Blue water cruiser Kate Ashe-Leonard looks back at the preparation, trepidation and exhilaration of her first Atlantic crossing
We are at anchor in Fiji’s pristine waters and tropical heat with kiteboarders and wing-foilers dashing by, but we’ve put our own gear away. Instead, we sit behind our laptops, sipping our coffees while analysing the weather and making departure plans. It has been gusting relentlessly over 30kts for weeks. We are itching to leave but we know it is wiser to wait. We have just two more passages until we complete our transit across the Pacific and arrive in Australia via Vanuatu.
As we prepare ourselves for the miles ahead, I think back to the first time we crossed an ocean. What an adventure that was. Out there on the Atlantic, surfing its swell, being pushed along by the wind, and catching fish. The replenishing sight of the sun rising, the magic of sailing into the sunset at the close of each day and the silence of most nights except for the slight hum of the rigging and the whirring of waves. No light pollution, a sky full of stars, dolphins dancing in phosphorescence stirred up our wake. We face these next ocean passages with similar feelings of apprehension and excitement for what is to come – the unknown. It was this first transatlantic passage that made us certain we wanted to continue sailing around the world and chasing adventure.
Lanzarote
I had been nervous for days. The waiting, the preparations, the sense of one-way-ness about sailing across an ocean; away from Europe, from family and everything I knew. It was these things too that filled my mind with possibility, and I took my nerves as a sign – this was something to be conquered, something really worth doing. The wind barrelled through Marina Rubicon, Lanzarote reaching as high as 45kts. We watched from the safety of our cockpit on Polaris tied up to her berth as two monohulls dragged across the bay just in front of the marina at an alarming pace. We leapt to our feet and ran towards the end of the dock to decide if there was something we could do. A dinghy sped towards one of the boats closely followed by another. Both owners were quickly back onboard. The sea out there was a mess of white water, the wind was so powerful many sailors in the marina had removed their sails. It had been like this for days and days as we waited for a weather window for the first leg of our Atlantic crossing to Mindelo, on the island of Sao Vicente in the Cape Verde islands.
Crew Arrival
