No, really. Climate change is not, in fact, a hoax.

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This was a long time coming. Peter had been talking about sailing across oceans since the day we met (my being “in” for this adventure was part of the screening process, it turned out). We bought the Fish in the Mediterranean specifically so we could cross the Atlantic first, before tackling the Pacific. The goal of our first two years in the Med was to get the sailing experience we needed, get the boat ready, and get to Las Palmas to cross the Atlantic with the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers). After a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, along with fear, occasional terror, work, some yelling, and god knows, way too much money, we were in Las Palmas, and we were finally ready.

Our crew had already been with us at least a week and were making invaluable contributions to our last-minute preparations. Axel, a German physician retiring from 30+ years as a GP in southern Spain, had done this crossing with the ARC twenty years earlier, and routinely chartered boats in Greece with his wife. He was calm, measured, skilled, and open to any task. And he’s a doctor. Monique is, among other things, a charter skipper, racing crew, and sailing instructor from Holland, and brought more technical experience to the group than the rest of us put together. She also brought a no-nonsense approach that didn’t have time for any level of unprofessionalism, and when she called out an instruction you did it. Pronto. She was the perfect first mate for Peter: she responded to his requests with precision and offered her own suggestions for his consideration. She demanded step by step plans for any task more complicated than hauling out the genoa – discipline we’d been lacking to date – and I found her explanations and demonstrations remarkably easy to follow and replicate. She is a consummate teacher.

We were confident of our crew, and found them both very easy-going and fun. We’d replaced our frayed genoa sheets, and a local rigger had double checked our rigging for wear. We’d ticked off all our To-Dos, and To Buys. We’d done a massive amount of provisions planning and shopping. We had meal plans, a watch schedule, and full water and diesel tanks, along with extra water and diesel in jerrycans in the port bow lazarette. Our new life raft was anchored securely on the transom under the dinghy, and the JonBuoy attached to the rail nearby. Each of our life vests had all the required technology, including personal AIS beacons, MOB (Man Overboard) alerts, spray hoods, lights, and whistles. We attended the ARC safety seminars and demonstrations and passed the individual boat safety inspection. This was happening.

The day arrived, sunny and brilliant, and calm as can be. This was it, and there was no turning back. The queue of ARC boats just getting out of the marina was impressive – multihulls were the first class after the racing boats to start, but that didn’t stop every other ARC boat from wanting to get out into the harbor to watch the fun. We lowered our overall dressing as soon as we cleared the marina and raised sails for the start. Not that they would do us any good: there was still almost no wind, but engines weren’t allowed so we had no choice. It was chaos. Of course, every boat wants to be the first across the start even if there are still another 2800 miles to sail after that, and with only 15 minutes between the classes there wasn’t much to distinguish between the imminently starting multihulls and the rest of the fleet. One hundred and forty odd boats were crowding the starting line – sails up and no engines, i.e. no steerage – I just closed my eyes and hoped for the best.

Once across the start and out of the generalized chaos, we dove straight into our own chaos in an unsuccessful effort to fly the parasail. There wasn’t enough wind, and while the true wind might have been almost angled correctly, the apparent wind was negating all our efforts to fill the sail. We gave it a good go though and eventually had about half an hour of decent sailing, then gave up and started the engines again. By that time, it felt as though the rest of the fleet had already passed us by, and indeed, we struggled through the rest of the crossing to stay within the last quarter of the boats.

Night followed a truly glorious sunset, and the navigation lights of other boats winked on around us – in fact we spent most of that first night dodging boats as we overtook some and were overtaken by others.

The fleet fanned out considerably in the next few days, and soon enough we could very occasionally see another boat on our AIS, but only rarely glimpse the mast or lights of anyone else. In the meantime, there was no moon, and the night watches during our first week were marked by the almost incomprehensible darkness that falls on a moonless ocean. A bazillion stars couldn’t make up for the lack of moon, as bright and numerous as they were, and the Milky Way floated placidly above with its path to infinity slipping away in front of us.

^{Fortunately, we had a waxing and full moon on the crossing, too.}

I knew I already enjoyed a quiet, unexciting night watch with steady wind and just the sounds of water rushing under the hulls and sails stretching lazily. Our first week out we had some of that peace, but still had to motor sail too much to keep pace with the fleet. In fact, we quickly became frustrated by the lack of wind. On the other hand, do you really want to tempt fate with hopes for increased wind? Apparently, we did, because the second week was a nightmare of huge waves, cross swells, high gusty winds, and squalls. Then in an apparent response to our silent pleas for less wind, the seas calmed, the wind died to a gentle breeze, and until our very last day out we had to motor almost the entire time. Might have put up the parasail a few times, but the genoa mostly stayed furled and the main stayed zipped into its sail bag.

This was not how it was supposed to go. Peter had been telling me for years that the Atlantic was a dream crossing, with its steady, reliable 15-25 kt trade winds, and long period swell, and all we would need to do is raise the parasail and sit back and relax for a few weeks. At first I found the motoring a loud nuisance and kept telling myself that once we got far enough south those infamous trades would kick in. Monique was frustrated by how little our experience was living up to the hype. Axel reminisced about the strong, steady winds on his first crossing, although his memories were tempered by the discomfort of being on a monohull that time instead of a cat, which is theoretically more stable in waves and swell.

Theoretically. We got spanked that second week. We were bruised and battered just getting from one end of the salon to the other. Cooking was perilous – Axel wondered how he could strap himself to the stove so he could use both hands to keep the food, bowls, pans, and plates in place – so we ate a lot of microwaved dishes. We clipped in at the helm on watches – not just to the jacklines when leaving the helm –to make sure we didn’t slide out when thrown off the helm seat. It was relentlessly rough – waves from one direction, swell from another – with no rhythm or time between slamming. The sweet 10-14 second periodicity of the first week’s swell, when we glided up one side and down the other, was down to less than half that. Try banging your head against a wall, then count to 5 and do it again. Then again. And again, and again. For six full days.

The gusts were way too strong to fly the parasail – too many other boats (38 by the end!) had already shredded sails, including their bluewater runners, code zeroes, and paras, and less than a year out from spending that much money on a sail, we were not going to risk losing it now. (We saved that for a few months later….)

^{Damage reports from other boats}

We could occasionally put out the reefed genoa, even more rarely the main, always anchored down to the third reef, but mostly we had to motor or motor sail. The diesel engines live in compartments in the stern, one thin fiberglass wall between the head of the beds in the aft cabins and the roar of the engine. Even at low rpms, even in bashing waves, in the incessant whining of rigging, the engines are loud. Sleeping in those aft cabins – Peter and me on port and Monique on starboard – required earplugs, pillows over the head, and complete exhaustion, but nothing could erase what came to feel like the all-encompassing, inner brain vibration and noise of days of ceaseless motoring.

^{Leaving Gran Canaria behind….}

At the beginning of this second week the unthinkable happened. I was relieving Peter at the helm for my 03:00 watch when Monique came up looking stricken and asked if we’d heard about the Man Overboard (MOB). ARC Rally Control had just announced on WhatsApp that thirty minutes earlier the lead racing boat, Ocean Breeze, reported a man overboard. We stared at each other, the NO! NO, No, No no no no no no nononononos flying from our brains and deep in our hearts to our mouths in horror. The wind was howling around us, we’d all sat down to avoid being knocked over by the bashing, and the cockpit was sloshing with water that flowed up and over the transom whenever a swell hit just right. It was pitch, pitch black – the barely first quarter moon couldn’t break through the clouds – and we knew immediately that the chances of recovering that poor sailor were almost nonexistent. About an hour after that news, ARC Rally Control announced that another boat – a newer model Leopard 44 in fact – the Karolina Viking, had lost a rudder, which damaged the rudder compartment and allowed water to flow into the starboard hull. They were going to sink, albeit slowly.

Other boats nearest them immediately sailed to the aid of each. Leaps and Bounds 2, in second place at the time of the MOB, was several hours behind, but headed directly to the coordinates put out by MRCC Norfolk (Marine Rescue Coordination Center), which had taken over organizing the rescue efforts. Both it and Ocean Breeze, as well as Project X, a large motor yacht in the area that responded to the Mayday, searched tirelessly for hours. Other boats altered course over the next few days to pass through the widening coordinates, but none sighted him. Eventually the search was called off. The victim, a 33-year-old Swedish man (his name has been removed from circulation at the request of his family), was lost. Leaps and Bounds 2 continued its race, but Ocean Breeze took longer to leave the area. I can’t imagine what that crew felt as they turned the bow one last time towards St. Lucia, away from their mate. After the agony of their search, and their loss, giving up must have been soul-crushing.

In the meantime, Cinderella di San Remo reached Karolina Viking in time to rescue her crew when they abandoned ship. Cinderella’s captain, knowing seas were too rough to get close to the crippled boat, extended a 300’ floating line, then circled the Karolina lifeboat until her crew could secure the line and bring themselves close enough to safely board Cinderella. It was a more dangerous endeavor than it might sound, and Cinderella’s crew were truly heroic. They already had five aboard, and with five more from Karolina Viking, they decided to continue together to St. Lucia rather than turn back to Cape Verde. (I felt vindicated about our bilges stuffed with food. You never know.)

These events made a challenging trip harder. First, it hadn’t made a difference that the MOB’s life vest had an AIS transponder, never mind lights and a measly whistle. The AIS signal doesn’t last forever, and even while it’s broadcasting, the area it covers is just too large, especially in high seas, in the dark, and with no eyes on the man from the moment he went over. (It’s also time consuming for a large racing boat with multiple sails to turn around. Wake crew. Organize. Lower sails. It doesn’t matter how many times you train for it, at those speeds there’s already at least a kilometer between the boat and the MOB.) We load our vests with technology to make ourselves feel better, but it doesn’t matter. And the sheer hopelessness of it made the hours of waiting for news excruciating.

I also have a particularly hard time understanding the motivation to embark on an adventure that could so easily kill you. Sort of like mountain climbers climbing dangerous mountains – I don’t get that at all, but when I find out about someone dying while trying, I am not also ON the mountain. I was on this boat – we were risking our lives on this boat – because Peter, who I love, who I’ve committed to spending my life with, who was clear for years that this was in our mutual cards if I would have him, spent his entire life dreaming of sailing oceans. I could either keep up or live without him. And this wasn’t about blaming the victim – clearly every single one of this fleet’s crew had chosen to make this trip. But whhhyyyyyy??? So far, the crossing had been an underwhelming experience. Winds were erratic, and too little or too much. Boats were getting damaged left and right. They were losing critical systems, sails, and hardware (in addition to a person). It was supremely uncomfortable – and keep in mind that at this point we were only two days into the bloody awful second week. And the dangers were all too real. Honestly, why?

I spent the next day crying in our cabin. I was lucky that it happened to be my day “off” watch. (In our four-day watch rotation we each had a day where we had a break from 06:00 (the end of our night shift) until 24:00.) I had a full 18 hours to do whatever I felt like doing, and in this case, I felt like lying in bed crying. Along with some full-throated cursing and pillow pounding, I eventually started to feel slightly better. By midnight that night they’d called off the search, we’d been able to express our sorrow and condolences through the ARC crew WhatsApp group, and I was able to take my next watch. It took days for us all to come out of the funk though: there was a long shadow.

When the winds finally died at the beginning of that third week, we let out a collective breath. But we knew already that according to our weather apps we were only barely outsailing a large “blue hole” of no wind, and we didn’t have the speed to stay out of it.

Sure enough, our sails drooped within a day, and the engines, off for the first time in a week, went back on. Other becalmed boats in the fleet joked about running out of diesel, looking at coming into the marina in Rodney Bay on fumes. Several others actively arranged diesel backups with nearby boats in case they indeed ran out. One actually had to get a jerrycan from another boat. We’d been careful to run only one engine at a time, and always at low rpms, so we were looking at the last 450 miles of motoring with some confidence. After a few days though, Monique and I decided to do what was needed just to get there: use both engines and up the rpms. We had to use up one of our four extra diesel jerrycans as a result, but at that point who the fuck cares?? – we just wanted to end the madness.

High points, you ask? Yes, definitely. We celebrated the coming of Sinter Klaus on December 5, thanks to Monique, and soon after celebrated reaching the midpoint of our crossing.

And there were less stressful, if wind-less, days that reminded us how much we enjoy simple cruising.

But also, dolphins. Dolphins on any day made that day worth getting out of bed. We had lots of side striped dolphins, and one day the visiting pod had a few spinner dolphins as well, and their show was spectacular. True showoffs.

And there were thousands and thousands of flying fish. Every morning there was at least one dead on the deck somewhere, and others skittered and soared out from in front of the bow every hour of the day. They can fly up to the distance of a football field – we even saw some of them making 90 degree turns during their flights, too. It was always good to see our little mascots were still with us – those that survived the dolphins, that is. And we were visited at length by a minke whale one day; he slid along under the surface of the water about 10 meters from the boat and occasionally came up to smell the surf and feel the wind on his face. Minkes don’t breach like other whales. There’s no drama at all with minkes: they rise slowly to the surface and poke their pointy snouts up out of the water, then spout lamely and go back under. We were in thrall.

We also had birds. Not a lot, but enough to remind us that we weren’t entirely alone in the world above the ocean. A Canarian Chiff Chaff – very similar to the Iberian Chiff Chaffs who stayed with us on the way to Gran Canaria from Gibraltar – stopped by on the third day, and along the way we saw storm petrels, frigate birds, brown boobies, and cattle egrets. Other boats were getting visitations too, and I enjoyed trying to identify them from the photos people shared. Many were obvious – hard to mistake a brown booby or a western cattle egret – but a few were more challenging.

Less savory to me were the abundant fish being caught by the fisherpeople of the fleet, who proudly shared their prizes and occasionally shared their fish cleaning photos, and in one case, their sushi, as well. It was impressive though, I have to say. From the second day onward people were hauling in truly beautiful specimens. Mostly mahi mahi, wahoo, and tuna, but the occasional skipjack, barracuda, snapper, and even a sailfish rounded things out. These pictures are from just the final week!

Fortunately, Peter couldn’t find the lures and leader we’d bought in Las Palmas, so he was left drooling over the photos of everyone else’s catches, and I didn’t have eau de fish guts polluting my galley. Until the last day. He found the lures the day before but hadn’t gotten any bites yet. Fine, I thought, he’s having fun, no need to actually catch anything, never mind kill it. As we got closer to the Caribbean many had reported the disappointment of snagging sargasso weed rather than a fish, so when I saw the rod bent over the stern dragging an apparently inanimate object, I called that he should come get the weeds off and try again. Ten minutes later he and Axel landed a tender young mahi – the most gorgeous fish I have ever, ever seen. Iridescent green and glistening in the sun – how I hoped it would spit the hook, flip out of the net, somehow, some way, avoid the doom that awaited. They marinated and then grilled him. I’m sure it was delicious, but it made me sad.

We got our first glimpse of land early on the 15^th of December, our 21^st day. It was a mirage for the longest time, but those with sharper eyes than mine swore it was right under those clouds on the horizon. It took a while, but we did get closer, and could see the outlines of St. Lucia’s mountains, and eventually the crashing waves on its east coast. We’d had one of our few good days of sailing: the para had been out, the wind was steady behind us, and we hadn’t needed the engines at all. It was almost hard to see it end.

But not that hard. In fact, by the time we crossed the finish in Rodney Bay and made our way to our berth in the marina, the rum punch handed us by the ARC personnel was the only thing I was seeing. “Relief” doesn’t cut it. We were elated, but “oh my fucking god I’m so glad that’s over” was the dominant emotion.

^{Finish photos, thanks to friends at the summit of Pigeon Island outside Rodney Bay.}

^{Axel brought the matching Flying Fish t-shirts!}

The next day’s hangover gave me time to savor our arrival a little better.  Drinking with a Dutch amazon is not the smartest strategy in the world – she wasn’t the one stumbling down the dock at 2 am with a twisted ankle and the giggles to prove it – but we had ourselves a very, very good time. And when I finally woke up one of the first things I realized after acknowledging that I was indeed exceedingly hung over was that I was also exceedingly proud of myself. Of us. Of what we had accomplished despite what often felt like terrible conditions. And the next thing I thought was, “And I never have to do that again.”

I wasn’t the only one. Monique agreed wholeheartedly that she never needed or wanted to cross another ocean, and in the coming days we spoke to several others, male and female, who echoed the conviction. Mostly glad, like I was, to have done it once, but felt no desire to do it again. More widespread among crew was disappointment in the conditions we’d all faced. It wasn’t just wind – too little, too much, anything but the steady trades – but also the chaotic swell and wave patterns, and finally, the relentless nightly squalls.

A brief aside: “Squalls” is the widely used, gentle euphemism for the often-violent storms that develop in response to the water evaporation and air movement typical in warm oceans. Often packing 30-40+ knot gusts, squalls are to be avoided. They mostly didn’t last more than 10-30 minutes, though many boats reported heavy squalls battering them for several hours at night. Squalls were responsible for the widespread sail destruction among boats in the fleet, generally those that didn’t get their sails down before the squall hit. Squalls were the reason we stopped flying the para at night. We’d been prepared for increased squall activity as we got closer to the Caribbean, which is notorious for its warm air and waters. But starting toward the end of week one it didn’t seem to matter how sunny and calm the day was, by the time the sun went down we’d nervously watched banks of clouds building on the horizon for hours, the radar was splotched red, and we knew it was going to be another night of Dodge-em. Less fun than it sounds.

^{Having been advised in the ARC weather seminar to go south around oncoming squalls, instead of avoiding this one it moved with us and we ended up right in the middle of it (photo on left)! Another boat shared the last photo on the right. Very scary.}

But the bulk of the fleet’s sailors had the time of their lives (including Peter, who is incapable of feeling anything other than joy when he’s on a sailboat, regardless of its state or the conditions). There was general elation and pride, rueful comparisons of blown-out sails and replacement costs, and plenty of manly braying and chest thumping about the hard parts. Peter truly loved every minute of it and is not in the least deterred from his plan to continue to the Panama Canal by the end of the year (2025) and on across the Pacific in late winter of 2026. This just whet his appetite for the bigger ocean, the more idyllic islands of the Pacific, and the new challenges we’ll face. I’ve promised to go through the canal with him and help provision and prepare the boat for the crossing, then get on a plane and meet him in the Marquesas. Happy to continue from there, but at this point I can’t imagine what it would take for me to set out across another ocean. Now taking applications for crew!

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Postscript: A couple of months have passed since I finished writing this post, and I’ve been puzzled about why I haven’t just published it already. Granted, I hadn’t finished the previous two about our time in Las Palmas, and our efforts to prepare for the crossing. But it’s also been a couple of weeks since I published those in succession. Meanwhile, we’ve been back to Denver for several weeks, and since returning to the Antilles have spent several weeks in Martinique, longer than planned (for reasons that require another post), and on to Dominica and Guadeloupe, where we are now. But still haven’t published this post. What gives?

I’ve made my way around to thinking that it’s about not wanting my thoughts in this post about the crossing to be the last word on how I feel about crossings. They are still developing. I’m still processing. We had a gorgeous sail from Martinique to Dominica a few days ago, and as I sat at the helm feeling the slide over the big ocean rollers, listening to the slight shudder of the main and creak of rigging and the water rushing under the hulls, singing along on a beam reach at 8-9 knots in the 17-21 knot breeze, it hit me. This is what I’d wanted for the Atlantic. I love this. This is how it should have been. This is bluebird sailing in the way that skiing in the Rockies on a brilliantly sunny, warm day in March is bluebird skiing. Is it too much to ask? Well, yes. Like everything else in life, you have to take the bad with the good. Some days there are white outs with icy slopes and out of control snow boarders. So, we had shitty weather for the crossing, so what?

Well, so it made three weeks on a shrinking boat feel endless. It felt like a marathon of struggling to stay positive in the face of bad conditions, a life ending accident, and insufficient sleep and fresh food. And underneath that is the fear that every crossing in our future will be fraught with the unpredictable and frankly unpleasant realities of climate change’s impact on weather. Do I really want to spend another three to four weeks of my shortening life limping across another ocean in the same kinds of conditions? I still don’t think so. Nothing is guaranteed, ever, so the Pacific might be the best crossing ever. I will probably be in the same position as our family and friends were while we were on the Atlantic: terrified for Peter’s safety and wondering why he hasn’t checked in yet today. It may well be easier to be the one on the boat, dealing with whatever comes, instead of waiting for news about what came.

In other words, I’m still trying to figure it out. This is an accurate rendering of my feelings during and after this crossing, so I’m going to go ahead and put it out there. But I reserve the right to continue to ruminate, waffle, decide, un-decide, and ultimately just see how things go over the next year. Who knows where I’ll end up. Or how I’ll get to the Marquesas.