Chris Monk

Wow ! I just sailed across the Atlantic!!! How does one describe 15 days at sea? Long - undoubtedly! Monotonous - not at all; the regularly changing weather and sea state, the fretting over whether or not we had the sails tuned or had the right sail plan up or were heading in the optimum direction to get the most favourable weather, the chatting, the debating, Dave’s soap box, the fishing, the fish prep, the cooking, the truncated sleep patterns, watching the heavens at night, being mesmerised by the phosphorescence in our wake. The feeling of vastness was ever present, with boats in close proximity early on, the Rally fleet soon spread and we could go for a couple of days and see nothing on the horizon, nor even on the AIS system tracking vessels within a 25 mile range. Then occasionally we would end up sailing in relatively close company with another yacht for a day or two, seeing their sail on the horizon or monitoring their masthead light at night. We would call them and chat on the VHF, then our courses would diverge and we’d be on our own again. Once more our route took us through an area of no wind for 24 hours so we took the chance to swim in 5000m of water, some 1000 miles from the nearest land….. a most bizarre experience! The weather finally gave us 3 days of ‘proper’ tradewind sailing, with the wind right behind us at 15-25 kts allowing us to surf down the swells running up to 4 m in height at times. Normal boat speed for “Breeze” is around 6 kts, the highest speed we saw whilst surfing was over 15 kts, quite an exhilarating feeling! Thankfully we were spared the worst of the intense squalls of wind & rain that other boats experienced. Grenada finally showed on the horizon and we were welcomed with a distant rainbow welcoming us to the other side of the Atlantic. Then, shortly after crossing the Rally finish line, we dropped the sails and motored into Port Louis Marina in St George’s, Grenada to our own personal welcoming party of loved ones and the Rally organisers armed with rum punches and bottles of champagne. What an adventure for myself, Mike, Ian and Dave!

After 2-1/2 weeks staying in Las Palmas, working through a long job list, we were finally ready to go! We had been getting to know the crews of a number of other boats and the Rally organisers had a daily programme of seminars and social events to get involved with. Come the 9th November 86 yachts paraded out of the Las Palmas marina to the start line, cheered on by hundreds of friends and family, along with a brass band playing on the Marina breakwater. Crew Mike, Ian & Dave even had their own personal fan clubs there to wave them off. The start was in a fresh breeze but overnight this eased as we moved out of the wind acceleration zone around Gran Canaria. My on watch crew called me up in the middle of the first night as the steering was so stiff the boat could barely hold a course. All things pointed to the autopilot; confirmed when I disconnected the drive arm from the steering, leaving us to hand steer for the following 7 days. This clearly wasn’t part of the plan and whilst, with 4 on board it was very manageable, it was still tiring given the additional level of concentration needed to hold a course. The trade winds weren’t present consistently, so we had a mix of calm weather that we had to motor through and wind from various directions, the NE trades only filling in during our last 24 hrs at sea. The other major drama occurred when part of the swivel at the top of our biggest downwind sail chafed through and I had to recover half of the sail from the water before it dragged under our hull. Despite this, morale remained high, the crew enjoyed themselves (I think!) and we gradually settled into a 4 hrs on 4 off watch routine in pairs. We marvelled at the night sky, saw whales, dolphins & turtles and caught 2 mahi mahi which fed us well, watched spellbound at the night time bioluminescence, particularly when it was dolphins streaking through the water and we even stopped for a swim in 3500m of water! Amazing! We arrived into a breezy Mindelo, Cape Verde, more than ready for some undisturbed sleep and a hopeful repair of the autopilot.

After an enjoyable couple of days in Funchal we set off for Gran Canaria. Wind never filled in significantly so we had the engine on for much of the way to meet our arrival target. First night out had a magnificent view of the heavens including seeing distant lights cross-crossing the north west sky for an hour or so - could it have been aliens? Certainly wasn’t satellites as they were moving in multiple directions. Decided that it was most likely naval aircraft on night exercises from a carrier! Wow! Anyway, we hooked a mahi-mahi which made for excellent ceviche and fried fish that evening, and we missed another that gave a big hit on the rod but took the lure with it. Shame! We sailed between the obscure Islas Selvagens, or Savage Islands; 3 small volcanic islands that are now a Portuguese National Marine Park. Hoped to see some marine wildlife but had to content ourselves with a few more birds than usual. Approaching Gran Canaria we finally spotted some dolphins to keep crew Mike happy. Finally, rounding the NE corner of the island we started to see the large drill ships and other commercial vessels moored up in the port at Las Palmas. We tucked Breeze up safely into the LP Marina alongside an almost deserted pontoon, cleared ready for an influx of boats doing the ARC+. We left her there and flew home, ready to return in late October ahead of the Grand Depart on 9th November.

Well what an adventure for Anthony, Ian Mike & Chris. Longest passage for 3 of the crew by quite a way. Flew back to A Coruna to get the boat prepped for a week at sea. Motoring round Cape Finistère on Day 1 was a little unnerving as we kept a watching eye out for the dreaded rudder-eating orca. Once we started to head further offshore towards Madeira the risk subsided and we settled into our watch system; paired up on 4 hour overlapping watches during the hours of darkness then just one person designated on watch during the day. We had periods of no wind but when it blew we had nothing too extreme, peaking at around 25 knots. Plenty of time to try out some of my new sails from Crusader Sails in Poole - delighted with their performance thus far. We were accompanied by pods of dolphins a few times; fascinated by the bio-luminescence glittering in our wake at night and marvelled at the stars and the Milky Way, cross-crossed with the occasional satellite, shooting star and plane. We were passed by the odd ship heading up and down the coast and then crossed by those heading between the Med and the Americas. Our fishing exploits were successful in that we hooked a fish, yet unsuccessful in that by the time we pulled it on board some other marine creature had eaten it for supper. The weary crew finally sighted Porto Santo and Madeira about 15 hours before we finally arrived into Funchal and some well-earned downtime.