for Phil, another Brit, who would round out our crew for the crossing. Phil flew in on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 2d, and by 7:00, we were out to sea, headed for Bermuda.
The sail to Bermuda took us eight days (actually, we got there in seven, but it was night when we arrived, and we couldn’t get into the harbor at St. George until the next day when it got light). We ended up waiting four days in Bermuda until the forecast showed several days of favorable winds ahead. The crossing from Bermuda to Horta in the Azores took us 18 days, and was pretty brutal. We had one day of westerly winds, which are normally the prevailing winds in May. The other days were either calm, and we motored, or we beat into the wind, which was hard on the boat and the crew–lots of noise and pounding on the hull. We did, however, make it safely to Horta, arriving on May 31st, after 2600 miles of sailing.
The harbor in Horta–a marvelous sight to a weary sailor.
I didn’t realize it when I accepted Janez’s offer to come aboard as crew, but a long, blue-water crossing is sort of a big deal in the sailing community. Phil, who has been sailing for decades, told me that there are more people who climb Mt. Everest each year than cross the Atlantic, east to west, in sailboats. I’m not sure that’s right, but it’s clearly not a common experience. For a rookie like me, it’s a bit like taking a few lessons at the local climbing gym, then signing on to an expedition to climb an 8,000 meter peak.
It was an amazing experience. The ocean is awesome, vast and powerful. Every day, the view is water all the way to the horizon (which is about 20 miles) for 360 degrees. I love the remote, empty places that I’ve been to, places that are raw and wild. It doesn’t get much emptier than the middle of the ocean–at least not on this planet.
Geezer Adventures 
Hi Shaun—your Atlantic crossing post is a good one. Reminds me of being at sea with Semester at Sea and when it suddenly sunk in that we were far from being alone—so much was happening below us and we were just a speck on the surface. Glad it all went well. Cheers, Ruth
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