We set out from Baltimore with the dream of sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. We made it, but not the way we planned it!
We first left in July of 2017 with plans to make it across that year. Well, we did make it across, but not until 2018, and we didn’t actually make it all the way across until 2019!
North Atlantic in June
We left Baltimore in July 2017 and planned to sail down the Chesapeake Bay for a few months and then cross the North Atlantic in the winter. We would leave the Chesapeake Bay and head towards Bermuda for our “Shake Down Cruise”. If things were going well, we would just keep going. If things were not going so well, we could pull into Bermuda and carry out repairs or changes that needed to be made. That was a cute plan!
North Atlantic in October
Well, we did leave the Chesapeake Bay and quickly felt the fury of the North Atlantic in the winter! It was only October but there were frequent gales, and they lasted for days!
Our first ocean storm happened off of Hatteras, NC, an area known for having some of the worst storms in the Atlantic. The waters just off of Hatteras are dubbed “The Graveyard of the Atlantic” due to the high number of shipwrecks that have happened there over the past 500 years of known sailing in those waters.
This was a great place to be for our first storm! I don’t mean that sarcastically. It was horrible and put the fear of the Ocean right into the core of our soul so that we would never try anything as stupid as sailing out of season again!
The time to cross the North Atlantic is June/July, not October/November!
June
October
Just look at the difference! In June, the winds are light and pleasant; in October the winds are strong and fierce! What were we thinking!
We soon retreated and were towed into Hatteras where we carried out many repairs. Once the boat was working again, we decided to do the logical thing and sail South for the winter, winter in the Bahamas and then leave from the Bahamas when the weather was appropriate for crossing the Atlantic. That ended our plan of crossing the Atlantic in 2017!
We did just that and spent months trying to get down the ICW in our deep draft boat with a small electric motor that had a tiny battery bank! That was another lesson: Blue water boats are not ICW boats!
Once in the Bahamas, we waited until the weather was better so we could sail to the Azores. June of 2018 came around and the weather was looking much calmer than it did in the winter! We had a crew member aboard because our parents wanted us to have a crew member (in case something happened to one of us as we sailed across for our first time). Husband and wife cruising is great, but if something happens to one of the two, the other becomes a single hander. Having a third person on board means that if something happens to someone, you are now a two person crew.
Our crew member was a firm believer in strict schedules and didn’t understand how sailboats and schedules work together (they don’t work together). He threatened to leave if we didn’t shove off in the next few days! We decided that we could just float around until the weather calmed down and then start sailing once everything went right and he wouldn’t be able to leave because he would be trapped on a boat out at sea!
This seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was a horrible idea! First, crew is not necessary. Maddie and I have sailed close to 17,000 nautical miles at this point (and that’s only been from Baltimore, MD, USA to El Ejido, Spain) Set the boat up for single handing and you will be fine with any number of crew. If something catastrophic happens, the sole survivor can still manage the yacht. If you ever have crew start calling orders like that, it will not get better as time goes on. That is the first sign that you need to send them packing and kick them off your boat!
We didn’t know that at the time and ended up spending weeks at sea with an angry person! That made the painfully slow journey very stressful. Bermuda, once again, served as a “as needed” stopping point. If we were having problems with or on the boat, Bermuda would serve as a place to repair and remedy those problems. The remedy we needed came in the form of an international airport to send the angry crew member packing!
Aside from some anger management issues with our crew, the sail to Bermuda was one of the most beautiful sails I have ever experienced. Everyday, the water was glass calm and we barely felt like we were moving. This was because we were not moving (we had 7 days in a row where we averaged 20 nautical miles per 24 hour period). There was no wind and we were just floating along on the weak ocean currents in the area as we were carried across a very large high pressure system that flushed all the wind out of the area. The sky was always clear blue and the clouds in the distance looked fake. The sunsets looked like God had painted the sky and sea together with vast purples, oranges, and reds. Every morning and evening was absolutely beautiful and breathtaking!
We anchored in Bermuda and waited a few days for the winds to become favorable to sail to the Azores. This only took about 4 days and then we left St. George’s Harbor. The winds were beautiful and the first four days of the passage were warm and on a beam reach. We sailed along without adjusting a single line for four full days! Our passage to the Azores was around 26 days and when we made it there, we were elated!
The Azores are my favorite place to visit and we have actually arranged to fly through them whenever we fly back to visit family.
We arrived and had a few weeks until we would need to leave to sail to Portugal before the season would come to a close. We learned our lesson in the beginning that you do not sail outside of the season and we were not about to make that mistake again!
The season to sail from the Azores to Portugal is rather short, it starts in May and ends in August. If you go before or after, you will regret it! Since we didn’t want to rush this beautiful place, we decided that we would wait until next May to leave. So, our short stopover in the Azores that started in August 2018 soon became a very long stopover as we didn’t leave until June 2019, 10 months later!
In that time, we made wonderful friends, learned how to speak Portuguese, and got Portuguese residency! We also repainted the topsides of the boat, gutted and refit the head, Maddie’s closet, and the galley. We learned a lot on our passage across the Atlantic and decided that the winter stay in the Azores would be a great time to carry out these projects that we had been putting off.
May 2019 rolled around and the weather just wasn’t right yet to leave, so we waited. Then in June 2019, the weather improved and we could leave, but we didn’t want to. We were having so much fun in the Azores that we really didn’t want to leave! Then, another cruiser came over to our boat for sundowners (sunset drinks) and began telling us about his cruising adventures. He had sailed far and wide and then pulled into the Azores for a few weeks… 10 years ago! He also loved it and decided to stay a little longer, and a little longer, and a little longer, and now he has lived there for a decade!
We were falling into the same trap, so we decided that we needed to leave, but that we would be back. Most places, when we leave, we know we are never going to see again. We make sure we see everything we want to see, eat everything we want to taste, and soak up every last sunset we can there because we will never return. Pictures, videos, and memories will be all we will ever have of those places. The Azores was not going to be that way!
We looked at the sky and found a good time to leave based on the clouds and what they were telling Herby about the weather to come and we set sail. We left the Azores and sailed North to catch the Westerlies that would carry us to Europe.
The sail to the Azores was calm, sunny, and warm; the sail to Europe was not! It was rough, rainy, and cold! The further North you sail the rougher the weather gets and it became very apparent that we didn’t want to sail any further North than we had to. At 47*N, the winds were consistently out of the West and we were well above the high pressure system that sits between the Azores and Portugal. This meant that we could safely and swiftly make our way to the Iberian Peninsula and reach the other side of the ocean.
We left on June 14, 2018 made landfall on July 1st, 2019 and completed our first Atlantic Crossing. It took 382 days to sail across, or 9168 hours to finally make it to the other side! Naturally, there were many stops along the way, and the stops account for the grand majority of the passage time! But the stops are also what makes the passage worthwhile.
Just sitting back and thinking, I remember a few sunsets where the clouds were absolutely amazing, a few nights where the luminescence was especially stunning, or when dolphins would swim in the dark waters glowing and leaving a trail of sparkles behind them. I remember the night sky, and the endless waves, but my strongest memories are of the places we stopped along the way: the caves in Bermuda, the low stone walls of the Azores, the fish and chips in Hamilton or the Alcatra in Angra do Heroismo. My strongest memories of our transatlantic voyage are not of the passage itself but of the places we stopped along the way.
