![]() “A good inspection and rig check before departure is a must, and we rig for heavy weather with our smaller headsail on the furler and have the staysail ready to go. Skip Novak’s Storm Sailing Series features a run through some of the essential deck checks.ĭan Bower also emphasises these basic checks. Preparing your boat for everything from flat calms to gales is paramount, and after a lazy season in the Caribbean everything needs to be checked over. So when you consider the outlay for an expensive downwind sail inventory, for example new spinnaker or Parasailor, don’t forget the good condition mainsail with perhaps a fourth reef and the strong staysail that will be just as invaluable on the way back. Given this, you’ll need to think from the outset about your upwind and stronger wind sails, and your yacht preparations for the route across to Europe. Make regular checks on sails and rigging, looking particularly for chafe damage. According to a survey by Jimmy Cornell: ‘every year approximately 1,200 boats cross the Atlantic from the Cape Verdes, Canaries and Madeira along the north- east tradewinds route.’ Yachts mainly stop here in May and June and around half have come direct from a Caribbean island, while a majority of others arrive via the staging post of Bermuda. Nevertheless, each year, around 1,000 yachts arrive in Horta en route to Europe (the total was 1,232 in 2015, to be exact). These options, once the preserve of big motorboat owners and superyachts, are gaining popularity with mainstream cruisers, especially the time-pressed – in fact, a couple of owners I interviewed at the Caribbean 600 this year had their yachts shipped out from Europe and had booked them back by ship later in the season. You could, of course, always take the easy way out – remember that old saw that nothing goes to windward quite like a 747! You could get your boat sailed home by a delivery crew, or shipped back to the Mediterranean or northern Europe. What should you weigh up in your crew and boat preparations and which route and strategy is best? The road home can be more testing, but it is also varied, and planning for it should ideally shape your preparations from the time you plan to leave home for a season in the sun. While most people focus on crossing the Atlantic from Europe to the Caribbean, the voyage back to Europe or the US east coast is equally important – in some ways more so. Then, with summer returning to the northern latitudes, crews begin the return leg of their migration back home. By early summer the peak Caribbean season is coming to a close, ushered out by a fusillade of big regattas.
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