Atlantic crossing – From Cape Verde Islands to the Caribbean

On February 18th 2019, Etienne and I left Mindelo, Ilha de São Vicente with a good northeasterly wind, fair seas and sunny skies. Unfortunately, it didn’t last for very long and as we passed south of the next island – Santo Antão the wind dropped quite a lot and it took us a few days to fully clear the Cape Verde Islands. A few days later the wind shifted to between east and south-east and remained in that quadrant, between 10 to 25 knots, for the rest of the crossing.

For a while this wind shift created a crossed sea which was rather uncomfortable as we were brutally and unpredictably shoved from one side to another. Yet, the seas were never really rough as the waves did not exceed 3M high. About mid-way, as the wind and the swell were coming dead astern, we decided to tack downwind and jibe every 12 hours or so hoping that the extra speed gained by zigzagging downwind could more than make up for the extra distance that must be covered. In the end it proved to be about equivalent but it was more stable (more comfortable) and easier to handle for a short handed crew.

Fairly soon, as we got used to the rythm of the sea, to our regular 3 hours watches and to the cooking and cleaning duties, we began to truly enjoy these peaceful days and nights. Listening to music and audiobooks, reading a lot, downloading weather forecasts by radio and practicing celestial navigation with a superbly accurate sextant (a retirement gift from my work colleagues) easily filled our days. I must also say that I wasn’t too successful with fishing. Lack of experience was the main reason and I only caught one fish – a fair size Jack that gave us 4 nice fillets to cook. We were very surprised to find that the ocean was covered with large patches of algae (Sargassum: The biggest seaweed bloom in the world – BBC News July 2019) which of course made fishing impossible most of the time as the line got tangled in algae and same for the hydrogenator impeller often blocked for days by this seaweed.

We ultimately landed in Martinique after spending 19 days at sea and sailing more than 2000 nautical miles. We were both happy to have arrived, especially Etienne who was heading back home, even though I wasn’t in a hurry to see this crossing end.