Double hand Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean. An easy journey?

Double hand Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean. An easy journey?

Today is December 31, 2024. It’s 11 a.m. now, and we’re setting sail from Tenerife, heading directly for Martinique. I wasn’t alone this time, but with Anita, and we expect it to take us about 20 to 21 days. The weather forecast looks great. We’ll have a beam reach, light winds at the beginning. The first night is over. We’re making seven to eight knots over the ground and 6.5 to 7 knots through the water. So we have a current pushing us along. Wonderful. Anita isn’t feeling entirely well, but I think she slept a lot up front. And I slept a lot down below as well. I set the alarm for every 30 minutes. First every 20, then every 30, and now, towards the end, every 45 minutes, but it’s a quiet night. Two freighters have passed us, and now there’s a sailboat alongside with a very weak AIS signal. It only appears every four or five miles. It’s not far away. Well, four miles away, that’s what I meant to say. That’s not ideal, of course, but okay. For many, this voyage they now face is the first truly long stretch they’ve had to tackle, as it involves a good 3,000 nautical miles . So far, they’ve covered a few hundred nautical miles to reach the Canary Islands, but one thing is relatively certain: if the boat is sound, and if the crew feels ready for this voyage, then they will most likely manage it well without major problems. For me, this east-to-west Atlantic crossing is my third in this direction. I did the first one in 1998, sailing with the ARC. During that ARC, a sailing magazine, the English sailing magazine “Yachting World,” investigated the most common equipment problems encountered on such a long voyage and during such an Atlantic crossing. The first issue was retractable spinnaker poles – this sliding mechanism is somewhat of a weak point. The second thing was autopilots, and the third was generators. As far as I can remember. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the statistics anymore, but it was a result that didn’t really surprise me. Many people gather in the Canary Islands to consult, consider, and so on. Some go across with the ARC, others without, and the people you meet there, you’ll continue to see in the Caribbean, and they’ll accompany you—I always call it the “Floating Village”—groups form, and they often really do stay together. This sailing together naturally provides a certain sense of security, but one thing has to be said: when you set off with the ARC, for example, and you look at “MarineTraffic” or “VesselFinder,” you see a huge fleet crossing the Atlantic, and you get the impression that you’re sailing in a convoy. But that’s not the case. On the first night, you see many ships, but on the second day, probably no one at all, until you arrive. You’ll see one or two others there. So it’s not exactly co-sailing, but it certainly makes sense to stay in touch with others and consult with them if problems arise, etc. But essentially, you’re on your own for 3000 nautical miles. You have to understand that when you’re in the Canary Islands, you don’t yet have the trade winds. Between the Canary Islands and roughly the Cape Verde Islands, or at the latitude of the Cape Verde Islands, there are often light winds; they can also be strong, but it’s not the trade winds. The trade winds begin somewhat north of the Cape Verde Islands, and from there they blow relatively steadily across to the Caribbean. In recent years, it has become apparent that there are many low-pressure areas, strong low-pressure areas, in the North Atlantic, which also run somewhat further south than was previously the case. Therefore, there is a zone of calm between the North Atlantic and the trade winds, and this can shift relatively far south, and I will mention this once or twice in the film. Therefore, it’s not unusual to have to dive even deeper, sometimes to the latitude of Trinidad and Tobago – as was the case for us recently. But you can see this very clearly in the weather forecasts, reports, and models, which show what’s currently predicted. However, there’s no universally applicable rule. All three east-to-west Atlantic crossings I’ve made had very different conditions. The first time, I was sailing a 10-meter boat. It took me 21.5 days – there were two of us – and we had consistently strong winds, around 20-30 knots, sometimes over 30 knots. We even had to hove to for a day in 40 knots, or a bit more. The second trip was quite calm. We only encountered squalls at the very end. And this second trip was a mixed bag. So every voyage is different; we didn’t have such strong winds. Friends of ours who set sail two weeks earlier had consistently very strong winds. So, that’s it for now. Enough about my experiences, and now back to the video. Today is day two. We’re sailing very well, very fast on our course with a beam reach. We’re getting 13, 14, 15 knots sometimes, beam reach. The Starlink antenna is located right under the sprayhood and is plugged into a USB-C PD charging port. It also has a second input for something else I can connect. There’s another USB-C port here. So I’ve created two outputs here, and it’s working perfectly. Given these conditions, we’re a bit faster than I expected. Yes, we’re doing almost eight knots now. The weather forecast is also quite favorable , and we probably won’t get much more wind. We’re going fast enough anyway. It’s lovely to see the sunset up ahead. There was another sailboat in front of us, or rather, it was next to us; it was a little bit faster than us, and then we had to give way to a freighter. We passed in front of the freighter, the other one passed behind it, and we somehow lost sight of each other, but I think he’s ahead of us. He’s going a bit faster than us. Okay, but since we can’t see him anymore, there’s no more racing. That’s fine too. And he has a bad AIS, a bad AIS system ; you can only see him for four miles, or three, four miles. Sometimes he’s even gone at three or two miles. And you can’t see him at all beyond four miles. So, we can’t see him anymore. He’s somewhere up ahead. That’s fine too. Okay, on to the second night. The night was quiet. We did see one freighter, but he was relatively far away. You can see so much more now with AIS. Before, you could see freighters or other ships visually, purely visually. This one was 14 miles away. I saw him on the AIS for a long time, but of course, I couldn’t see him visually. He was much too far away. It’s also good for commercial shipping that they can see us. So, there was a sailboat ahead of us. He was right next to us yesterday. He spoke to the other sailboat. He saw him on AIS and told him to change course to starboard. So it’s very good for everyone involved that we can see each other. On the fifth day, we reached the trade winds, or rather the northeast trade winds. The wind shifted from east to northeast , and we’re sailing down to the southwest. We rounded a large area of ​​calm to our right. With today’s weather forecasts, you can do that relatively well, if they’re accurate. So it worked out, but we’re no longer sailing at over eight knots like last night, but only at four and a half knots, now five knots with a following wind. That’s very pleasant. Of course, we still have a bit of the old swell from the east, so we’re still rolling a little, but the windvane self-steering system is working very well. It always works very well with a following wind anyway. And above all, it’s very, very calm compared to yesterday, when we were battered through the high waves, sailing fast at over eight knots. That was exciting, yes, but now everything is good and calm. And so the fifth day comes to an end. Today is the seventh day at sea, it’s just beginning. There’s quite a strong wind out there. We’re sailing wing-and-wing and we’re doing seven to eight knots. I saw over nine knots while surfing. That’s really quite intense, isn’t it? Especially because we’re wing-and-wing. So, the mainsail is on the starboard side, the genoa is on the port side, and although we’re sailing in such a way that there’s always enough wind in the mainsail, I still think: that’s pretty intense. So, let’s see. I should really take the mainsail down, but I’ll wait until Anita wakes up, because she’s asleep right now. She’s just finished a few hours of night watch. Yes, and it should be okay for that long, but I think it would probably be better without the mainsail. That’s actually the only way, in my opinion, to pour coffee or hot water without scalding yourself: by holding both at the same time. Exactly. Well, that’s how I do it anyway. Then turn off the gas, and then you can put it down on the stove because it’s gimbal-mounted, so the cup can’t tip over. We always do very long night watches, to be honest. I start with the first night watch. It gets dark around 6 p.m. here, about 6:30 p.m. local time, and I usually stay until about midnight, 1 or 2 a.m., and then it’s Anita’s turn. She also does several hours, and this morning I got up again just before sunrise and am doing my watch now. Yes, well. I’d like to have her with me to take down the sails . Just for safety reasons. I can do it alone, of course, but I mean, if she’s asleep up front and hears me messing around with the winches, changing course, and everything to get the mainsail down, then she’ll come, she’ll naturally wake up and maybe get restless. I don’t want that, obviously. So, I’m going to make myself some yogurt for breakfast. There’s always yogurt here. Well, I’m making yogurt, let’s say, for myself, with homemade yogurt. I’ve put it in here so it’s easy to get to. It’s usually made in little jars. And six jars make a liter. Yes. And oops, I have to be careful here because it’s rocking quite a bit. Sugar goes in, and then nuts. They’re up here. They get crumbled a bit, and that makes a nice nutty yogurt. That’s what it looks like with the coffee. It’s good, isn’t it? It’s bearable. I prefer to eat it in the kitchen. Here, you can see it with the coffee, because I can’t just put it on the table, it all goes flying. So I have to eat in the kitchen, drink the coffee here, and then it’s fine. By the way, you can see how we’re sailing in butterfly mode; everything has to be just right so nothing goes wrong. If I wanted to steer this course with the electronic system, which is right here, then of course I couldn’t steer by compass because the wind is constantly changing. So I’d have to steer by the wind with the electronic system. That works, too, it’s no problem at all. I just have to press “Standby” and “Auto” simultaneously, and then, on my system here, it’s the 7000, the Autohelm 7000 or whatever it’s called, 7000+, then it steers by the wind. But the system keeps telling me, the electronic one keeps telling me, whenever the wind shifts even slightly, it always says: “Attention Wind Shift, Attention Wind Shift.” Yes, and then I have to keep going back and confirming it. And when the wind is so erratic, like it is right now, I have to keep coming back here to confirm it. That’s impossible, that’s just absurd. Therefore, in my opinion, steering with an electric system only works if the wind is steady, perhaps even if the sea is also calm. But with the conditions we have here, That won’t work. The windvane self-steering system is much better. Without a peep, it always steers the boat in the right direction. It’s a bit fiddly, though. You have to get used to it, and it has to get used to you, too. You have to have it well under control. Many people have a lot of trouble with it, and once you’ve managed that, it’s been steering us for, I think, two or three days now, without us doing anything . Once you’ve got that, it’s a fantastic thing, I can tell you. Anita’s awake now, and we’re going to take down the mainsail because we have way too much pressure in the sails. To do that, we first have to bring the headsail to starboard so we can head upwind. So, here’s what we’ll do. First, we’ll furl the headsail, okay? So that’s out of the way. Okay, that’s enough. Now, I’ll bring the headsail to the other side. The sheet is kind of… it doesn’t want to go around properly. Tighten it like this. Yes, because the sheet, it goes around a lot of the corner now . It’s hanging in the snatch block. You see, it’s hanging in the snatch block. That’s obviously not ideal. Wait a minute, I’ll just go forward quickly. Pull it back. Yes. Okay. Okay, I’ll tighten the sheet here. I’ll switch to electric steering and increase the angle by 30 degrees. I’ll increase it even more now. Right, one more time, quick! Increase it by another 30 degrees, so we’re roughly on a beam reach. Ah yes, wonderful. That should work now. Okay. Yes, I’ll pull it out here. Okay. 3, 2, 1, here we go. Okay. The top end stays in there? Yes, the top end stays in the groove, in case we put it back in place. Yes. There, and it’s out. Now we can bear away again. It can come down from here. Just a moment, first we have to… Yes, you can take that down again. Okay, now I’m bearing away again. Drop it 50 degrees. Let’s see what he says then. And you can see it. Everything’s okay up front now, right? With the mainsail. Yes, yes, yes. I saw that. Okay. And then I’ll just bring the mainsail in a bit closer here. Now we’ll be sailing at a completely different speed. Not eight knots anymore, but only six. Well, or five. So a mainsail that furls into the boom is much better. And not like what I heard in that seminar from Trans-Ocean, when—I think it was Mr. Nickel—he said that a furling boom was completely unsuitable for bluewater sailing. That’s not true at all. You can do everything, you don’t need to leave the cockpit, and the big superyachts all have reefable sails that can be furled into the boom. It’s simply wonderful. I’ve also heard that if you furl it into the boom, if it really gets caught, you can’t get it down at all. Well, nothing can get caught on that. You just have to hold it a little taut when you’re lowering it. Hold it a little taut upwards. Not at the boom. At the mast! At the mast, right. Right. That’s rather unsuitable in my opinion, isn’t it? Yes, exactly. Because the thing gets stuck somewhere and then you can’t get it down. Right! Then you can’t get the thing down. And if you have vertical battens, then you can’t even let it drop. Here you can always let the sail drop like a normal one, right? So, you just have to, you can do it on a beam reach and not like the sailmaker in Stade said, I think they said, that you always have to sail straight into the wind. That’s not true at all. Yes, you can do it on a beam reach, right? You have to hold the sail back a little at the top. Then you practically have to push air or wind into the sail from behind so that it flutters and then you can furl it on a beam reach. That’s completely no problem either. So, that was my two cents. Yes, exactly. Okay. Today is January 8, 2025. We’re on day nine of the crossing. We set sail from Tenerife on December 31st of last year. We’re sailing beautifully downwind using the windvane steering system. And that’s at an angle of maybe 20 degrees to the mainsail, so it doesn’t come over and cause an accidental jibe. In the evenings, when the wind was a bit stronger, we preferred to take down the mainsail and sail through the night with just the headsail. But now the weather forecast is so stable that we simply leave the sail up and don’t touch the windvane steering system. Everything is working wonderfully. We’ve had many strong low-pressure systems in the north this year, in the North Atlantic. Many storm lows, extreme storm lows, that have weakened the trade winds a bit and are probably also responsible for the trade winds being so weak here now, because they come from the northeast. The winds from the low-pressure systems further up in the North Atlantic are westerly or southwesterly, meaning they weaken the trade winds somewhat. But in between, there’s also a real calm zone, and this calm zone was quite far south. And that’s why we were actually supposed to head very far south, all the way to the latitude of Trinidad. That was the forecast. But all that has since changed, and we’re sailing directly towards our destination. Today is January 10th, marking the start of the 11th day of the crossing. The sun is rising this morning. As always, spectacular, with lots of clouds in the area. And the sea is calm. We’ve continued further south, or rather southwest, because these areas of light winds are spreading in the north. The weak trade winds will continue like this for about another week. Large areas of light winds, or calms, are also forming in the north. So we have to sail around them to the south, and for the last three or four days of the passage, the trade winds will pick up considerably, and I assume that a corresponding number of squalls will hit, meaning heavy rain with gusts. But there’s still a week until then, so it’s actually quite calm and pleasant. We’re now sailing a bit further south, as I’ve already mentioned, because there’s a calm in the west . We don’t need to go in there now. And right now we only have the mainsail up because the headsail was flapping so much during the night. Now we’ll unfurl the headsail again and then we’ll be a bit faster, and tonight we’ll head west again. So, dear Anita. Yes. Dear crew, yes, we’ve now reached or passed the “midway point,” because we were in the middle of it, so we’ve gone two miles over. Oh yes, that’s right, isn’t it? And that’s why we’re celebrating now, or in other words, halfway there, so we’re celebrating with a beer. We’ll have the second beer secretly afterwards. Nobody must know about that. And you open it now. I have to go “pffft” now. Yes, like that. Well, look, that works. And then the first sip goes to Neptune. That goes without saying. Ah, okay. You have to do that now. I hope I can manage it. Of course. The deck has taken a bit of a beating too. But that’s important. Is it alright? Yes. Yes, sure. Okay. Okay. The hardworking crew gets the first one with a glass. Yes. They make sure they always have a glass. Yes, now I get this. Cheers! Cheers! Cheers! We did a good job. Ah, that feels good. Yes, wonderful. So, we hope we can manage the second half just as well as the first. We’re on day 10 now, right? That means we’ve completed 9 days. No, we’re on day 11. Day 11. That means we’ve completed 10 days and a few hours. Yes. And another 10 days. We’ll arrive on the 21st. That’s the forecast. Okay, all right. Let’s hope so. Yes. Perhaps a few more words about the watch system. We used to aim for a two-person crew to take turns standing three-hour watches, but then we switched to a system where if the watch person was still fit outside, they simply continued their watch, letting the off-watch person sleep. When the off-watch person got up, they took turns, and then they did the same. Eventually, this system became less rigid, and for me, or rather for us, it was always the best system. We did it this way on all three voyages, and it proved to be very effective. In addition to the watchman, who sits outside or inside, I’ve defined an alert sector around me, from 2 to 6 or 2 to 7 miles, and monitor the incoming AIS signals there. Speaking of AIS: I can only advocate for having an active AIS, meaning an AIS that not only receives but also transmits. I know the argument that people say: “No, no, a passive AIS is enough for me, I’ll be careful.” But if I’m sailing alone, or with one other person, it doesn’t matter, and I see a white light that doesn’t have an AIS transmitter, then I’m forced to monitor that white light because I don’t know what it is. Is it a sailboat, is it a fishing vessel, where is it going? I have no idea. So, for safety reasons, someone without an active AIS forces me to stay awake to monitor it. And you might not even have the perspective of others at the moment you’re not in that situation yourself. But if I see an AIS signal, I know: that’s a sailboat, heading in that direction, at that speed, and then I can anticipate what that means for me. That’s important: so get an active AIS! In addition to the AIS, I’ve defined an alarm sector that covers the other one precisely; that’s a sector I monitor with radar. The inner area of ​​up to 2 nautical miles is excluded because there are so many waves there constantly sending signals, which would trigger a continuous alarm. So, from 2 nautical miles onward, it’s relatively outside the waves, and then you can extend the sector outwards. So, for the ships that don’t have an active AIS, I’m hoping I can catch them, but that only works if they themselves have a good radar reflector at the masthead. So, not those little tubes you attach to the shrouds; they’re completely useless. The rigging itself doesn’t reflect signals, and many people don’t realize that. A ship’s rigging doesn’t reflect a signal; you need a proper radar reflector to see it. A quick word about solar charging: many will be surprised that the solar panels produce less output than expected. Imagine sailing west, and the sun also moves west, meaning that at some point the sails will obscure the sun, or rather, the sun will be behind the sails, casting shadows on the solar panels. Therefore, when you’re underway, they produce less power than you initially think. This might surprise some, but it’s simply a fact. Around the halfway point, or later, after two-thirds of the journey, you’ll encounter increasing squalls. Squalls are low-pressure areas, very small, practically a cloud, that can produce very strong winds, and where the winds can shift by 90 degrees and, as mentioned, increase dramatically. 30-35 knots are not uncommon. So you have to be prepared for that; you won’t encounter these squalls before then, but on the final stretch, you’ll most likely have squalls with very strong winds. I always reefed the sails at night so I could withstand gusts of 35-40 knots without having to do anything. Of course, that slows things down, but it gives me peace of mind. The second thing you’ll notice: there’s a type of grass that grows in the Atlantic, increasingly so in recent years, called Sargassum seagrass. It forms huge patches in some places. You sail through it, and what does it do to you? First, the hydrogenerator collects the seagrass and gets stuck, so I constantly have to go back to clean it. I raise it a bit, then it gets washed out again, I lower it again, but eventually, we had to pull it up because it kept clogging. It was pointless. The second thing, which is much more dangerous and surprises many because they don’t expect it at all, is this: if you have the hull here and the rudder here, then it can happen that this Sargassum grass grows over the rudder, making it increasingly stiff and jammed. I’ve heard about this happening more and more often lately. This only happens if you don’t have a skeg, and most modern boats don’t have one. What people then have to do is… So, firstly, they’re naturally surprised because the rudder isn’t working properly anymore, until it becomes clear – perhaps after looking down with a camera – that it’s the sargassum grass that’s jammed up. That means the crew takes down the sails, reverses the engine – imagine that, with those waves – reverses so it gets washed out, and then the rudder is free again. So, if something like that happens and the rudder is very stiff, it could be due to the sargassum grass and doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a problem with the ship. Okay, I think that’s all I wanted to say, and now back to the film, and enjoy! Cheers! Cheers! We’re not going to talk about what we’re going to eat. No, we’re going to eat something really delicious. Delicious pâté. Mmm. Tastes good. Yes. And you have… what’s this? Artichoke hearts. Artichoke hearts. You have these all to yourself. That means I get a little more pâté to make up for it. Right? Yes. Aha. That’s always the way it is. Good. Hmm, does the red one, the cherry juice, taste good again? That’s grape juice. Grape juice. I really thought earlier that it tasted like vinegar or something. Red wine vinegar. But it’s not red wine. It’s just grape juice. So it can’t taste like that, can it? Hmm. I have some grape juice here too. You have some grape juice too, but it looks like water. Exactly. Yes. Cheers. So. And now we’ll see if we can find the lady later, shall we? With her “AVANDRA”. Yes. A young 21-year-old, single-handed rower across the Atlantic, who wants to get into the Guinness Book of Records as firstly the youngest person and secondly to have rowed from mainland Europe to mainland South America. She’s going to French Guiana, right? I think so. Yes, exactly. And she’s already two-thirds of the way there. She burns 7500 kcal every day and, with her initial body weight of 63 kg, 64 kg, or 64 kg, she can only consume a maximum of 5500 kcal, which means she lost 20 kg in the end. Incredible. Isn’t it? We have her in front of us, she’s still six miles away, and we’re going to pass by about a mile away, take a photo, and ask if she needs anything. Exactly. And in the meantime, we’ll eat the liver, what’s it called? The pâté. We don’t want her saying, ” I’d like a pâté!” Or do we? We’d better eat this now. Yes, exactly. Very delicious. Zara Lachlan, 21 years old, rowed solo from Portugal to French Guiana in 97 days without any outside help and was entered into the Guinness Book of Records for this achievement. An incredible feat. We passed close by, having informed her beforehand via VHF radio, of course, and she was incredibly happy about the encounter. We were the first people she’d seen in months. With her permission, we’re allowed to show these pictures in this video, and of course, we’ve also sent all the video footage and photos to Zara. Today is January 15th, day 16 at sea. The waves have calmed down. It’s quite pleasant sailing. We’re sailing downwind. The wind is consistently around 11 or 12 knots. We’re doing five knots. We’re wing-and-wing. We can even sunbathe aft , and the hydrogenerator is working too. A line had broken that you use to lower the hydrogenerator into the water. It’s all repaired, and now everything is working very well again. It’s now January 17th, day 18 of the crossing. The wind has picked up, as predicted, to about 25 to 30 knots. At times, we had a little over 30 knots. The waves are very high. Everything rattles a bit down below, but it’s not unpleasant. Most importantly, we’re fast again now. We only have one headsail out, and it’s reefed, not poled out, and we’re cruising along at about six to seven knots. It’s going wonderfully. It’s quite calm down below, inside the boat. You hardly notice it. But when you see the waves out here : they’re quite impressive, and sometimes we’re heeling over quite a bit. Even if it gets really windy, it’s not too worrying. There are a few clouds in the sky. They’re like cumulus clouds. But none that are bringing any real wind or rain. The sargassum grass is still there, and there’s a crazy amount of it. That’s why I got the “Watt&Sea,” the hydro generator, up. Because the weight on the mount is just too much, in my opinion, and I constantly have to go back and clear it of the sargassum grass. You have to keep tilting it up a bit. Yeah. And that’s really no big deal. Leave the expensive thing alone. It can stick out now. I mean, if there wasn’t any grass there, you could obviously use it. It would be really useful then. But right now, with all this sargassum grass, it’s pointless. That’s okay. We have plenty of solar power; we charge at, I don’t know, 25 amps, sometimes 30 amps. That works quite well. Yeah, we’ll see what the night brings. The next three days will stay like this. That’s how it is, so we can prepare for it. We’ve got a squall here now, it’s relatively large, and it’s almost over. I got the camera out too late. We had winds up to 31 knots. We’ve got the full genoa out. We’re going pretty fast with the big genoa. Yes, that’s how it is. What I’m doing is trying not to stop or slow down, but quite the opposite, to stay in it as long as possible, because it’s really pushing us forward. Once it’s over, we’ll just have light winds again and then we won’t be making any progress. So, we’re doing over seven knots now, and before we were doing three, or maybe three and a half to four. Yes, I haven’t even had time to put on a T-shirt, but it doesn’t matter. It would have gotten wet anyway. We’ve been in it for 20 minutes now, and it’s slowly turning blue again back there. The squall is probably starting to die down now. But I didn’t know if this large genoa, 64 square meters or whatever size it was, 63 or 64 square meters, could be left up in 30 knots or more. And I left it up. We had winds up to 31 knots, I saw, but it was no problem. Okay, after that it gets calmer again. Today is January 19th, the 20th day at sea. We’re surrounded by squalls. It’s raining again right now. We sometimes have winds up to 35 knots. Very high seas, we surf for long stretches. Yes, it’s a bit rough here, and yes, after so many nights I’m a bit overtired, but it’s actually okay. Sometimes we’re heeled over completely – then everything flies around down below. I saw a surf at 11.6 knots. We must have been really tearing down. Otherwise, we’re doing seven to eight knots over the ground. Sometimes the day is even a bit calmer than the night. Last night was pretty rough, but we’ll see. The wind will pick up a bit more. We have two more days and then we’ll be there. Everything’s fine. Great. Nothing dramatic. Yes, the waves are already quite high and impressive. And we still have 130 miles to go. 130 miles to go and then we’ll be at the anchorage. That means we’ll be there tomorrow, around noon. And because the waves are so high here now, you have to be quite careful down below, so we’ve made ourselves a lounge area where you can also sleep. Namely, we lowered the table in the saloon , and you sleep very peacefully there. Well, “very peacefully” is an exaggeration, because the waves are very high, but you sleep relatively peacefully there. At the pivot point of the ship, yes. Otherwise, we’re continuing at six or seven knots. We’ll make a good daily run of probably 160 miles this time. Yes, otherwise everything is fine. The water temperature in the Atlantic is now 27 to 28 degrees Celsius. As a result, the air temperature is also very pleasant, nice and warm. However, it’s all quite strenuous because the ship is constantly rocking, and you get sweaty relatively quickly. We did take a shower today, though. We have plenty of water thanks to the watermaker. And so everything is very, very manageable. We’ve also filled the tanks. I always make sure that all the tanks are as full as possible. We’ve only needed the diesel tank a few times now because we haven’t had the “Watt&Sea” hydrogenerator in the water. The Sargassum grass puts a tremendous strain on the suspension. It needs constant cleaning. I’m not doing that. So instead, we’ve been running the engine a bit, about an hour or two each day, because we have quite a lot of things here, two refrigerators and everything. Exactly. But tomorrow we’ll be there, and then we’ll anchor and rest for a while. We’re really looking forward to that. It’s about time… It’s January 21st, which makes us day 22, but if you calculate that we’ll arrive here around noon, with Martinique in front of us, just a right turn away. Considering that we’ll arrive around noon, it’s taken us exactly 21 days. That’s been quite a long time, I must say, but we had varying degrees of wind: sometimes very little, sometimes a lot, sometimes too much. But it was never really dramatic. Now we’re anchored in Sainte Anne, Martinique, in this large anchorage that’s so easy to navigate into both day and night. We saved a bottle of champagne for this moment , and we have every reason to celebrate and toast. We’re doing great. We did wonderfully. Nothing broke. Nothing happened. We had strong winds at times, sometimes too strong. But we’re doing wonderfully. We’re relaxed, especially now, and from now on things will be calmer in the Caribbean , which we’re looking forward to. I hope you’ll stay tuned, that you enjoyed the video, and we’re saying goodbye for now to this big trip and hope you’ll stay with us. You can see more videos from the Caribbean here, and then cheers! Ciao from Cocon.

Want to see more videos about sailing on the Atlantic or in the Caribbean? Check out here:

More details of our sailing yacht Cocon? Come and check this series:

In my video, I talk about our Atlantic crossing as a couple, a scenario familiar to many sailors. Together with another very experienced sailor, I sailed my COCON from the Canary Islands to Martinique in the Caribbean.
People often say that this route is ‘really easy’. But is it really as easy as people say? Although this was already my third Atlantic crossing on this route – in addition to other blue water voyages – it proved once again that no two crossings are the same.That’s why I’ve included separate sections in the video where I share my experiences and points that I consider particularly important. My aim is to give anyone planning a similar trip a realistic insight into what to expect, what to consider, what helps, and what my solutions and suggestions are.
The weather during this crossing was very mixed, and we encountered relatively rough conditions at the beginning and especially in the last third. I am all the more pleased that we arrived without any damage to the COCON and without any other problems. A large part of this success is also due to the atmosphere on board: we were a very good team, very experienced, familiar, attentive and harmonious – something that is priceless on long ocean voyages.
After 21 days on the Atlantic, we finally reached Martinique. And even though it was my third crossing, arriving is always a special moment, which we celebrate exuberantly with a bottle of champagne.