I first sailed across the Atlantic 22 years ago.  

Dawn and I left Lanzarote on December 24th 2004 on our pride and joy, Erika II.  She was long keeled, cutter-rigged, heavy displacement monohull in the Colin Archer style. 42 feet on the deck, plus an 8 foot bowsprit.  On the 15th January 2005 the green hills of Antigua finally emerged from that big blue horizon. We sat on the bow, drinking champagne at 9am with a pod of dolphins frolicking below.  It was my 40th birthday.

I had fulfilled my Atlantic ambition. I remember it as a very enjoyable crossing, a three week holiday at sea for Dawn and I. (Although you might check that with Dawn.) 

Six knots is a pretty relaxed pace for fishing, baking bread, drinking Spanish wine, rolling down the trades with our boomed staysail one side and a genoa on the other.  

We were at sea for 22 days.

Almost exactly 10 years later, we set off again from Lanzarote, in our newly hatched Outremer 51.  This time we took the southern route via Mindelo in the Cape Verde islands.  Travelling a bit faster than Erica II, Escapade sailed from Mindelo to Antigua in 10 days, arriving 6th January 2015.

I enjoyed both trips, and they could not really have been more different.  

Well another decade has passed, and it seemed the Atlantic was calling again.

Our good friends Alex and Arabella launched their beautiful new Outremer 52 ‘Outlaw’ in 2025 and I was invited to sail on their crossing to the Caribbean.

A combination of circumstances including an Indonesian wet season and an English wedding, meant that I was on the right side of the world to be able to join them.

Escapade is safely tied up in Lombok (I hope) while the NW Monsoon blows through. 

To be honest I had mixed feelings about this trip.  I try to avoid sailing at night on Escapade these days, unless it’s really necessary.  I find night watches a bit tiring now.

Yet here I am signing up for two weeks at sea..

Dawn and I flew to Cape Verde to meet Outlaw.  

Stepping aboard for the first time, she seems very familiar, but a bit bigger than Escapade.  The length, beam, draft, freeboard, all only slightly expanded, but the boat seems much more substantial.  The living area has very clever sliding doors which disappear into the bulkheads, leaving a vast open saloon/galley/cockpit area, which on Outlaw has the ambience of a Balearic beach club.  Alex and Arabella have brought their own style to the boat.

Escapade feels positively spartan in comparison.  On Outlaw all the winches are powered, winch handles barely used.  I could get used to the Outlaw style, barista coffee, even a projector and screen for outdoor movie nights.

We sailed from Sal to Boa Vista for a few days, where Alex and I enjoyed some fun waves to wing around on.  Outlaw has even more toys on board than Escapade.

Then an overnight sail to Sao Vicente, where we tied up in Mindelo to take on final provisions and a crew change.  Dawn jumped ship and the new crew arrived.  Brian and Lizzie are waiting for their own Outremer 52 to be delivered next year, and keen to gain some experience on a similar boat.

In 2014 Mindelo seemed like a remote African outpost.  It’s now a very popular yachting port and Atlantic departure point, the place was buzzing with boats all about to set sail.

We loaded fresh provisions and ran all the forecast models several times a day.  They all looked pretty good, but with some big patches of light wind north and south of our track.  I don’t have too much faith in any forecasts beyond 5 days, but the models kept playing an animation for us that showed a moving band of 20 knot trades that could blow us all the way across the Atlantic.  If we could catch it, and stay in it.

The first obstacle when you try to sail west from Mindelo are mountains of the neighbouring island Sto Antao.  This high volcanic mass casts a wind shadow 50 miles long, but only about 8 miles thick, so we motored straight across that and into the trades.  Then a full main and gennaker pulled us along slightly north of our rhum line to get firmly in to that wind band.  Winds close to 20 kts and our boat speed on a broad-reach solidly in double figures.  So far this was all very familiar to me, we practised a bit of down-wind reefing and had some exhilarating surfs down the windswell. 

After a couple of days of that, it seemed that we were able to turn left a bit and ride our patch of favourable breeze dead downwind, all the way to Tobago.

Alex has done a great deal of research on the rig options for sailing a catamaran straight downwind.  (This is all new to me, when we last did this in 2014 the advice was to sail the angles to maintain boat speed.)  Now there are several options to go dead downwind and Alex’s rig of choice is a furling twin headsail by North Sails.  This sail was something of a revelation.  From the moment it was unfurled, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that we didn’t touch it for a week.  We dropped the main into it’s bag and that was all the sailing done!  The autopilot steered straight downwind and we arrived in Tobago a week later.  To call this rig low maintenance would be an understatement.  Once that sail was set, the crew were only really needed to keep a look out for slower yachts in danger of being run down by a galloping Outlaw.  It was ridiculously easy, but that wasn’t the most extraordinary thing about this sail.  I had always believed that sailing before the wind was slower and rollier than hoisting an assymetric and blasting off down the broad-reach.  Well forget that. This sail pulled us along day and night at such a speed, if you went any faster nobody would be able to sleep.  The boat was happily surfing down swells and regularly topping 20 kts boat speed, while the robot steered to a 180 true-wind angle.  Remarkable.  Mainsail in it’s bag, no reefing.  What a way to travel.

With barely any sailing to be done, the crew were kept busy with Alex’s mandatory morning HIIT circuit workouts, or Arabella’s yoga class.  Then the planning, cooking and eating of three square meals.  Sundowners on the roof, dinner seated round the table while Outlaw surfed westward.  We all enjoyed the days as Outlaw gobbled up the miles.  The night watches began after dinner, 2100 to 0700 is ten hours, so with 5 crew we had the luxury of a mere 2 hour night watch each, and a glorious full moon to watch the ocean flashing past. 

Technically that meant that we could all have plenty of sleep but at those speeds it wasn’t always easy.  When we’re going that quick on Escapade, Dawn calls it ‘Crash Bang Wallop’ sailing.  We generally slow the boat down at night to get some sleep.  But Alex was very focussed on that boat speed and the daily runs, there would be no slowing down. So we lay in our bunks while the roller coaster romped through the night.  Earplugs helped.

We failed to catch a fish, I blamed the boat speed.  Anyway I wasn’t really that keen on dealing with a lively specimen on the aft steps at those speeds.  I did collect flying fish from the trampolines most mornings, which were scaled, filleted and fried, if big enough.   

The miles flashed by, after a mere 4 nights at sea we were throwing the halfway party!

There was quite a bit of traffic, we passed ships and yachts day and night, the Marine Traffic screen showed we were in a swarm of vessels out there.  The World ARC had left Mindelo a few days before us.

One morning we started to see clumps of sargasso weed on the surface.  By the afternoon there were big rafts of the stuff, we were sailing through a vast floating field of sargassum.  We started to notice a new vibration on the faster surfs.

Alex poked his GoPro camera down on a pole to check the rudders, which were fine, but look at this.

We had trapped enough sargassum around each saildrive to produce a noticeable juddering at high speeds.  For a few minutes, our twin headsails had to be furled as we stopped the boat to shake off the weed.  The magic twin headsails were quickly re-set, problem solved.  By the next morning the sea was clear, no weed to be seen.

So that mobile patch of wind on the forecast had looked too good to be true.  But it all came true!  We stayed with it as it blew across the ocean, all the way to Tobago.

Outlaw completed the 2,138nm run from Mindelo to Tobago with a final time of 8 days, 23 hours and 45 minutes.  That twin headsail was finally furled and the anchor went down in the turquoise waters of Store Bay.  

The end of an epic crossing, the pleasure of a quiet stationary boat, and the start of a holiday in the Caribbean.

I’m so glad I signed up for that trip!  What a ride. Thanks for having me along Outlaw, I loved it.