MALTA RADIO: “What is the problem?”
Siracusa, Sicily, Italy VESSEL: “The problem is the Captain is crazy!” This was one of the first things...
Horta, Faial Azores
With the passage from Bermuda to the Azores behind us, and after a little land time and a lot of wine, I thought I would look back and try to recap the crossing with the wonder of hindsight.
Overall, we had a great passage. It was rougher and faster than we expected, but in the end, we made it safely across most of the Atlantic Ocean without any real issues, and we even had a little fun.
hen we left Bermuda, we were excited, upbeat and a little scared. When we arrived in Horta, we were still excited, a little beat up, but very proud. While most people don’t understand why we would sail a small boat across an ocean, and some just think we are crazy, we landed in Horta to a community of sailors that get it.
It was great to be welcomed to the Azores by fellow cruisers with similar experiences. We spent the next several days sharing stories and experiences of our passage.
We arrived in Horta on the island of Faial in the Azores, Portugal, eleven days after we left Bermuda. It was a lot colder, rainier and windier, but we were very happy to be there. The passage had three distinct parts that driven by the wind and sea conditions.
The first part was the type of sailing that sailors dream about. Blue skies during the days, followed by clear nights with a bright moon and more stars than you can imagine. The winds were strong, aft of the beam which moved us along at a good pace. We were out in front of the other boats and having a great time. This lasted for about two days when the winds died and shifted in front of us.
The second part of the trip started out with some motoring and then ended up with us tacking into headwinds. During this time, we were surrounded by dolphins, whales and other sea life. Every few hours someone would call out as the dolphins jumped and surfed along the wake of our bow.
While it was frustrating to motor, we knew we had enough fuel and that the winds would fill back in soon. As the wind came up, it was right in front of us. We choose to tack into it rather than run East or North, giving up mileage we had made earlier. This turned out to be the one mistake of the trip. We lost a lot of ground and found ourselves a further north of where we would want to be for the rest of the passage.
The third section brought a weather report for gale and storm conditions ahead. We had two independent weather sources, both said we were going to get very strong winds in the next 24 hours, but that the weather would be a little lighter to our south. So we prepared Berkeley East for the strongest winds she had ever seen, by rigging our drogue (sea anchor, securing everything we could, making meals for the next few days and reefing the sails way down. We chose to give back some of the north we had made and ran back south about 30 miles in hopes of lighter weather.
The weather came on us just as forecast, very strong from behind. As the winds grew we got more and more comfortable with how Berkeley East would handle conditions with gusts over 55 miles per hour. The next five days would be more of the same. The wind direction changed slightly and the waves grew bigger, but we were confident that we could handle anything that was coming at us. It was uncomfortable, but we were back sailing 200 nautical miles per day. While strong winds are not uncommon on a passage across the Atlantic, the sustained high winds we saw were not. Typically, there is a break between weather systems, this year we had three systems come though back to back, making for a fast, but bumpy ride.
During the passage, we checked in daily with the other rally boats via our Single Side Band (SSB) radio. It was nice to hear the voice of others around us and to compare conditions. On May 28 the news during the rally check in was not good, one of the boats in the rally had been damaged overnight when it struck a submerged object. Just days before, we were in Bermuda having drinks with the crew of Setantii and talking about what we should do when we reached Portugal. Now, they were safely aboard a banana freighter and their boat was abandon, adrift and sinking into the Atlantic. The owner was an experienced captain with multiple Atlantic crossing and we knew if this could happen to him, it could just as easily happen to us.
After digesting the bad news, we focused on what we could control and continued to sail conservatively. During the rough weather we sailed toward Horta as quickly and safely as possible. We made up a significant amount of the time we had lost on day three. In the first days, we watched the progress of the other boats carefully, but as the weather worsened our focused changed to sailing Berkeley East safely. During our last night the winds and seas had come up, so we reduced sail even further, using just our storm sail and triple-reefed mainsail. As we approached Horta, we started to see other boats on radar and realized that while we had all taken different routes and sailed over 1900 miles, a number of boats where arriving within hours of one another. We spent that last day pushing a little harder in hopes of making it in ten days, but we missed that goal by an hour.
Berekely East crossed the finish line at 4:01:01 pm UTC on May 30th, eleven days, one hour, one minute and one second after we had departed Bermuda. Everyone was safe, there were no injuries and the Berkeley East was in great shape. We planned for 15 days, hoped for 12 – 14 days and were ecstatic to arrive in barely 11 days.
All in all, it was a good passage. Now, we are spending a couple of weeks exploring the Azores, before the passage to mainland Portugal.
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We are very proud of you both. That is an unbelieveable accomplishment that really very few compartively have done. We miss you both and wish we could communicate more frequently. Hope you are having a great time. Please stay in touch with us.
Wow that is a breathtaking account – loved reading it and could envisage it all – wonderful that BE is such a great boat and that you were all safe – so sad to hear about the abandoned boat – our thoughts go out to that captain and crew not only for losing their boat (sob) but for their future plans being dashed – I hope they can re-group and get back on track. So glad you are all safe and no lives were lost.