Transatlantic – East to West

Download Las Canarias to St. Lucia

The rhumb line from the Canary Islands to St. Lucia is about 2600 miles but in sailing, a straight line between two points is rarely the quickest. Ever since the Spanish began plying this route in search of plunder among the Americas, seafaring wisdom has dictated sailing southward on the remnants of the Portuguese Trades, toward the Cape Verde Islands off the coasts of Mauritania and Senegal and thence westward after the westerly Trades take hold and blow more or less steadily, day and night, all the way to the Caribbean Sea. Passages made along this trade route are more like 3000 miles.

It’s the first southward leg of the passage that requires serious consideration. November marks the end of the season for tropical storms, though historical data documents huge storms born over the Cape Verde’s as late as mid-December. We can do little to avoid such occurrences, but we can avoid the chilly gales that occur frequently in the more northerly latitudes between the Canaries and Cape Verdes. This portion of the passage is still subject to variable winds that whip up confused seas. Porto Mogan, our point of departure on the southern coast of Gran Carnaria, has been wiped out on numerous occasions by gale force southerlies.

When Howard and Joel arrive in early December to help me with the passage west, I am pouring over the weather data. I figure that we should wait about three days to get a promising window. While we wait, the boats making up the ARC Transatlantic Rally, having already rescheduled twice, put to sea and I am able to watch their masthead tricolors as they clear the southern tip of island. They find some heavy going in the first days of their passage. A few boats are even forced to abandon their passage.

Our window arrives as scheduled and we shove off, provisioned to the gunnels with a deep frozen slap of lomo, eggs, rice, pastas, veggies, fruit, Tropical cut-rate Canary Island beer, and lots of diet Cokes for Howard. Five miles out, we hit the “acceleration zone” created by the mountainous islands. Like a slingshot, we broad reach for almost five days, running close to 200 miles per day. We start talking about a 10 or 12 day crossing. But that was not to be.

Around day 3, Howard is gibing our whisker pole and pulls a muscle. Instead of riding atop his arm, his bicep is now slung under. His face is pale with worry, but I assure him that there is nothing out of the ordinary. We shove the bicep up where it belongs and tie it up with an ace bandage, like a sail lashed atop a boom. There’s no turning back now so we put Howard on light duty and allot him an extra ration of food. He likes that.

As we begin shaping our course in a long arc from southward to westward, the trades fill with a disappointingly anemic velocity. On good days we see 22 knots. On bad days it drops to 10 or 12. But no matter, the wind is abaft our beam and I soon weary of downloading weather faxes and gribs. We’re in the trades and that makes things about as predictable as they get.

The wind’s warm now and we travel mostly west between 15 and 10 degrees north of the equator. We make 150 to 175 miles a day and that’s  not bad for our 42-footer—better than most. We settle into the routine that comes with long passages. During the balmy night watches we revel at the night sky. The Southern Cross hangs low on the horizon to the south. New stars! During the day we eat, chat, listen to music, read books, and every now and then, make small adjustments to our sail trim. We do all those things and then we check our progress on the chart, trying to guess our arrival time. “Are we there yet?”

Once we are firmly ensconced in the Trades, the sky turns a hazy red color and soon the boat is covered with a reddish patina. I stress briefly at thought that all the metal on the boat is suddenly turning to rust and then I realize that the red coating is Saharan dust, blown from the deserts of Africa and deposited on Songline’s rig and decks. On one hazy morning we see an eastbound tanker pass us. She the only other vessel we see during our crossing.

We thought we just might be in St. Lucia for Christmas, but that wasn’t to be. The days wear on and the wind grows weaker and weaker as we enter the last portion of our voyage. We listen in on the transatlantic radio nets and plot the position of other boats. We have overtaken many of the ARC boats that left five days before us. Some are anticipating transits of 25 to 30 days.

With our destination only a few hundred miles away, we begin spending our reserves of fuel on the iron wind-maker. Joel and Howard have already used the HF radio to send emails that change their flight dates. We press forward at a steady seven knots and watch the fuel gauge tick toward empty.

On day 17 we raise St. Lucia from the horizon. Joel mocks up a St. Lucia courtesy flag using marker pens and tape. Our final approach is marked by a rare westerly wind that hammers our nose. As we round the island’s end we see an armada of  charter boats, their inexperienced crews surprised by the west wind, racing for port. We enjoy the rain, ecstatic at the prospect of our journey’s end. We set the hook in Rodney Bay as the afternoon drifts toward night. Come morning, there were new adventures awaiting us.

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Tags: altantic crossing, boating, cruising, sailing, sea stories, seamanship, video

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 6:31 am and is filed under All Stories and Articles, Video Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.