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
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.
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!
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 🙌⛵👍
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. ...
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:-)
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.
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.
Hi, how did the Aries wind vane behave ? I have one, never used it still (only sailed the boat by wind 1 week) and late January we cross the Atlantic if plans go to plan 🙏🏻❤️⛵🏴☠️⚓🌎
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
Nice boat. Don't know what it is but I see a wind generator there (AND its mounted where you can actually service it while under sail). Do you have any solar? Coupla things I noticed.. Tiller steering maybe this is a long keeled boat (lotta ocean crossing cruisers are... safer). I don't see any solar though. And NO spinnaker those things are nothing but a pain in the ass. Also noticed that you're mostly on a reach.
Thanks Lee. I do have a small solar panel, 100w, that and the wind gen kept me mostly topped up in windy west Indies anchorages, and underway in the tropics. Was tight enough for power as I got further north. She's a Halmatic 30, long keeled.
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 🤣
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 UA-cam though haven’t heard an update from them in a while
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.
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!
Just enjoy yourself brother! Practice with your sexton and bearing compasses. Enjoy the ride , your not missing anything here! 😂😂😂 Fair winds my friend✌🏾❤️🤣🍻
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.
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
Single handed, on your own boat, a fair bit. There's a lot of years of preparation that go into getting a boat ready for the passage, and in that time you'll be doing a lot of coastal sailing to see what works and what doesn't.
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.
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 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
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!
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 UA-cam 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.
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
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.
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?
@@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.
Thank you very much for the donation Leon! A lot depends on how the boat is set up and your appetite for work and risk. I've heard people say up to 42 foot, no problem, over that, more difficult. But people single hand 70+ foot racing yachts around the world non stop, so it's possible, but it becomes more of an athletic and sailing skill issue
@@Leonwhu73 I'm in Sligo on the North West coast of Ireland. Sapphira is in Galway, and I've bought another boat, Williwaw, in the South of France. I just got back from my first short cruise on Williwaw, excited to do some more of that.
I am buying my first yacht in October and joining the cruising community. Your content is inspiring.
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 young man! Very well done. That's one item scratched off the bucket list.
Subbed in the first 30 seconds! I love the rawness of this video…thank you!
Awesome soloist Trans Atlantic . This is on our bucket list . Best wishes from Ireland and the crew of Wavedancer
Thanks for sharing your emotions that open with us. Great video. Thanks for taking us along ☀️🌴☮
How get ur ex pos ?
@@Alan13Mac sorry, don't understand what you mean
@@theoldsailmaker6408 i said happy christmas in Irish o
@@Alan13Mac Thanks! I am from Austria, so I did absolutely not understand :))
I think there's a few more people at home dreaming the same dream...
Oooooooh yes!!
I am, since I passed 50’s
I’d love the adventure but open water terrifies me 🫣😂😂
I've just found your channel and I have enjoyed this. I'm looking forward to catching up with the story. I found your honesty really refreshing.
Great video. Congrats on making the dream come true.
Each bit of hourly progress is sweet. Good going.
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.
Thanks so much! Halcyon 27s are lovely boats.
Thanks
Nicely handled, especially how you talk yourself into a keep calm and carry on mentality.
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!
Thanks so much, a lovely comment.
well done !!! what a nice feeling must be leaving Mindel for the Caribbean !! ... Fair winds and Cheers from Muros!!!
Thanks Jesus! Yes amazing feeling for sure!
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 🙌⛵👍
Thanks very much for the kind comment Richard, glad you're enjoying them!
Good on ya mate! What an accomplishment.
Thanks Dave!
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.
Thanks very much Martin! She definitely is a good wee boat. Happy New Year to you too.
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. ...
Thanks Tom! Happy New Year and Fair winds to you too.
Brilliant, regards to your Mum and CONGRATULATIONS to YOU!!!! Happy Christmas sailor
Thanks David, happy Christmas to you too!
I love this video… just popped up in my feed. What a great bonus for NYE 2022
Thanks for sharing and congratulations
Congrats on the crossing Mark! Merry Christmas & I hope Martinique is treating you well. Can't wait for the next video 🙂
Thanks Vanessa! Happy Christmas, loved the pics from yesterday, everyone looked very happy.
I’ve been looking forward to an update. Glad to see it’s gone well!
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:-)
Thank you and fair winds with your future voyages! It's amazing to get out there
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.
Totally take your point, in retrospect I was very sleep deprived and needed to just chill. I'll know for again I hope! Thanks for watching Rory
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.
@@SoloSailingSapphira If you are back in Ireland in 2023 I'll pop over and buy you a beer.
I'll be back, would love to meet for a beer
So looking forward to my future crossing ,your doing good there buddy.
Thanks Alwyn, and fair winds on your voyages!
Well done Mark ,Looking foward the new episodes ,Enjoy the Sun ,
Thanks so much, enjoying it so far!
Do it my man! Very inspirational..... I dont know if I could film myself in these moments..
I use it as a sort of pressure relief and also to talk things through so I remain calmer.
nothing like knowing your on your own! no loving family nor stranger to help you out! welcome to my life
All ahead full
Absolutely, a unique feeling!
What a great achievement - congratuations!
Nice work man! great to hang out in Martinique and see you soon
Thanks Rhys, been great for sure! Looking forward to sailing with you guys
I tip my hat to you.... well done Sir
Very good video.👍👍👍 Have a nice day.😉 Greetings. 😎
Mark, what an amazing trip. I love your commentary
Ah thanks Mick, glad you're enjoying it!
Belated merry Christmas Mark. Safe, healthy and happy new year.❤ Yvonne and John
Thanks guys! Happy Christmas to you too, hope you had a great one
Well done. A really enjoyable account of your journey so far.
Congrats on the successful solo crossing mate. Can't wait to get ours finally started - getting antsy is an understatement haha. ☺️⛵⛵
Thanks Eric! Fair winds and following seas once you get underway!
That boat will mind you. well done.
Thanks Eamonn! She's been great so far
Love this, be great if there was a chronology (or playlist) so we could follow the entire Transatlantic voyage in sequence? thanks
I did put all these in a playlist, should be under my channel page and playlists, solo sailing Sapphira all videos
@@SoloSailingSapphira thanks Mark will check it out!
Well done, thanks for sharing
Thanks for the comment, and thanks for your recent video with the knockdown, I'm an instant fan after seeing it. Fair winds!
@@SoloSailingSapphira Beers on me if we ever cross paths! Sail on!
Nice.
Though I did want to put a length of tubing on your guard rail to stop the main sheet rubbing
Haha, I know it rubs on the sprayhood a bit but I didn't notice it rubbing on guard rail.
Hi, how did the Aries wind vane behave ? I have one, never used it still (only sailed the boat by wind 1 week) and late January we cross the Atlantic if plans go to plan 🙏🏻❤️⛵🏴☠️⚓🌎
I hope all is going well 🎉Happy New Year!
Happy New Year Clemson! All going very well, enjoyed a great new year in Martinique, still recovering!
Excellent video! Can you articulate your approach to sleep on a voyage like this one?
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
Well done mark fantastic.
Thanks Brendan! Feels like a long time since I was in Malahide!
Nice boat. Don't know what it is but I see a wind generator there (AND its mounted where you can actually service it while under sail). Do you have any solar? Coupla things I noticed.. Tiller steering maybe this is a long keeled boat (lotta ocean crossing cruisers are... safer). I don't see any solar though. And NO spinnaker those things are nothing but a pain in the ass. Also noticed that you're mostly on a reach.
Thanks Lee. I do have a small solar panel, 100w, that and the wind gen kept me mostly topped up in windy west Indies anchorages, and underway in the tropics. Was tight enough for power as I got further north. She's a Halmatic 30, long keeled.
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 🤣
Well done 😊
All the best 🎉
Did the Sarogasso weed foul up the wind vane rudder?
Awesome! True champion
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 UA-cam though haven’t heard an update from them in a while
Yes I've been following their progress on Instagram, they post daily with their progress
@@SoloSailingSapphira thanks
Thanks for great video.
Please tell what is your nice boat type and size?
She's a Halmatic 30, 9m long. Thanks for watching Jãnis!
Great content ✅ thanks 🙏
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! They are great boats 🙂
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!
I'm leaving Mindelo 2 weeks behind you. 34ft steel schooner Blue Dragon. Perhaps we'll cross paths one day
I'll keep an eye out for you! Fair winds on your passage.
Just enjoy yourself brother! Practice with your sexton and bearing compasses. Enjoy the ride , your not missing anything here! 😂😂😂 Fair winds my friend✌🏾❤️🤣🍻
Thanks Johnny, I'm hearing you. Totally chilled now and enjoying the Caribbean vibe, in no rush to come home
Great journey. May i ask how you managed insurance for single handed crossings?
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.
What brand/type of boat is this?
She's a Halmatic 30, long keel sloop
great video! looking forward to the next videos. just curious what your plans are? are you sailing the world or going back home after this?
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
What boat are you sailing ? Enjoy
She's a Halmatic 30
Can I ask what boat you are sailing please
She's a Halmatic 30 Craig
Thanks good luck with all your sailing
What's your name? What brand, model, length and year is your sailboat
My name is Mark, she's a 1979 Halmatic 30, 9m long.
Thank you
Mindelo is a beautiful place
Sinead and the kids?
Thanks m8t.
Boa viagem marinheiro, Fernando de Portugal
how much sailing experience do you need to do something like this?
Single handed, on your own boat, a fair bit. There's a lot of years of preparation that go into getting a boat ready for the passage, and in that time you'll be doing a lot of coastal sailing to see what works and what doesn't.
What does that romb beside wind generator is for?
Do you mean the liferaft?
It's a radar reflector to help with visibility another vessels radar
@@SoloSailingSapphira no it's higher on a line. Another guy answered it. Sorry, i haven't seen your reply 🙈
How long would it take to become competent enough to sail across the Atlantic from novice?
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.
@@SoloSailingSapphira Thanks for the reply. There's lots of great points there to consider and great advice. Thank you. Keep living the dream.
Can I ask who you are able to be insured with as a solo sailor?
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.
New sub here. Do you think it would have helped having a spinnaker on board?
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
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍❤
Hi, how many ft is your boat?
She's a Halmatic 30, 30 foot long
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!
Where is this guy from I know he is Irish what part
I'm from Sligo Thomas
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 UA-cam 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.
How do you uploads your videos when you at sea!
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 don't see a preventer on your mail and your jib should be sheeted tighter for rolly downwind reaching.
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.
Fly the flag for Ireland !!!!!!!!
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?
Thanks for the feedback Howard, I'll definitely try to incorporate more info on daily running, checks, weather, etc in the future
Enjoy the solitude
Nollog cona
Nollaig Shona duit!
@@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.
@@SoloSailingSapphira Mark you must have a sat telephone
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.
Send a link to see where u are ? Pls
Question. What’s the largest boat you can sail solo? (I know bugger all about sailing!). 🫡🇬🇧
Thank you very much for the donation Leon! A lot depends on how the boat is set up and your appetite for work and risk. I've heard people say up to 42 foot, no problem, over that, more difficult. But people single hand 70+ foot racing yachts around the world non stop, so it's possible, but it becomes more of an athletic and sailing skill issue
@ Thank you. Where are you now?
@@Leonwhu73 I'm in Sligo on the North West coast of Ireland. Sapphira is in Galway, and I've bought another boat, Williwaw, in the South of France. I just got back from my first short cruise on Williwaw, excited to do some more of that.