Planning a transatlantic crossing?

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Here is a 24 minute episode from "Distant Shores" on crossing the Atlantic. We left England in the end of November (yikes!!) and stopped at Madeira and the Canaries before crossing the Atlantic over New Years... we did our best to capture life at sea on an ocean passage... downwind sailing, flying fish, watch-keeping, cooking, celebrating New Years! Hopefully for anyone contemplating the trip it might help show what its like...

The film is up on both Vimeo and YouTube

http://vimeo.com/distantshorestv/ds60

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlnQayGO__M

Fair Winds

Paul & Sheryl Shard
 
Hum, i get a bit irritated at how some people put up their own first time on a long passage is suddenly advertised as a "how to" video. In this video the participants also discovered that you can buy fresh fruit! In shops!

For the record, New Year starts at GMT and everything else is local time/daylight adjustments. Those winches should have a "dead man's loop" and not be empty on the winch alone, nor loaded with messy line. Preventers should be (springy) nylon, not braided line, unless you like risking snapped boom.

I quite liked the way that they started off with doing video wearing lifejackets, and a week later, yerknow, bollox to that - even at night.

Presumably the "we have no fuel left" was another"how not to do this..." signal as one approaches land, hum.

Beware beards.
 
I enjoyed the video thanks. I would like to see more technical detail, how you kept the batteries charged. The daily power consumption. It looked like electric steering, another power hungry module.

Do you carry a spinnaker?

A tour round the boat, for me, would be interesting as I am planning my first long passage.

What was the long distance radio you have? How did you get the latest weather information? How much water did you drink, did you have a water maker?

These are the types of questions buzzing around in my head.

cliff
 
I enjoyed the video thanks. I would like to see more technical detail, how you kept the batteries charged. The daily power consumption. It looked like electric steering, another power hungry module.

Do you carry a spinnaker?

A tour round the boat, for me, would be interesting as I am planning my first long passage.

What was the long distance radio you have? How did you get the latest weather information? How much water did you drink, did you have a water maker?

These are the types of questions buzzing around in my head.

cliff

I guess you'll have to buy the DVD ;)
 
Hum, i get a bit irritated at how some people put up their own first time on a long passage is suddenly advertised as a "how to" video.

It was our fourth transatlantic crossing... and this was stated in the video.

Are you really in the Caribbean?
 
Hi Cliffdale,

Glad you liked it. We charged the batteries with the generator - run twice a day for 90 minutes. You are right the autopilot uses a lot but the Southerly is pretty easy to steer. We do not carry a spinnaker. We had a Schenker watermake, and an ICOM 802 radio and used that to get weather...

Fair winds!

Paul
 
Enjoyable film - thanks for putting it on YT. More techy stuff would be good even though it might not appeal to your larger audience don't let that put you off;)

I'm glad you showed the good and the bad/frustrating bits its good to see the balance, and how you choose to do things without being judgmental on others.

I'm in the early stages of planning some trips for the future (dreaming?) so this sort of stuff is great
 
Thanks Barbican, we are making our newest shows with more "techy stuff" as you say. The shows do need to appeal to "non-sailing" audience but our main reason for doing them is to try to give a flavour for sailors (or aspiring sailors) who will actually do it! And its a VERY LOT of work to just put together one show. So we appreciate the kind words :-)

Paul
 
Fourth transat makes it more surprising that you ran out of fuel. Whatever.

Yes, I'm really in the Caribbean.

That's your problem? Are you always combative with your posting? It makes me have a vision of a guy on a 40 year old piece of **** sailboat sitting near derelict in Simpson Bay lagoon using free wifi to bitch about everything others are doing while doing nothing but drinking cheap rum and cokes.
 
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That's your problem? Are you always combative with your posting? It makes me have a vision of a guy on a 40 year old piece of **** sailboat sitting near derelict in Simpson Bay lagoon using free wifi to bitch about everything others are doing while doing nothing but drinking cheap rum and cokes.

tcm at one time had a Leopard 69 motorboat or something like ? Now a round the world cat I believe.
 
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