Ian Mackley

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.