A Guide to your First Ocean Crossing

A great read for any adventurer who is planning to sail across an ocean. A Guide to your First Ocean Crossing is both witty and informative, with each chapter packed with useful tips and advice. The author not only covers the practicalities of undertaking a long sea voyage, but also the friendship and support of a small crew several hundred miles from the nearest land and the difficulties of coping with the exhausting combination of isolation, solo night watches and ferocious seas. Family and friends back home are not forgotten, as the writer describes the difficulties of enduring several weeks of separation and how best to keep in touch. The main focus of the book is how best to plan and prepare for a long distance sailing trip, and how to handle the physical and mental challenges of an ocean crossing. But it is also fast moving and upbeat, revealing the wonder of meeting giant ocean mammals in their natural environment, and the unrivalled calm, tranquillity and awe of being the only human being to witness a breathtaking tropical sunrise, with no other vessels for hundreds of miles in any direction. In order to provide a real sense of what it is like to sail across an ocean, the book includes a detailed narrative of a two month trans-Atlantic crossing in the company of two friends. The vivid descriptions of Caribbean sunsets and night watches in the tropics under magnificent star filled skies will transport you to the blue seas and warm sunshine of some of the best sailing areas on earth. Following accounts of visits by dolphins and several sightings of whales, you are eventually carried north and east to the cold seas between the Azores and Northern Europe, where you will experience the battering of Force 9 winds and be pounded by mountainous waves under a series of Atlantic low pressure systems. This highly readable account of the highs and lows of a tough and challenging voyage is fast paced, exciting and at times humorous and uplifting. The appendices which follow provide details of chart positions and daily distances covered. The book also has a useful glossary, a list of some informative websites, and even a few tried and tested sailing recipes.