28 December to 21 January 2024

Las Palmas, Gran Canaria to Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia, 14° 05′ 36″ N, 60° 57′ 89″ W, 3110nm, 24 days, 4 hours and 30 minutes

Thinking back to our Atlantic crossing, it’s hard now to remember much of it in any real detail. No two days were the same yet they all blurred into one. We were glad to have kept our daily blog, posted via the Iridium Go!, to jog our memories of events as they unfolded.

If you weren’t following along at the time, you can still read that account of our epic passage here but here is another insight into our long 24 days at sea.

Just like the view, the structure of our days always remained the same – a four day rotating watch pattern. Were it not that our days were punctuated by the unexpected – catching a fish or two, a change in the wind or varying conditions in the sea state – it really could feel like Groundhog Day. (With all irony intended I watched the film of the same name in the early days of the passage. I’m not sure I’d ever seen it before and it definitely hasn’t aged well!)

We decided on a mixed watch pattern – 2 hour watches during daylight hours and 3 hours at night. With the luxury of four of us on board, that meant just one dark watch every night. Every four days it also meant that one lucky crewmate got a full nine hours off at night. During the day we did slightly shorter watches but which still allowed for time off to rest, do chores, fix things or whatever we fancied. It worked really well for us.

0600 to 0800

At 6am the first of our two hour daytime watches started and this was definitely a favourite with all of us. For a start, whoever was on this watch had woken up from as full a night’s sleep as conditions allowed so even the early alarm wasn’t a rude awakening. The sun was starting to rise and a new day on board was beginning.

Whoever was on this watch was also the nominated Domestic for the day and was responsible for getting the boat ready for the day. With the daylight, our navigation lights and radar were turned off and our cockpit lamps were put on to charge. The cockpit was cleaned and tidied. Everyone was very respectful of our shared spaces during the passage but cleaning the cockpit became somewhat competitive! However, Ben set a very high bar early on in the passage and no-one else really ever got near the standard he set!

0800 to 1000

The watch was slowly joined in the cockpit by the other crew members with bowls of cereal or their breakfast of choice. Fishing lines were put out in hope of an unexpected change of menu for the day and we waited to see how long it takes for crumbs or tea spillages to appear in the pristine cockpit.

If I felt inspired (and ingredients allowed) I might make up a big bowl of salad for lunch or bake a cake or some bread before it got too hot on board. The crew devoured these blueberry muffins almost as soon as they came out of the oven!

1000 to 1200

Everyone would be up and about by now, engaged in some kind of activity. During this watch I was responsible for the food checks. The evening meal was taken out of the freezer or the ingredients gathered for whoever the Domestic was that day. All our fruit and veg was checked for damage and anything that needed eating was set aside for use during the day. Our supply of eggs was carefully turned. (Apparently it stops them going bad as fast, but I did start to wonder whether someone told me this for a laugh).

I delegated checking the oranges in the nets at the stern to Will who was usually out there doing his exercises on the stern deck around this time.

Sometimes during this watch we might have a special breakfast together. We had banana pancakes on 2 January when we crossed the Topic of Cancer and egg muffins to celebrate Stefan’s birthday on the 11th.

1200 to 1400

During this watch, lunch might involve us sitting together in the cockpit eating a bowl of salad (until our fresh supplies ran out) or some bread, crackers or wraps with cheese (or pate or cold meat for Ben to ensure he got his meat quote on this almost vegetarian ship!). But we often sorted out lunch for ourselves as those on late night watches had eaten breakfast late and we were all hungry at different times.

For some reason, the mornings were when we were most likely to catch fish so sometimes we cooked some of it for a good hearty lunch.

1400 to 1600

This was the watch during which I was designated to update the weather and our blog on the tracker but we liked to do the weather earlier in the day so we knew what was coming and could make changes to the sail plan if necessary. We would usually do another update before dinner so we knew if anything had changed ready for the coming night. Stefan was also designated to do the deck walk during this watch just to keep an eye out for anything that was broken or chafing. Most days he had already been out on deck to swap the pole over or for some other reason so in reality he had often already done it.

Other than these tasks, this was often the quietest time on board during the day. Leaving the watch in the cockpit to watch the big patches of seaweed pass by, the others might slink off for a snooze or some quiet time, reading or watching downloaded films or tv. Ben watched the entire seven series of Only Fools and Horses, including Christmas specials, during the passage.

Early in the passage Stefan had got us to all draw straws for who would trigger the emergency drill to replicate as best we could some unexpected situation which required everyone to leap into action. Will kindly chose this watch to call our ‘all hands on deck’ drill so no one’s night was disturbed. Even so, the three of us not on watch managed to all be busy with something when the call came and we had to scramble into our life jackets to throw the liferaft, grab bags and ourselves into the cockpit in readiness for the emergency that wasn’t!

1600 to 1800

During this watch Ben did our daily generator run to ensure we had sufficient power to get us through the night with the radar and other instruments running and to keep the fridge and freezer cold. He also ran the water maker to top up the tanks so we had enough water for drinking, washing up and showers.

But mainly this watch was about Happy Hour!

To ensure we had some dedicated time to spend together as a crew we decided to adopt the Happy Hour that had been a daily feature of Stefan’s first Atlantic crossing on SV Delite. Unlike most other Happy Hours, no alcohol was involved because Pintail is always dry on passage but that didn’t dampen our fun. At 4pm we grabbed a can of something cold out of the fridge and raided the week’s snack bag for some nuts or crisps and all gathered in the cockpit. We might have a chat about important business like the weather forecast or a change to the sail plan but mostly it was intended to be our social time.

We played games, shared our desert island discs and celebrated events like New Year’s Eve and Stefan’s birthday together but mostly, in a most unexpected and fortuitous way, we discovered at our first Happy Hour that we had the makings of a band on board.

Ben had brought with him a small guitar, keyboard and amplifier. We were looking forward to having him on board for entertainment but we had no idea that we had another talented musician on board. It turned out that Will was a whizz on the keyboard and at our first Happy Hour Stefan and I just sat back and enjoyed hearing them jam together. Cockpit jams became a regular feature at Happy Hour and the two of us would occasionally join in on backing vocals!

Once a week during Happy Hour we would get an extra hour as we turned our clocks backwards to adjust slowly to the new time zone for arrival in Caribbean.

1800 to 2100

Our first three hour night watch started at 6pm. The Domestic got on with cooking dinner and sorting the rubbish which involved the indignity of reaching overboard from the cockpit to empty the organic waste into the sea!

The sun set spectacularly over the far horizon and dinner was usually served in the cockpit shortly after.

Despite it only still being early evening, the watch usually found themselves alone in the cockpit by around 7.30pm or so. Once dinner was eaten and the dishes were washed (the last of the Domestic’s chores for the day), the off watch slunk off to sleep for however many hours the rotation allowed.

2100 to 0000

This watch was a contender for best night watch. It was dark, yes, especially when the moon disappeared altogether in the middle of our passage, but it was not too late to make us want to fall asleep and we had a nice long sleep to look forward to afterwards from midnight to 8am.

And there were always the stars to gaze at. At some point during our passage, Will gave each of us a run through of the night sky, pointing out the key constellations and teaching us how to identify the pole star and therefore which way was north. If we kept the pole star to Pintail’s starboard beam then we knew we were heading west. We were glad not to lose our navigation equipment during our crossing but had we, it was good to know we had some means of knowing we were going the right way!

0000 to 0300

If 2100 to 0000 was a candidate for best night watch, 0000 to 0300 was candidate for worst watch.

It definitely meant the most interrupted night. We might have snatched only four hours sleep after dinner and it really messed with our circadian rhythms. Cups of tea and snacks were the only way to stay awake. However, once we finished at 3am we had no no day shift until lunchtime the next day so plenty of time to catch up.

For some reason this seemed to be the watch we were most likely to encounter commercial shipping and, later in the passage, squalls. We were always desperate not to have to wake anyone else up to take avoiding action and on the whole we managed just fine.

0300 to 0600

Another candidate for worst watch but we had at least had a good few hours sleep before having to get up. Early in our passage, it was brightly lit by the moon.

But by day 11 there was just a tiny orange slither of moon, of no use at all but strangely with all the incredible stars and planets shining away in the endless sky it was never completely dark.

It was during this watch during which we passed some important milestones, crossing the Tropic of Cancer and the Mid Atlantic Ridge. By complete chance both times during Will’s watch so Stefan, Ben and I slept oblivious to them!

And so it went on and on for 24 long days and nights until we finally arrived in the Caribbean…