By Grant
Well we made it. It’s a terrible cliche to start by saying ‘I don’t know where to start’ but the truth is I really don’t. The last few weeks have been so emotional that words just seem to be jumbled in my head. I know we are here but even after day 7 on terra firma and I still don’t really feel human and I definitely don’t feel like I have had enough sleep. I am not physically tired but emotionally exhausted. Well maybe I am also a little physically tired.
There are so many aspects to a crossing. Every boat is different and each have their own stories. None I have come across have a story without incidents and ours is no different. I will try and capture the realities in this post and hopefully in doing so shed some light on our story. However I will try avoid the details and just keep it broad.
Before you can even consider crossing you must figure out who will be on your boat. Such a critical decision because as I have said many times a yacht is a very very very small island and an even smaller house when you are all living together. The dynamics change under pressure and everyone has different goals and needs. For instance a crew member it’s a job, a friend is often doing it for the great adventure and accomplishment whilst a mother may be accommodating a husbands dreams and a father may be trying to just keep his family alive. None of these are inaccurate in our case but there is so much more to it. We all have our own individual stories and they will all be told differently. I will tell my story for the point of the owner, navigator and father of 3 young children and wife on this vessel.
Onboard Arabella was my Family, Big Alex (intro below), Apple, Fede and Morgan, but also my Brother Craig in Seattle who was not technically onboard but followed us closely and helped route our course and keep me posted on anything important. Frankly he was completely invaluable and I just couldn’t have done this without him. I was also lucky enough to have Big Alex join me. The hope was a couple of other friends would join but COVID scuppered these plans. Nevertheless I couldn’t have asked for a better friend to be with me. Alex van Nes and I started our budding entrepreneurial lives at the same time (22 years ago) and have been great friends since. He is also a sailor who enjoys open water yacht racing in Table Bay, Cape Town. But more importantly he knows me well and I know him and I needed him. And he was always there. Thank you my friend!
In the beginning you must prepare the boat to have everything ready, working and seaworthy. As you know this always comes with unexpected surprises and in our case the port engine transmission failed and we were never able to engage reverse for the entire crossing. Actually quite cool to say you crossed the Atlantic without reverse :-). I guess it could have been worse and we couldn’t go forward. There were many other problems as all boats will attest. But this is normal and hopefully they are not terminal and you can fix them. For the most part we fixed or found a way to make work all our problems. We are far luckier than others. Sadly in the other ARC rally (one that went from Las Palmas directly to St Lucia, while ours went from Las Palmas to Grenada via Cape Verde), two boats were abandoned mid-ocean and there was also an accidental death. Surely this is not for the faint hearted.
Next you must ensure all your safety equipment is in order, up to date and working. There are a lot of additional safety requirements when you cross one of the big oceans. All can be very expensive but there is no cost too much when it comes to safety. The challenge was trying to remind everyone (mostly my kids) to wear their lifejackets and clip on the safety lines when walking around the boat. But all this safety did not stop our young family from stopping 3 times in the middle of the Atlantic to have a swim. 5000m, 6000m and 7000m deep swims with the most incredible blue you have ever seen. We even tried a little body surfing behind Arabella under sail. So not safe but so much fun.
The family and especially the kids are one of the biggest challenges. But to be fair they are also the best medicine. Nothing makes you feel better than a hug from your kids. Anyway, primarily we needed to ensure they are entertained and don’t get bored, we needed to ensure they keep learning as best we can and try to have a structured day, obviously we need to keep them safe especially in bad weather and at night. It sounds all so easy but when days blend into nights and you are constantly busy either on helm duty, cooking or doing chores, the time for the kids is not easy to fit in. I think the mantra “happy wife happy life” changes to “happy kids happy life” on a boat. We were blessed because all three kids truly embraced the crossing. Arabella was the master chef always baking and helping the B team (more on this to come) in the kitchen. In addition she helped Daddy everyday with the fishing lines whilst doing her Math and Chinese work. She really was a super important member of the team. Never once being sea-sick but unfortunately picked up a fever and sore throat (from Alex) which kept them quiet for a day or two. Alexandra was engrossed in books. She doesn’t like fishing and prefers to eat the goods coming from the kitchen but boy she loves reading. Alex finished 12 full-sized books during the crossing and hopefully we can all look forward to the book reviews when she is done. Azania was also an absolute trooper. Azania learnt her alphabets and math, bossed everyone around and was always the first to get involved in the art classes with Mommy. On the topic of Art, all three girls created some incredible pieces along the way. See pics later.
For most of the journey we followed an interesting shift system. The 4 adult men (myself, Alex, Morgan and Fede) would rotate the evenings in 3 hours shifts 9-12, 12-3, 3-6 and 6-9. But when the winds were high and we were flying bigger sails we would have 2 men on each shift. So sleep was never for very long. During the day the girls would always handle 9-12 in the morning and then in the afternoon we would have teams sharing the cooking, helming and chores. The A-Team was Myself, Big Alex and Little Alex, the B-Team was Delphine, Arabella, Azania and Apple and the C-Team was Morgan and Fede. 12-3 was cooking lunch, 6-9 was cooking dinner. So everyone cooked, cleaned and helmed at some point (well mostly because my teammate loved cooking so much that he did more than me or another way of putting it is he was just helping me out because I really didn’t get much sleep). The system really worked well and each team cooked some incredible meals. I think it is probably fair to assume that we ate the best of any boat crossing the Atlantic. But even though I made the shift list I didn’t cater for the fact that I was also Dad and Husband, as well as navigator. So when I should be sleeping I was with my wife, or kids on watch or just generally not fully trusting the system and worrying far too much causing a fair amount of sleep deprivation. Lessons learnt for sure but not the ones I suspect you think.
On this topic I must talk about the galley and the food provisioning and storage. Often overlooked in a crossing but soo very important. I think it is fair to say that Delphine got full marks for this exercise. She studied books, took advice from others and then delivered an incredible job. You won’t believe it but we pretty much had fresh produce (meat, vegetables and fruit) until the day we arrived. This takes very carefully planning and storage. We even made our own yogurt on board which was delicious. I cannot thank my lovely wife enough for becoming a true sailing partner. I think that many relationships take strain over these kind of passages but for us it was the opposite. If it is at all possible I am more in love than ever.
Sails sails and broken sails. Nothing destroys you more than breaking very important pieces of equipment. When sailing across the Atlantic you are pretty reliant on downwind sails. As many of you know we purchased to sparkling new special downwind sail called a Parasail to help us with this crossing. And what an incredible sail it is (was). You put it up and forget about it. It is a truly incredible invention and served us very well on the previous leg to Cape Verde. And it was doing the same until disaster struck on Day 10. We blew a corner off the parasail. Under pressure she just popped. I was in bed and Delphine woke me seconds before the pop and I ran up in my underpants to recover the sail before we got her stuck under the boat. Everyone did well getting her down but emotionally we were pretty low. How would we make it across without this sail. Luckily we had another partially downwind sail. A gennaker which is more suitable for light wind reaching but with a few alterations in her setup we got her taking us pretty nicely downwind. Two full days of fun and games with our gennaker, goosewinging and trying out new ways to sail her came crashing down when she blew out on Day 12 at 19h30 in the evening. This time the Head (corner at the top of the triangle) blew off. Now we were screwed. No more downwind sails. It would be a long slow route across the Atlantic in our already smaller than usual Genoa (a story for another day). But not this crew. Not my Brother. He pushed us to fix it and sent clear instructions. However there were no pictures or YouTube videos as we were at sea and could only send and receive text via satellite.
“If there is no patch area, it all split off, you need to stitch the clew patch back on but with an overlap 2-3 inches and glue it on with sikaflex. Then use the radial pattern from the clew to the sail with the sail tape and then sew over with that webbing. 2 layers of Dacron tape overlapped 50%$ radial out one on the luff and one on the foot then 3 or 4 redialed between. Like a hand from the clew ring think of a palm as the tack ring and fingers as the Dacron tape. Sew webbing over the tape. You will end up putting the old tack back on the sail with an overlap and the fingers of the webbing to bridge the join. Cheers, don’t stress too much, it is all part of sailing. Have a coffee and then see how it is!”
We started immediately to try and fix the Parasail from my best understanding from Craig’s message. Honestly I understood most of it but still this was my first time ever fixing a sail. I got all the glue and sikaflex we could find. All the sail tape and any tape we could find and out came the needles and thread to begin sewing. We worked right through the night. Nobody stopped until Maui was ready to fly again. We had motor-sailed (engine and genoa sail) through the night but we knew we couldn’t afford to keep the engines on anymore. Simply we were a long long way to the point we had enough fuel to get us home. And as the sun rose I pushed us all to get ready to fly Maui again. And what beautiful flight it was. She launched and held and flew. Pride beyond compare. A true team effort. She flew all day and around evening time I was discussing with Alex that we should take her down for the evening and add some additional supporting patches. I was discussing the details when BANG! She blew again. Nothing can describe my anger, frustration, FURY. I was blind with rage. I was just about to take her down. Minutes maybe. I just couldn’t believe it. I was LOW. Real real low. And I was tired. And I was frustrated. But again we needed to get to the other side and we needed a downwind sail.
It was at my lowest that my darling Brother Craig helped the most. Don’t get me wrong he was singularly the most important member of our team and he wasn’t even on the boat. We spoke through messages over the satellite every single day. He reminded me daily to check things and many of his checks saved us from disaster. I cannot mention them all but let it be known that without Craig we might still be trying to cross the Atlantic. Never ever have I loved him so much and never ever have I felt more close to my brother. I was in his world and he was going to do everything he could to help me cross this ocean. So at this very very very low moment he writes. “Dont give up brother. I have another way you can fix the sail”. I laughed and cried and replied that I am done. No more fixing sails. I am exhausted. He pushed me and said I mustn’t give up. I can do this. His morale boosting speech felt like Jose Mourinho on a champions league final. I couldn’t let him down. I couldn’t let my family down. So Delphine, Fede and I settled into work fixing. Fede soon passed out because he had been up the previous night but Delphine and I would not give up. All through the day we sewed with a drill and my Dacron yellow fishing line. We sewed 40m of the sail back together and then took my brothers wild advice to just tie a massive knot at the end of the sail. I had so little hope I felt like I was wasting my time. I really didn’t think it would work. But how wrong I was. When dusk arrived Delphine, Fede and Alex (who was helming for 12 straight hours whilst we sewed) suggested we take a break and rest a bit before launching her one more time. I didn’t agree. I said there is no time like the present. And we did it. Up she went. She didn’t look all that perfect. A little like she had and even more angry face but she caught the wind and flew high above us and never failed us for the next 3 days until we reached Grenada. I cannot thank my brother and wife enough for there efforts and never-give-up attitude and I cannot thank my friend Big Alex enough for keeping my spirits up. I couldn’t have stayed positive without you. WE DID IT!. Maui was reborn twice. And now she needs some serious repairs.
Some of you may have heard about the Marlin? Well the fact that we caught anything was a surprise in itself. There is a huge problem in the Atlantic at the moment and we encountered the worst of it. Because this year the Tradewinds were not developed in the north it pushed us to sail more south than normal. In fact we actually went all the way to 10°20’N which is really far South for an Atlantic crossing. And because we were so far south we encountered massive amounts of seaweed or Sargassum. This is a big problem and caused by global warming and each year the blooming is getting worse. The trend has really only been identified since 2011 so this a very new phenomenon. The reality is at times it felt like we were sailing through field of freshly cut bright green plants floating on the surface. For 14 straight days we never had a clear day. This seaweed catches your line and hooks and sooner or later you are dragging a forest behind your boat. The second problem was when you are sailing downwind you have an enormous sail up and dropping this sail is not the quickest thing you can do. If you have reverse you can slow the boat down whilst the crew or family drop the sail before loosing the fish. We obviously didn’t have reverse. Anyway, with the help of Arabella and Fede, we cleared the lines daily and didn’t give up until zzzzzzzzzzzz. That beautiful sound. I will write another post just on this catch but it is safe to safe this kept me happy for a number of days. 2.6m and 500lb Blue Marlin. Definitely the biggest thing I’ve caught fishing in my 40years trying.
The journey across was the end of 8 months on the boat with the crew (Morgan and Fede). It is a very long time for people who are not family to share a space. Certainly not easy for either party. But for me it was especially challenging. I like my space. I need my space and whilst locked on a boat across an ocean with no escape hatches it can weighs on you. Certainly it did for me. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I believe this and it has served me well my whole life. Suck it up son and move on.
As I am writing this final paragraph I am at anchor on the south side of Grenada with family and my friend Alex onboard. I am finally relaxed and this morning we launched the Smartkat kinda like a hobbie-cat but inflatable) and went sailing as a family. We were flying! I feel reborn. I feel refreshed. I feel ready for the next adventure. The next 5 months we will cruise the Caribbeans, play some cricket, catch some fish and drink some Rum. We will do it as a family.
And then…. We cross the Pacific. Yikes.