The Challenge and Appeal of Atlantic Blue Water Sailing
Sailing across the Atlantic is not just a journey. The Atlantic challenge demands resilience, adaptability, and a willingness to embrace the unknown. Blue water sailing, long passages on the open ocean require a different mindset from coastal cruising. It’s about civilisation in miniature, self-sufficiency, and learning to live with the sea on its own terms.
The Unpredictability of an Atlantic Challenge
No two Atlantic crossings are ever the same.
On one voyage, you might have perfect trade wind sailing, with steady 15-knot winds and a ship rolling gently downwind for weeks. Another time, you might spend days battling light airs, trimming sails constantly and searching for the faintest breath of wind. And then there are crossings where the Atlantic reminds you that it’s in charge, where deep low-pressure systems force you to reef down and ride out heavy weather. Sailing from Ushuaia to Antarctica across the Drakes Passage can be an exciting adventure. Bear in mind all our voyages are scheduled in the summer months of the Southern hemisphere and the ships are fully able to cope.
Ocean Voyages.
Coping
Returning to the UK from the Canary Islands, sailing on the three-masted topsail schooner Malcolm Miller, we were storm-bound for three days, 400 miles out in the Atlantic from northern Spain. The ship was fine. The people had mixed responses. We were reefed right down and going nowhere against a northeasterly wind coming straight from where we wanted to go.
When off watch and not sleeping, I took myself to the steadiest and deepest part of the ship, the workshop just above the keel, below the half deck, a space squeezed into the narrow hull but warm and cosyl. There, I made a model of the Malcolm Miller out of wood scraps. At the end of the voyage in Weymouth, I presented the model to the cook for the epic meals achieved in such rough seas.
The ability to handle a ship at sea is not something learned overnight. Indeed, the route to becoming a tall ship captain is long and arduous. To understand how sailors of the past crossed oceans, Traditional Atlantic crossings and our Ocean Passages offer a deeper look into the history and techniques of long-haul sailing.
Who is Blue Water Sailing For?
You don’t need to be a professional sailor to cross an ocean, but you do need the right mindset. Blue water sailing is for those who want something more than a typical holiday. It’s for those who aren’t afraid of a bit of discomfort in exchange for an experience that few will ever have. The reality of of an Ocean Passage
Atlantic Coast Challenge
Not all Atlantic sailing means crossing an ocean. There’s a different kind of challenge in following the coastline. Strong tides, shifting sandbanks, heavy traffic, and narrow harbours can make a few hundred miles along the coast more intense than a thousand miles across an ocean.
There’ a lovely, illustrative, story of an early conference of international seafarers, the beginnings of what today is the International Maritime Organization. I think the conference was not long after the sinkings of the Titanic in 1912. It was pretty inclusive as there were big ship captains and skippers of fishing boats. It came to pass that the Captain of a Transatlantic ocean liner was sitting beside a Cornish Fisherman. The Captain asked the fisherman, ‘Now then my good man, what do you do if you lose sight of land?’ ‘Well, said the fisherman, I do the same as you do when you come insight of land. I fill my britches!’
For those who enjoy varied conditions, changing scenery, and the satisfaction of plotting your way from port to port, coastal sailing along the Atlantic rim offers a rewarding test of seamanship.
See this article: Join the Past in the Present
If you’ve ever dreamed of seeing nothing but open ocean for weeks, feeling the ship moving beneath you as it rides the swells, and watching the stars from a darkened deck at night, then an Atlantic crossing might be exactly what you’re looking for.
Would you like to take on the challenge?
Ocean Voyages.
