Analysing our Atlantic Crossing – Canary Islands to the Caribbean

In this post we sit down for a debrief of our 3000 nautical mile journey from Las Palmas, Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands to Saint Lucia in the Caribbean. This discussion aims to give you an insight into what our journey was like – the good, the bad and the ugly. Paikea is far from perfect but she proved to sail exceptionally well given the sometimes challenging conditions experienced on our journey westwards.

The Journey

We started from Las Palmas in Gran Canaria in late January 2022 on a journey that would take us across the Atlantic Ocean to our destination of St Lucia some 2700nm away. Due to a low pressure system that was sitting in our path, we actually sailed a distance of 2956nm. It took us 18 days or 423 hours with an average speed of 6.85kts. Our average daily distance sailed was 164nm per day. If we round things out a little bit and say we did 3000nm then our average speed was 7kts.

7kts may not sound like much to some, but when you take into consideration the distance we had to cover and the fact that we are a sailing boat and therefore we are at the mercy of the weather, it is not a bad average. The weather pattern we usually saw was 16-18kts during the day then at 8pm the wind started to increase. It usually stayed around 21-23kts during the evening. This jump in wind speed plus the fact that it was dark with only one person on watch, meant that it was just a bit too much to run our Frankie fractional at night. Once we had put our fractional asymmetrical away, we just used the jib which is quite small and our speeds were reduced from 9-10kts during the day to 5-6kts during the evening.

There were some exceptions where the wind would stay low enough to run the spinnaker all night which was fantastic. We also had at least 3 days where the wind was less than 6kts which meant that we had to run our mast head gear and slowed down our average speeds accordingly.

The Highlights

Meeting the Morrocan Navy while sailing past the coast of Morroco.

Having good runs with Frankie up especially in 16-18kts with 1 reef in the main was incredibly enjoyable. When we had that Atlantic swell without the crossed sea state, it was a dream sail. Top speeds we experienced on this journey were 17.8kts on GPS and we logged 18.2kts on our vessel navigation.

Hearing Karen Weekes from Shecando, a solo Atlantic rower, on the VHF talking to another ship and seeing lots of flying fish as we got to the lower latitudes were other highlights.

The Lowlights

Encountering possible pirates off the coast of Morocco. The reality that we were at their mercy as there was no way we could outrun their high speed vessels was a scary and sobering thought.

Really terrible weather from lows right in the middle of the Atlantic, even when we had the good wind, we still had the crossed sea state from the left over lows that had passed through previously.

Not having a cross over sail to take us from the asymmetric spinnaker to the jib. We really were missing something that we could deploy at night to run in heavier airs (ie a screecher) with the ability to be able to furl it away easily.

Batten box failing on the mainsail was another problem we had to fix en route. Due to the fact that this was a temporary solution, we have been having to repair these boxes as and when they fail. Ideally, we would like to purchase proper batten boxes and will do so once we have enough funds to allocate to this project. In the mean time, the temporary solution and repairs will have to do.

Losing our rudder 800nm from St Lucia was the biggest disappointment. We had made new rudder blades to attach to our existing rudder stocks while we were in Valencia. Unfortunately, the stock that was made from hollow stainless steel tube on the starboard side failed and the rudder

The journey took longer than expected. This was due in part to the fact that our custom polars needed improvement. Polars are important for every boat for accurate routing, departure planning and weather avoidance. We have been busy making our own polars for Paikea, however there are still gaps missing, add to that the missing rudder all makes for inaccuracies in route predictions etc.

What was good about Paikea

PredictWind and IridiumGo were both fantastic. At times, in the middle of our journey, we calculated that the nearest people to us would be the astronauts in the International Space Station when they flew overhead. To be able to check weather regularly, update our routing, and keep friends and family updated with events along the way in such a remote part of the world was exceptional.

The lock on the mainsail worked well and everyone on board knows how the system works. The only reason we have to go forward of the cockpit is when we need to put the mainsail on the lock.

Reefing lines worked the way they were supposed to. We were happy to see there was no chafe or wearing at any of the reef points in the sail where we had put the spectra covers.

The sail-ability of Paikea was fantastic. The ability to adapt the boat to the conditions and situations of missing rudders, squalls, reef in and out, dagger boards up and down and various sails in our inventory to chose from made sailing across the Atlantic on Paikea a pleasure. We could change things to balance the boat, make it go faster or slow it down as need be. For us it is a safety aspect of the the boat to be able to change the setup on Paikea to suit the current conditions.

Our treat was to purchase good red/white head torches. We can’t recommend the RAW Exposure head torches enough. Check out our boat systems page for the link.

What was no so good about Paikea

Not having a sail between the A3 and jib. This was our oversight as we anticipated a much lighter airs crossing and did not thing we needed a Screecher type sail.

We definitely need to sort the shading on the solar panels and get more solar panels for on the cockpit roof. We really underestimated how much the shading would impact on our operation of Paikea.

Wind deck slapping. We have identified that we have steps in the wing deck which lead down into our hulls. Depending on the weather and waves conditions, these step faces would hit the waves and make a lot of noise. We will look at putting some sort of fairing to improve the entry of the step into the wave.

What lessons did we learn?

While Paikea is not perfect, it is a well performing catamaran that has proven to be a great option for us. We have identified that we need some sort of cross over sail between our A3 and our Jib. We also know that the rudder blades, we made for Paikea are a huge improvement on what was there originally. We know that we are on the right track for rudder shape and will design something along these lines for Paikea.

Our next project will be building new rudders (possibly with winglets) for Paikea in the Caribbean!