Sailing in the Atlantic: ‘Fog, gales, hurricanes and calms in one voyage’

Fog, currents and calms would challenge Mike Reynolds as he tackled the Grand Banks, Gulf Stream and Azores High. He was at the French island of St Pierre off the Newfoundland coast, next stop was sailing in the Atlantic to Flores in the Azores.

Zen Again, our Japanese designed and built 1980s IOR ¾ tonner, is a well-equipped ‘pocket’ blue-water cruiser. She has over 50,000 miles under her keel with us and about twice that with previous owners. The original Japanese owners circumnavigated South America from Japan.

The second Japanese owner did a single-handed partial circumnavigation of the Pacific, finishing in Australia. We purchased her at home in Australia and have spent the last 10 years slowly circumnavigating.

We started the season on the hard in Deltaville on Chesapeake Bay in the US. We prepared Zen Again by changing from a 16kg to a 20kg Manson Supreme anchor, 8mm to 10mm anchor chain, rewiring the mast, a new Tasker mainsail, a Tides Marine Sailtrack and a new Pelagic autopilot, some of which is will be in Yachting Monthly’s February 2025 edition. After several years in the tropics we prepared ourselves with warm clothes and new wet weather gear.

We had a wonderful cruise through New England to Nova Scotia and southern Newfoundland. Our overall goal was to transit the Panama Canal in 2025 so we had two alternatives: Plan A returned coastwise via the US, Bahamas and Caribbean; and Plan B was a clockwise North Atlantic circuit via Azores, Canaries and Caribbean.

Plan A was conventional but against prevailing winds and potentially hiding from hurricanes. Plan B was longer but rode the prevailing winds. We’d only briefly visited the Azores en route from Australia to Europe and hoped to cruise them more fully. We opted for Plan B.

We timed our cruise down east to suit our expected St Pierre departure date of early August. This put us ahead of many cruisers, except only those few planning long cruises in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, or bound towards Greenland, Iceland and beyond. We found many US coastal resorts were opening ‘next week’ as we cruised east over several months.

Sailing in the Atlantic: Route options

A summer passage from St Pierre to Flores involves three distinct parts – Grand Banks, Gulf Stream and Azores High. The Grand Banks offer cold shallow water, fog and usually SW winds.

The Gulf Stream offers deep warm water, strong but varying currents and thunderstorms. The Azores High offers warmth, sunny skies and lighter winds, with a high risk of calms if the high is over the Azores. The passage is 1,200 miles, so about 10 days for us.

The key risks are gales at the start of the passage, calms at the end and hurricanes throughout. Initial gales and hurricanes are easily avoided with modern weather forecasting – hide and wait for them to pass. The tricky part is avoiding calms since 10-day forecasts are unreliable.

We had timed our cruise down east to St Pierre to arrive there mid-summer. At that time hurricanes sometimes track up the US coast to Canada and out into the North Atlantic, generally decaying as they recurve east. We hoped for an ex-hurricane to pass well north of us as we crossed the Gulf Stream. It would push the Azores High south, giving us westerlies for the last part of the passage.

In Newfoundland we were following the weather outlook closely. We timed our passage to St Pierre as a hurricane was approaching the Caribbean and curving north. In St Pierre we compared notes with two other cruisers. One departed two days before us and the other one day before us. The former was a big cat and the latter a 38ft monohull.

The now ex-hurricane was predicted to pass well to our north in a week. An excellent weather window seemed to be in place.

In the run up to departure and throughout the passage we twice daily downloaded routes plus ECMWF and GFS wind, gust, CAPE, rain, cloud, pressure, air temperature and wave GRIB files from PredictWind. Separately we downloaded RTOFS ocean surface current GRIB files from SailDocs.

While in range of weather radar we viewed this live, high-resolution information from Windy. All were downloaded using our Gen2 Starlink which we’ve been using for more than two years.

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Grand Banks

We departed St Pierre at noon in thick fog and light winds. As we cleared the lee of the island the wind slowly filled in and we shut down the engine. We close-reached SE through thick fog in gradually increasing wind, reducing sail in stages.

By morning the wind had veered to the SW giving us a beam reach. We had squalls with winds gusting to 25 knots. The seas were short and lumpy. Once in a while a sea would break into us, giving us a good side swipe with green water over the deck and drenching the cockpit.

Sailing through the mizzle

The start set the scene for the next three days. Winds stayed SW, mostly 18 gusting 25 knots, but with occasional squalls to 30. The fog persisted. Sailing through the fog at night was interesting.

There was ‘mizzle’ in the air which landed on all windward surfaces. That included the crew if we emerged from shelter. It would have been miserable if we were broad reaching. Thankfully the mizzle stopped during the day. We used the autopilot since we were pushing fairly hard with more mainsail than our WindPilot vane gear could handle.

During the nights the fog broke up at times. We could then see a few stars through holes in the higher clouds. We had varying reefs in the main and furls in the yankee. It was cold and we were loving our padded onesies and new wet weather gear!

Twice a large pod of dolphins accompanied us for about 30 minutes – always a morale booster, which was welcome amid the tough sailing, though we were motivated by the thought we were heading for the sun!

Throughout this part of the passage we used our radar continuously. This was in addition to AIS since so many fishing vessels don’t transmit on AIS. We also chose to keep our dinghy inflated on deck. It was very well lashed down but supplemented our life raft.

Our SailnSea SailingGen hydro-generator kept our batteries charged while the solar panels struggled to function with little sunlight.

Gulf Stream

On day four the fog lifted and we moved off soundings into the Gulf Stream. The wind eased until eventually the sails were slatting and we started motoring. Some hours later we resumed sailing as a nice WSW breeze came in.

A thunderstorm gradually built to windward and the wind backed to the SSW. We furled the yankee and unrolled the staysail. It was a good decision as we had gusts to 36 knots. Zen Again was very comfortable under double-reefed main and staysail as the thunderstorm dumped a lot of rain on us.

This set the pattern for the Gulf Stream transit. Thunderstorms were passing by or building around us with little wind between them. The name of the game was to avoid both the calms and the storms themselves. Currents were generally with us but not consistently. Their presence was obvious from the sea state.

We spent several days crossing this area. We used both autopilot and vane gear depending on conditions.

The deep low was now passing well clear to our north and tracking east as predicted. The Azores High was being pushed south nicely, and our morale improved with every degree the temperature rose.

Azores High

Champagne sailing officially commenced on the afternoon of day eight. We had left the thunderstorms astern and were riding the Azores High. Seas of only one metre and broad reaching in 10 gusting 15 knots. Bright sunny days. Nights with a wonderful half moon followed by a spectacular view of the Milky Way.

With the wind now well aft we adopted our ‘trade-wind sailing’ mode. We broad reach under windvane steering gear with boom brake set and gybe our way downwind. Better VMG (velocity made good), less rolling, much safer. It was great to escape the cold and fog into warmth and sun.

As we approached Flores another yacht appeared on AIS off our beam. It was the larger monohull which had departed St Pierre a day before us. Nice!

The persistent fog, lumpy sea state and plenty of wind over the Grand Banks kept us on our toes. Poor visibility certainly adds an ‘edge’ when sailing fast. The Gulf Stream was challenging navigating around the thunderstorms while trying to stay in positive current. The Azores High was the reward with beautiful tradewinds-style sailing.

In hindsight the scariest part of the passage was anticipating it. As we cruised Canada we were the only boat we came across planning to sail to the Azores. It seemed we were ‘taking a flyer’ on our own. But we’d done the research and were sure we just needed to wait for a good weather window.

Arriving in St Pierre and discovering others planning the same passage was encouraging. And a weather window arrived right on time.

The passage took 10 days, as hoped, and we logged 1,200 miles for an average boat speed of 5 knots, with about 50 miles of current assistance. Maximum wind speed was 36 knots with seas to 2m and swell to 2.5m. We motored for 37 hours, almost all in the Gulf Stream.

Failures included an autopilot actuator and a new leak into the forepeak. We know our autopilot actuators are only good for one ocean crossing so we had a spare aboard. We subsequently traced the leak to a no-longer-sealed bow mooring cleat bolt.

The stars of the voyage were the WindPilot, the Sailtrack, the new mainsail, the SailingGen and our warm clothes. The WindPilot worked marvellously in apparent winds down to 6 knots if we kept the boat balanced.

The Sailtrack made reefing so much easier and the mainsail was fast. The SailingGen kept us well charged. The padded onesies were awesome!

We then spent a week exploring Flores before sailing on to Horta. There we joined an Ocean Cruising Club 70th Anniversary cruise in company through Macaronesia – the Azores, Madeiras and Canaries. But that’s another story.

Sailing in the Atlantic: Learning Curves

Proper Preparation

Our mini-refit in Deltaville prepared Zen Again well for this year’s cruise. The coastwise cruise including overnighters prepared us for the ocean passage.

Research the Route

We were surprised to discover St Pierre to Flores was only 1,200 miles. These things aren’t always obvious looking at standard chart projections.

Research the Weather

Our close examination of pilot charts and hurricane tracks convinced us that the passage was viable. Our research showed the three weather regimes we were likely to encounter. With this knowledge it was easy to recognise a good weather window, and amazingly we were able to string them all together.

Suitable Clothing

As Alfred Wainwright said, ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.’ Padded onesies under good wet weather gear did the trick. The experience would have been a lot less pleasant had we struggled to keep ourselves warm.

Find your own path

Many of the normal cruising routes are popular for a reason, but it doesn’t mean that other routes and areas aren’t also possible. Whether it’s ocean routes, cruising areas or even just finding your own anchorages, sometimes it’s nice not to follow the crowd.

Atlantic Islands

We loved Macaronesia and would highly recommend them as an oceanic cruising ground.

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