Mindelo to Barbados

Well we have now officially crossed “the pond”. After 20 days at sea we pulled into Port St. Charles near the northern end of Barbados on 28 January. It is quite an indescribable feeling to have managed to achieve a life times ambition but we have done it. The passage itself was mostly OK though there were some frustrations. In particular, the first week or so was frustratingly calm with one dreadful night when we only managed 12 miles in 12 hours!

Oddly, we did not feel the same sense of pre passage tension as we did when leaving the Canaries for the Cabo Verde islands. Others were also leaving for various destinations. Quite a lot were heading to Brazil. A lot were heading to the Caribbean as were were. One boat was following one of the ideas I looked at which was to go to Surinam and then up to the Caribbean. I think this made it all feel more routine for us to be leaving on a long passage – the longest yet for us by a big margin.

Still, off we went with a very nice send off from Chris and Keren of Moontide. We enjoyed the acceleration zone between Sao Vincente and Sao Antao but then ran into the wind shadow behind Sao Antao which set the pattern for the first week of the voyage. Audrey experienced strong winds on her first night watch but this was an affect of Sao Antao we think as the wind then went determinedly light for the next six days. On one dreadful night we only managed 12 miles in 12 hours. Still, the wind did eventually fill in though it gave us one day of rough weather to remind us that this was still the Atlantic and should not be trifled with. The winds were not gale force at least and it was not nearly as uncomfortable as the gale bound days on the trip from the Canaries to Cabo Verde.

As we left the Cabo Verde archipelago we were passed by this oil rig. We had seen it anchored in the bay and assumed it would be towed by a tug but it is in fact self propelled!

This proves that certain post copernical theories about the structure of the earth are not in fact correct and the Flat Earth Society has a valid point. Alternatively, it could just be that we reached the edge of the Africa chart on the plotter.

After that the winds more or less settled down though we did have an awful lot of squalls. On some days they would be as frequent as one an hour. The wind would gust up to around thirty knots a few minutes in advance of the rain front. It would then pelt with rain for ten minutes followed by the wind staying at 25 knots plus for a further ten minutes. Some of them would suck all the wind out behind them and you would have half an hour or so of rolling in 12 knots or less of wind before the wind filled back in ready for the next one. The main trouble with these was that we would have to put the washboards in and close the cabin up entirely. Boats are good at keeping water out of the cabin and we have a spray hood but it is of course designed with the idea that spray will come from forward. This made the cabin rather stuffy but then with water being scarce washing was a bit of a luxury and we were really not at our freshest so it was not too bad.


We started making good daily runs after the first week and our record was 130 miles which is positively flying for a heavy old lady such as Sarah Giddings. 120 miles became the norm which allowed our little noon crosses on the chart to be satisfyingly wide spread on the chart.

After a week, the shipboard routine became very well established and land based worries seemed very remote. The main problem was to try to make interesting food as our fresh supplies dwindled away and we had to rely on tins more and more. We also learnt that we had not made sufficient provision for snacks except for some nut bars. However, we never want to see another SuperSol chocolate chip nut bar again! By the end all was had of fresh food were onions which keep forever and a few drying oranges. Sadly, we had got some excellent carrots in Mindelo market but owing to a lack of faith in their keeping ability we did not get nearly enough. We should also have got some more green tomatoes as they keep very well as well. Oh well, all lessons for the next trip.

The final approach was quite exciting. By chance we had got perfect timing and reached our waypoint an hour before sun up. We first saw the loom of lights around midnight which resolved themselves into quite a large town to the south of North Point. As you would expect, North Point is the northernmost point on the island. The Bajans like giving their coastal features obvious names. There is a South Point at the southern tip of the island. The swell slowly diminished as we slowly headed south to Port St. Charles six miles south of North Point.

We saw plenty of wild life. Lots of dolphins would visit us fairly often. We also got “buzzed” by a small whale, a bottlenose whale I think as it looked like a large dolphin. We would see lots of small birds skimming around the waves. We saw these all the way across so speculated that they must live more or less permanently out on the ocean. We also saw thousands of flying fish. Almost every day we would hear a dull smack and the next morning would find a small corpse on deck somewhere. We did “catch” a couple of larger ones but didn't try eating them. Here in Barbados, battered flying fish is a local delicacy so we will try them then. I did try and get a picture of the flying fish and birds but they never went flying when I had the camera out of course.

Our first view of Barbados - in daylight!

We were of course pretty tired as neither of us had got much sleep in the last night at sea which rather tempered our celebratory spirit though it still felt great to tie up and go through the clearance procedures here. All the staff, health, immigration and harbour authorities were very friendly as we filled in numerous forms with nearly identical information. We still felt pretty good at having made it though!

For the yottie geeks amongst the legions of readers: we logged 1775 miles through the water. Our chart plot made for 2000 miles exactly and the plotter reckoned it was 2020 miles to go. As you can see, we had a favourable current nearly all the way. Our tactic was to head WSW until we reached 15°N north and then run along that till around 800 miles short of landfall where we would start edging south until we reached 13° 21' N. As it happened, the north equatorial current takes a northerly trend near the west so we struggled to get our southing and had to gybe on the last night to get sufficiently far south. Still, we made it. We used twin poled out head sails alternating between the working jib and the storm jib to leeward poled out on a snap shackle on the end of the main boom while the genoa was poled out to windward with the spinnaker pole. This is the simplest of downwind rigs and is not as efficient as others. If we do this again, I will get a second inner forestay fitted and hanks on the storm jib along with a larger sail. This will make the leeward sail set better and allow more room to sail “by the lee” where you are further off dead downwind than we were able to manage. The perfect rig would also have a second spinnaker pole for the leeward sail but that makes for quite significant expense!

Our downwind twins rig.

We have had 24 hours to catch up on sleep now and the reality of what we have achieved is starting to sink in. At one level, we have not achieved much. Hundreds of boats make the same trip every year in both larger and smaller boats, though we would not want to do it in anything smaller than our beloved Sarah G. Over the years, tens of thousands have done the same trip. Lots of others have done much more ambitious passages as well though we don't have any desire to emulate them with something such as a circumnavigation. We do feel pretty good about it and for me, it is the achievement of a lifelong dream to sail across an ocean. Enough navel gazing though!