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Atlantic Crossing

on a boat, sometimes on the other but always with punch, Piton beer,
sparkling wine, and local vegetable and fruit dishes.
3-The learnings
What the crossing taught us:
• The Parasail is a nice light windsail, but it was not very useful for us
except for the few days of light wind. We used it without lowering
the mainsail, so we could suffocate it if necessary before dropping it.
In these conditions, it is very difficult to be purely downwind, and we
used it as a genaker and not as a spinnaker
• Poled-out in the wind, the self-tacking jib really works, but it is very
flat and remains small, and it must be ensured that it is not caught
on the wrong side by the wind, which led to the rupture of the clew
point.
• Our main engine was the mainsail, which is not ideal for downwind
sailing, with a very high risk of gybe, even with well-designed boom
retainers. I have since ordered a downwind sail, that are twin sails
that can be poled out on both sides, and attached together to be-
come a normal headsail.
• Helming by hand, with the short rudders of a Southerly, is illusory.
The windvane, with its deeper rudder and which is settled further
aft, is much more effective. For the gusts, rather than "regaining con-
trol", it is much more effective to control the mainsheet and to ease
each time the boat luffs. The risk of gybe is then very reduced.
• You must be very careful with the placement of the water inlet of
the watermaker. If it is too high, and too close to the boat's water
lines, the speed creates bubbles which enter the water inlet pipes
and prevent the watermaker from building up pressure and produc-
ing fresh water.

• We lost a chartplotter which in fact had little use in being attached to
the helm binnacle. Over such distances, we look at the large-scale
paper map "route du rhum", and that is enough. This plotter was
only used to record GPS positions, and it would have been better

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