How to sail an Atlantic circuit

Confined to quarters during the pandemic, many sailors are itching to slip their lines and sail for the sun. Elaine Bunting explains exactly how to break free and sail an Atlantic circuit

- Elaine Bunting

Just as the island of Hiddensee drew across the wake of the boat, Malin Andersson took up her camera and shot a video. When she looks at it now, a late summer scene from the Baltic coast of Germany, she remembers it as the instant she knew for certain she was right to think of leaving work to go cruising.

Malin and her partner Kaj Maass, both from Sweden and aged in their late twenties, met as students and formed a plan to take a year off before starting a family. After years of scrimping, they bought a Bavaria 38 and renamed her Cross Ocean. With the last tiny island of a summer cruise behind them, they began to prepare a transatlantic voyage and a year of adventure.

‘From then, we have never had a moment of regret about setting off,’ she says.

Each year, hundreds of yachtsmen of all ages set out across the Atlantic. Some have only a few months of freedom, others plan to cruise indefinitely. Their ambitions shape diverse choices in terms of boat design and preparations. Here, we look at some of the biggest considerations if that is your goal, too.

WHAT’S THE RIGHT BOAT?

A good place to start might be with the question: can I do an Atlantic circuit in the yacht I have now? In most cases, the answer is yes. Almost any well-prepared yacht of 30ft and upwards can tackle the downwind crossing, and indeed there is no reason why an even smaller boat can’t do it successfully. People have crossed in Folkboats; the legendary American sailor Webb Chiles sailed across the Pacific in a converted 24ft dayboat, and some masochistic adventurers have crossed oceans in micro yachts not even long enough for them to stretch out in.