Thanks so much Richard! Turned this on the other day but really wasn't expecting anyone to use it, very generous. What sort of boat are you buying? Delighted you've found my videos inspiring
Well done Mark! brilliant achievement and show what can be done with a good wee boat. very enjoyable video and looking forward to part 2. Enjoy the Caribbean and Happy new year.
Hi Mark, we are following your Ireland sailings and the Atlantic crossing progress. Great, absolutely amazing. I think I can judge that. I have been sailing for years and still am. Happy New Year. Fair winds. ...
Iv no experience or knowledge of sailing, but really enjoying these vids.... The sense of adventure is palpable, and your honesty and humility is very refreshing, thanks for sharing 🙌⛵👍
Fantastic achievement. Really well done. I've followed you from video 1 and watched your progress (distance and YT views!) and imagine (as a novice sailor which I am) what a challenge this is and how great it must feel to have made the voyage single-handed. Be blessed!
I've never crossed an ocean let alone solo but it seems like beautiful sailing conditions and you should smile and enjoy it a little more. But I also understand the fear of ocean sailing. ⛵️ Love your videos and that square transom with transom hung rudder sailboat.
You are living the dream there feller. My dream at least. I need to pluck up the courage to do the same before I get too old. In the meantime I'll live vicariously through people like you . Fair winds and following seas. I'll use this as an excuse to toast your next voyage with a glass of Paddy's:-)
Great video. People don't realize how exciting it is and to have that crazy rollercoaster of emotions when departing. Looks like a fine vessel, the halmatic. I sail a halcyon 27, but smaller but similar design.
Some stunning skies there Mark. I'd love to hear your thoughts on sleep some day. I struggle with getting 'deep sleep', but am usually well rested with dozing. Looking forward to part 2.
Thanks, I'll definitely talk in detail about it at some stage. In general I do fine with napping but the longer it goes, the harder a time I have identifying when I'm under rested. I need to recognize the signed better, mood swings, hallucinations, etc.
Back home, this is a one year deal, Ireland - Caribbean - Ireland. Will be single handing from here to the Azores and from the Azores to Ireland which will probably be hairier than anything I've done so far, but end goal is back to Ireland
Enjoy your videos Mark . I live in Donegal , and currently starting my sailing adventures with my first lesson this weekend. Can I ask what is your boat and what size?
Excellent hope you have a good first lesson and fair winds! Sapphira is a Halmatic 30, I'll probably do a boat tour video soon if I can ever get her tidy 🤣
Just enjoy yourself brother! Practice with your sexton and bearing compasses. Enjoy the ride , your not missing anything here! 😂😂😂 Fair winds my friend✌🏾❤️🤣🍻
Thanks! My approach to sleep is to take 15 minute naps for the first night or two until well clear of land, traffic separation schemes, etc, then gradually increase the amount of sleep until I'm sleeping for up to an hour. I rely on radar and ais alarms to wake me if there is traffic incoming. Across the Atlantic, there was pretty much no traffic the entire way, so by the middle I was sleeping pretty well. Then the wind picked up in the second half and it was too uncomfortable to get good sleep
Great Job, keeping the wee Halmatic moving. Managed to get mine across Belfast lough last year, who knows maybe someday ill take her on greater adventures. lol looking forward to the next one.
Thanks! I got third party insurance from Edward William. I had a look around for comprehensive insurance but nobody would even quote. The third party is needed in Spain and Portugal for marinas but not elsewhere from a paperwork point of view. It was about 300 for the year and covered all the places I was visiting.
9:40 I hear the frustration in your voice. But let me tell you about fretting over one's situation: It was 1976. I was 17, hitch hiking alone through Europe and basically broke. I'd been standing on a road outside Hamburg for 4 hours, and didn't get a lift. The rain had been tipping down the entire time and I was drenched. Frustrated negative self-talk started and I began thinking "WTF am I doing here, in the pissing rain, when all my friends back home in Nova Scotia are enjoying summer vacation and partying and getting laid...and here am I, on the side of some fecking highway in fecking Germany hitch hiking, in the fecking rain, poor bloody me, moan moan moan" and then just two minutes later I started laughing at how stupidly I had been thinking, and literally repeated the same thoughts, out loud, "Here am I, on the side of some fecking highway! In fecking Germany!! Hitch hiking, in the fecking rain!!! None of my friends are doing anything even close to this level of cool." and in an instant I changed it up, just like that, and it was awesome...I wouldn't have been anywhere else in the world right a that moment. (Well, other than getting laid, lol...when you're 17 that type of thing seems important.) It's all a matter of perspective.
Hehe, absolutely right, I actually had a bit of video where I comment that here I am moaning about being in the middle of the Atlantic alone when loads of my friends are in offices, or freezing cold in Ireland, or otherwise not doing anything quite like this. I cut it as it sounded a bit dismissive of others' life choices but agree that having a good word with yourself in these situations to reframe the narrative is a great idea!
The problem of sleep when solo sailing on ocean passages : all day long, day after day you never see a single boat so why would there be one at night? My point is that out of shipping channels the risk of collision is extremely small, so at night I sleep for however long I stay sleeping, which usually is a couple of hours at a time. I wake and do my checks and go back to sleep. Compare the risk of being hit with the risk of making dumb decisions because of sleep deprivation. And how many non -solo passage makers admit they slept on their watch, not intentionally but they woke up after an hour or more of unintended sleeping???
I agree with all of this 100% from my experience so far (which is fairly limited). Because this was my first multi week ocean crossing, i didn't know what to expect in relation to traffic, specifically other sailing boats. I had almost zero worries about shipping, but was concerned, leaving from Mindelo and aiming for the middle of the windwards, that I would encounter far more sailing boats. I imagined other small boats like me, with possibly limited power and AIS often not turned on to conserve power, and popped my head up at least every hour or two most of the time. As it turned out I saw almost no one and next time I'll be sleeping more soundly, for longer periods of time. Thanks for your comment David.
@@SoloSailingSapphira Like you on my first solo ocean voyage I tried to wake every half hour but quickly started to feel ghastly, my mind was foggy and the whole adventure was becoming a nightmare. Longer sleeps expose us to a tiny increase in risk but its still a very small risk, but solo sailing is about the challenge of confronting and managing many other risks besides that one, and the huge satisfaction of overcoming them all. BTW my yacht is Sapphire Breeze!😄😄
Looks like zora is doing the crossing now, maybe another day or so to go, They have gone quiet on RU-vid though haven’t heard an update from them in a while
Hi, it's a hard question to answer and depends on whether you want to do it on your own boat or with someone else, single handed or not, and on your tolerance for risk. The actual Atlantic crossing is a relatively easy passage, just long. Getting to the canaries or Verdes from northern Europe can be more challenging, especially crossing Biscay. And getting back from the Carribbean if that's the plan, is more challenging again. There are a lot of intermediate steps involved here; learning to sail is straightforward enough (do a course, ring your local yacht club and see if anyone needs crew, etc) but buying your first boat, kitting it out for long distance passage making, etc, there are more options and opinions and no one size fits all. Once you know how to sail and have your own boat you can start planning passages, and there's loads of goals here to achieve, your first overnight sail, first single handed passage if that's your thing, an extended passage of cruising (sail around Ireland, or the UK or cross the channel, cross the north sea, etc). I'd say from first buying a boat to crossing the Atlantic, cruising every summer in northern Europe or the med, doing some courses, crewing for others to learn faster, etc you could look into an Atlantic crossing after 5 years in my opinion. Lots will do it quicker than that, I know a guy that crossed on his own boat with very minimal experience, but risk increases as you don't know what you dont know.
IF? I was once the proud owner of Folkbåt no. 29 :-).Tremendous little boats, had some really good times with her. They'll look after you that's for sure. Ha det gott!
Hi Carlos, I was insured third party only, by Edward William. I looked into getting comprehensive insurance but I didn't find anyone willing to even quote me for what I had planned. The only reason I went for insurance in the first place was that in some places it is a requirement for entering a marina. Spain and Portugal were the only places that asked for it. Incidentally Edward William just wrote to me to say they're pulling out of the EU market.
I don't! I made it to Martinique, I just post in a few parts as it takes me a while to edit and also no one wants to listen to 45 straight minutes of my musings
I think it would have given me something to do which would have taken my mind off the lack of wind. Honestly though I think I'd never be able to relax while it was up, even an asymmetric. If I had a passage with even more calm weather then I'd be wanting it, but trade wind sailing I'll take a simple wing on wing any day
Well Done I have seen you before I think hope to follow you do you have a subscribe site would like to subscribe what boat are you saying looks like a Nicholson
Thanks Thomas, you can subscribe here on RU-vid and I'm on Instagram as well, solosailingsapphira. She's a Halmatic 30, very similar to the Nicholsons. Long keel, solid little boat, built in 1979 on the Hamble, southern England.
@@SoloSailingSapphira I luv what ur doing keep up the video s love it 2004 i wanted to sell the house buy a boat a live a board now im blind and in a wheel chair mark keep up the vids i listen to them.
That's really amazing Alan I'm really glad you're enjoying them! I do talk a fair bit 😁 I have a satellite tracker that lets me message people and allows family to track my progress etc, but I don't have a proper sat phone.
Would like to hear more about daily running this boat. Your light weight psychology is bit much. How are you eating, surviving. What are you thoughts. Get some help. Be more informative. How about predictwind?
Yeah I have a preventer on my main pretty much all the time on my Atlantic passage. Thanks for the tip re the headsail and rolly reaching! I tend to mess with it quite a bit to find the balance between speed and rollyness but it may have been out to far on parts of the passage for sure.
