Azores to Gibraltar: Sailing Paikea Upwind Across the Atlantic We left Horta on the island of Faial with about a thousand nautical miles between us and Gibraltar, and we weren’t going to get there in a straight line. The plan was to sail up past Terceira, tuck into the eastern side of a high pressure […]
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14 Days at Sea: Arriving in the Azores from Saint Martin By the 15th of June we were still out in the Atlantic, somewhere in that stretch of a long passage where nobody quite knows how many days it’s been but everyone knows exactly how many hours are left. That contradiction is normal on a
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Half-Way to the Azores: Squalls and Reading Rudder Angles Somewhere in the first week out of Saint Martin, the weather told us exactly where we were without needing a chart. Grey skies, proper cold for the first time in months, ominous cloud cover — not Caribbean weather anymore, in any sense. Two reefs in the
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How We Reef Our Mainsail Sailing Downwind Reefing downwind has a reputation for being awkward, and on a lot of boats, it genuinely is. Paikea adds a few of her own complications to that reputation — a mainsail halyard lock, a sticky spot in the mast track from a locking mechanism that was filed in
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Fast in Light Airs: Caribbean to the Azores Some passages start with drama. This one started with a countdown, a somewhat vague sense of “not the Caribbean,” and a weather picture that was changing daily enough that the plan was simply to leave and see what showed up. Saturday, June 3rd, departure finally locked in,
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How to Trim the Jib Upwind on a Catamaran Most people’s relationship with a jib sheet starts and ends with a winch handle — pull it on when you head up, ease it off when you bear away. That gets you moving, but it’s a long way from actually trimming a sail well. Getting real
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