(Editor’s note:Tom Hay and Dawn Biggs are Americans, personal friends from our hometown of Louisville, Ky. This is Pt . 4 of their adventure sailing across the Atlantic from the Caribbean to Europe.Jump to Pt. 1 here, Pt. 2 here and Pt. 3 here.)
We could have chosen an easier way to cross the Atlantic and begin our expat life in Europe. We chose to sail there in a small, three-decades-old boat named Kairos. It wasn’t exactly an impulsive decision. It had been our dream for 15 Covid-interrupted years.
First we found a sturdy, affordable boat in the Caribbean. We sold our home in the United States and for the next four years lived aboard her, accumulating 6,000 nautical miles while cruising from one end of the Caribbean Sea to the other.
But the centerpiece of the dream was always sailing across the Atlantic and see Europe. So we set sail from Puerto Rico.
Day 18:
1724 nautical miles. Drifting.
We are fortunate to sail during an era when technologies make things easier for us. GPS lets us know exactly where we are and the system of Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (epirb) links us to help via satellites in case of a catastrophe aboard.
And then there is Starlink. During our first years of sailing, if we were away from land we would be essentially cut off from communication. But when Elon Musk began littering the skies with his satellites, cruisers figured out that the same technology Starlink sold for camper vans would work for us. Thus with great hesitation we bought into Starlink.
It has been a game changer. It means we can get weather information throughout our voyage. For a passage this long, with unforeseen weather fronts moving across our path, this is an important safety issue. It allows us to talk about routing with more experienced sailors and problem solve systems with people who know.
And in a way we did not anticipate, it has linked us to a whole community of our friends and family as they follow us on our journey. We have been touched by the people who want to hear how it is going and offer their support. In Georgia two of our granddaughters even plot our position every day on a chart.
It doesn’t take a village to make this voyage, but it feels wonderful to know there is one out there watching.
Captain Dawn
Day 20:
1957 nautical miles. Winds 12 knots.
Every boat must have a captain, and on Kairos that captain is Dawn. It took us a while to understand what that means. I was learning to sail, while Dawn had several years of experience, but that was a long time ago and we have always been a team.
In an emergency, there is no one in the world I would rather have beside me than Dawn. When things get tense, we have an uncanny way of understanding what we each must do and then trust each other utterly.
But when it comes to the daily routine of sailing – studying the winds and making decisions about headings and sail plans – well Dawn is better suited to the task. And when decisions have to be made there needs to be an understanding of who will make the final decision.
In an emergency, there is no one in the world I would rather have beside me than Dawn. When things get tense we have an uncanny way of understanding what we each must do and then trust each other utterly.
I can sail the boat, but she can SAIL the boat.
And when decisions have to be made there needs to be an understanding of who will make the final decision. Captain Dawn. Kairos is a better sailing boat because she, not I, is the captain. So when the winds return it is good that she is on watch. She saw what was happening and set the sails at the earliest moment and started us back on our way east.
After a meandering drift of three days, today we make 161 nautical miles in 24 hours. It is good to sail again.
Day 22:
2202 nautical miles. Wind 10 knots.
One of the experiences of sailing on a small boat is how close you are to the water. We feel every small wave and see the little ripples the winds create on the surface of the water just a meter away from where we sit. I can’t believe it is the same experience on a much larger ship.
We have also begun to see Portuguese Man Of Wars floating by. At first they looked to Dawn like plastic water bottles littering the surface and we teased that maybe Sea Ya in front of us was tossing them in the ocean. But soon it becomes clear that they are creatures and one more reason to be careful not to fall overboard.
For some reason I have been thinking a lot about the famous voyages of Christopher Colombus and the ships he used to sail these same waters. Like most American schoolchildren, I grew up learning the names of his first three ships, “Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria”. (But we never learned, I might add, the names of the indigenous tribes like the Taino, who he found when he arrived in the Caribbean.)
The Nina, I’ve discovered, was just 8 feet longer than Kairos at 50 feet (15.24 meters). Her name refers to her small size, though as a type of ship called a caravel, she was much higher off the water and broader (16 feet). Most remarkable to me, quietly ruminating alone in the cockpit while Dawn is below cooking, is that there were 24 men crowded aboard the tiny Nina. How different this voyage would be if Kairos were wall-to-wall people!
Day 24:
2430 nautical miles. Winds 24-30 knots. Sails reefed. Banging into 3-4 meter waves.
Kairos is a Moody 425, built in 1990 on the south coast of Great Britain. In the 70’s and 80’s there had been an explosion of sailing yachts being built for the leisure market, some of which were not very seaworthy. After some rather notorious disasters, ship builders began to rely upon what was called a Lloyds of London Registry. To have it means that a boat’s construction meets the highest standards of seaworthiness.
We have the Lloyds of London certificate for Kairos, and while the standard has been mostly abandoned for pleasure yachts over the years, it shows us one thing – she is a well built, blue water boat. We have seen snotty weather before, and while it isn’t pleasant to experience, we have never had to worry for our safety. Kairos will take care of us. These few days of high winds and seas are not unexpected and we use them to make good time.
By my calculations, we have only 400 nautical miles to go.
Tom Hay, currently establishing residency in Portugal, is from the American south, spending most of his adulthood in Virginia. In 2019, after 40 years as a Presbyterian minister, he retired and moved with Dawn to the Caribbean to sail. Together he and Dawn have four children and four granddaughters. These girls gave him the name "Pops" and in return he writes them mystery books featuring a clever 10-year-old girl who lives with her father on a sailboat named Kairos.
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