How do you prepare for a solo crossing?
It all started in the harbour of Camaret Sur Mer, or actually on the trip there from the harbour of Aber Wrach.
26-08-2026 Aber Wrach – Camaret Sur Mer
Departure 08:01 end 08:07
After being underway for about 7 minutes, it happens. A loud beep. Engine overheating! Shut it down quickly. At that moment Sophie, a crew member I know through a Dutch sailing organisation, is still on board. We look at each other, slightly shocked. Sophie says: we can continue the journey under sail, we won’t need the engine until the next harbour anyway. I say: we’re going back and we’re solving the problem first. We need to hoist the sails and get back to the harbour. I was rather surprised by Sophie’s suggestion. But that is the advantage of being the captain, I decide what happens. Besides, I feel a certain love and sense of care for my boat that a crew member simply cannot feel.
The harbour of Aber Wrach lies inland in the mouth of a river and after very slowly beating back to windward we reach the harbour entrance, where the harbourmaster gives us a tow to the visitors’ pontoon. For free? Sophie says they sometimes charge for it, but I never received a bill.
While Sophie is beating back to windward, I have already opened up the engine compartment. What could be wrong? In my head I go through it step by step. One advantage is that I checked the raw water strainer, oil level and coolant before departure. So I can already rule those three out. I have to admit that the engine already sounded different when we left. And there seemed to be less cooling water coming out of the exhaust, but well, if nothing seems to be wrong, you don’t start checking everything just before a planned day of sailing.
The raw water strainer is now completely dry. That’s not a good sign.
The parts I check:
• The seawater intake from outside the boat up to the raw water strainer. Maybe something is blocking it. I use the dinghy pump to blow water back through the hose towards the through hull. Bubbles appear underneath the boat, so this seems to work. I also poke a hose into it to feel for any blockage. Nothing.
• Something wrong with the impeller? I open the raw water pump. It looks fine. No dirt, no blockage and the impeller itself is intact.
Well, everything after this is beyond what I can check myself. Sophie suggests starting the engine again to see what happens now. We do that and pour water into the inlet of the raw water strainer ourselves. It goes through the engine, but not very enthusiastically. The problem is still there, which makes sense because we haven’t actually found a problem yet…
I give up on the troubleshooting and go looking for a mechanic. I find one quickly and although apparently everyone is supposed to be on holiday until Monday, there is a young guy walking around who says he’ll come and have a look in a bit.
Two hours later he’s at the boat. Wow, even in France! Where everything doesn’t exactly happen quickly. He knows what he’s doing and works his way through the entire raw water cooling system one section at a time. Once he has established that everything is flowing properly up to the exhaust, the exhaust elbow turns out to be the problem. It is completely clogged with soot and corrosion. He tells me these should be replaced after roughly 20 years. That could be exactly right. A little later the engine is happily purring away again just like before. The bill is €420, of which €330 is for the new stainless steel exhaust elbow, and I’m not unhappy with that at all. The engine is better for it, everything was sorted incredibly quickly and I’ve gained a useful engine failure experience. You shouldn’t underestimate that either. Engine trouble is something every sailor fears because you often need the engine at essential moments, such as manoeuvring and in narrow waters.
Right, how does this contribute to preparing for the crossing? Because of this hiccup, I take more time to prepare the trip from Aber Wrach to Camaret Sur Mer properly. This is how I see that the best weather window is the following day if we leave at 14:00. This is because of the tidal current at Île de Molène, through a narrow passage between the island and the mainland. The current is particularly strong here. I communicate this slightly late to Sophie, the following morning. And she says that if we leave ‘now’, meaning 08:30, it is also still a good time. I’m literally on my way to the shower and without even having brushed my teeth I climb back aboard and trust her call. She’s a perfectly capable sailor and I want to keep some democracy on board.
27-08-2026 Aber Wrach – Camaret Sur Mer
Departure 09:05 end 18:44
The first two hours really are lovely sailing weather. We reach no less than 8 knots. And we have our first dolphin encounter! Yay! We have to beat to windward, which costs us a little more time getting to Île de Molène. Once we get there, the wind is directly against us, which means we can no longer sail and the engine goes on. Unfortunately, the trouble starts fairly quickly after that. Current against us… 1 knot. We’re still making 4 knots over the ground, then 3 knots, 2 knots, 1 knot, with an absolute low of 0.6 knots with the engine running at 2600 rpm. It has just been a full moon, so we’re in spring tides. I leave the steering to Sophie because internally I’m getting increasingly worked up. This is exactly why I had made a passage plan and why we should have left at 14:00. We would still have had the wind against us, 6 knots, which is very little, and the wind dropped throughout the day, but we would have had more than 4 knots of current with us. Which would mean that instead of making 0.6 knots over the ground, we would have been doing 9 knots. That is flying for my boat.
A few more rather unusual sailing decisions are made and that’s the point where I can’t take it anymore. I say that I find this a strange choice and that I don’t agree with it. Tempers rise a little. And we both find our own space for a while. We’re still sailing, so I do that in the cockpit behind the wheel. In the end it takes us 9 hours and 38 minutes to complete a trip that, at an average of 5 knots, would normally take 7 hours and 34 minutes. With the ideal passage planning and current, we probably would have done it in around 5 hours and 30 minutes. It isn’t about the time, but about trust in capability and communication.
Once we arrive in Camaret Sur Mer, Sophie says something really needs to change if I want her to continue sailing with me. Of course I’ve been thinking about this too and I WANT TO SAIL ALONE SO BADLY. To the point where I even wonder whether I somehow manifested this situation myself. I had been somewhat unsure whether I could manage everything solo and now there is nothing I want more than to sail alone and make all the decisions myself. Which is actually a beautiful outcome, and something I’m very grateful to both the situation and Sophie for. Sophie and I sailed perfectly well together for a little over two weeks and we have many of the same interests. After sailing, we would often both go our separate ways, exactly how I like it. We parted on good terms. She got off in Camaret and went looking for another boat to sail on.
Right, we still haven’t actually talked much about preparing for the Bay of Biscay crossing, apart from the fact that we now know I’m going to do it alone and therefore get to do the preparation nicely by myself as well.
How do you even start? What I’ve learned over the past 6 weeks is that there are four main things to take into account:
• Waves
• Current
• Wind
• Thunderstorms and weather
What I’ve discovered is that I find waves extremely uncomfortable. The Atlantic Ocean is of course rather famous for them. I want to avoid high waves at all costs. You can find the predicted wave height quite easily in the Windy app.
Current isn’t particularly important on a multi day offshore crossing. It mainly matters when coastal hopping and when dealing with tidal harbours.
Wind is obviously important if you want to move forward in a sailing boat. Both direction and strength matter.
And I absolutely do not want to experience a thunderstorm at sea. Thunderstorms can produce crazy wind gusts that you really don’t want to deal with on a sailing boat. Lowering or reefing the sails isn’t exactly an easy job on my boat either. Everything has to be done at the mast, so the risk is slightly higher. But more importantly, these gusts are unpredictable and you can’t properly anticipate them.
I’ve kept in mind that I want to be underway for a maximum of 3 days. I’ve spoken to other sailors who have made roughly the same crossing. The first thing I made sure of was that no high waves were forecast for at least three days. Okay, then the wind. I don’t want too much wind, which of course also brings us back to the waves. I’ve made some compromises when it comes to wind strength and direction.
No thunderstorms are forecast during the three days I’m now looking at. In total I’ve waited 5 days for a good moment to leave, which is relatively little. Often you have to wait much longer for a decent weather window. I have to admit that I also just really wanted to leave. I could have waited for an even better moment. But hey, you never know whether the weather forecast is going to be completely right, or whether a better moment is actually going to come, so at some point you just have to go for it and cast off!
Camaret Sur Mer – Cudillero
Departure 02-09-2026 09:55 end 05-09-2026 11:28
I leave on Wednesday morning because the last few days have mostly consisted of meeting fellow sailors and sleeping badly because of a lot of swell in the anchorage. On Wednesday morning I check the weather forecast again, after of course having watched this weather window for several days already. I deliberately don’t check it on Tuesday evening because I want at least one good night’s sleep before a possible departure. Wait. It looks perfect now. Now! Also taking my arrival into account. The boat is ready, I’m ready, let’s go!
Sure, I could have gone to get some fresh bread first, but who has time for that?
In a rush I say goodbye to the sailing friends I’ve made and we agree to meet again at some anchorage somewhere along the way. And I cast off, or actually I haul up the anchor. 35 metres of chain plus a 15 kilo anchor by hand. Okay, that’s at least a proper workout. But also immediately the last one for the next three days. At this point I still underestimate how often I’m going to be hoisting sails and putting reefs in.
It starts with about an hour of motoring around the headland at Camaret so I can set the sails there and head towards Île de Sein. I was in such a hurry to leave because I wanted to catch the last of the favourable current through the passage at Île de Sein. This is another narrow passage between an island and the mainland. I have to beat to windward and don’t make it to Île de Sein in time. So I decide to sail around it instead. The advantage is that I now have the current completely with me and don’t have to keep beating to windward. It takes me 6 hours to reach the tip of the island. At an average of 5 knots it normally would have taken me 4 hours if I’d gone through the passage. But with the conditions against me, probably 8 hours or more. After that things become a little more difficult. The wind is consistently around 20 knots. This is what had been forecast for the gusts, not necessarily for the sustained wind. But at least it means I can keep moving nicely. One disadvantage: it is coming from exactly the direction I want to go. That was forecast, but like I said, I made compromises when it came to strength and direction. Hoping that perhaps the forecast would be 30 degrees off and it would still be perfectly sail-able. For the next 1.5 days I’m beating to windward under full sail. With 20 knots of wind the waves are still fairly substantial. My tacks last 2 or 3 hours at a time. Sailing close hauled offshore isn’t exactly the most comfortable point of sail anyway, but hey, I’m moving along nicely at around 5 to 6 knots, although the waves slow me down. Once I’m a bit farther offshore I practise spending longer periods below deck so that hopefully tonight I can get some sleep, or at least some rest.
I notice that I need to eat regularly just to keep something in my stomach. As soon as my stomach is empty, I start feeling seasick as well. I have more than enough food on board to stay away for another 3 weeks, so no problem there. At around 17:30 I cook spaghetti. Yes, with actual fresh bell pepper, courgette and mushrooms. Enough for the next three days straight away. I have a gimballed spirit stove and it all works perfectly fine.
Evening falls. Because I’m beating to windward, the low side of the boat, the side the sails are on and the side that sits lowest in the water because of the wind, keeps changing from one side to the other. So I prepare both saloon settees as beds. I can lift the backrests up, which gives me fairly wide berths. And because I always try to sleep on the leeward side, I don’t have to worry about rolling out. The wind is very consistent, which is nice. I take little naps of 15 minutes, half an hour, sometimes even 45 minutes. I set an alarm every hour. But that’s mostly so I know how long it has been since I last checked my surroundings. I never actually wake up because of the alarm because by then I’ve already woken up and gone to check everything again. I’m a light sleeper, but all in all it’s nowhere near as bad as I expected. The farther you get into the Bay of Biscay, the fewer boats there are around you. And I’ve put the autopilot in wind mode, so I don’t have to worry about the sails suddenly starting to flog. The autopilot, by the way, is my most appreciated and least demanding crew member. What a hero. For the non sailors among us, you, or at least I, basically sail on autopilot almost all the time except during manoeuvres, in narrow passages or perhaps during short stretches. I’ve had music playing since the beginning of the trip, including at night. The sails and rig can make a hell of a lot of noise, and music calms me down. The waves decrease during the night to around 0.5 metres. I think I fall asleep about 7 times in total, so I probably get around 4 to 5 hours of sleep.
Thursday is a lovely day weather wise. Sunshine, 10 knots of wind and 5, sometimes 6 knots of boat speed. Nice! A much nicer day than yesterday. I didn’t enjoy yesterday that much. I am getting slightly frustrated about all the beating to windward. At this rate the trip is going to take at least a third longer. I also notice that I’m fairly tense about how much the boat is heeling and whether something might break under the loads involved. What I do think is incredibly cool is being this close to nature.
I’ve taken screenshots from Windy of the weather forecasts for the next few days and so far they seem to be fairly accurate. At around 18:00 I cross into the 1,000 metre depth area. The water looks different here. A beautiful, deep blue. At 19:00 the wind disappears and the engine goes on. Later that evening I try setting the sails again. The wind looks okay, around 7 or 8 knots. My little boat can definitely do something with that, but unfortunately it dies again fairly quickly. Engine back on. The advantage of motoring is that you can of course go exactly where you want to go and do it at a decent speed. And because there’s no wind, there are no real wind waves either. Some ocean swell, but not much. At 2200 rpm I’m making around 5.2 knots. In the end I will spend 30 hours under engine. It does mean I manage to sleep well at night. Music louder than the engine, even fewer boats around me. And probably the most beautiful night sky I’ve ever seen. In the middle of the Bay of Biscay there is of course no light pollution, so the sky is unbelievably clear. Wow. I think I sleep around 6 hours that night. Still in little naps, but slightly longer now, usually half an hour to 45 minutes at a time.
On Friday the sun rises at around 07:00, although unfortunately it’s cloudy.
Note: ‘Sailing is the most fun when the weather completely cooperates. It is not fun when the weather works against you or something breaks.’ Well. Amen.
At 09:00 I try to hoist the mainsail to catch the wind from behind and give the engine a bit of a rest, but unfortunately there isn’t enough wind. I can’t even leave it up for stability because it starts flogging. I notice that for the first time during this trip I’m comfortable below deck without wanting to look at the instruments every other second.
Wait, I can see wind coming! Nope, never mind…
To be able to sail through the night with all the electronics running, I need electricity. During the day the solar panels recharge the batteries so I can happily keep sailing through the night as well. If it’s cloudy in the morning and stays that way all day, it becomes difficult to keep sailing, particularly on autopilot, without occasionally running the engine to charge the batteries. Ah well, I’ve been motoring for quite a while now anyway, so at the moment this particular challenge doesn’t apply at all. It’s more just a thought experiment from that moment. As every sailor probably recognises on longer passages: what could become a problem? Great, let’s overthink that one completely… sigh…
I’m also using the time to rethink my travel plans and realise that I’ve never particularly aspired to do very long solo passages, meaning more than a week. That hasn’t changed. But I’m noticing that so much can happen along the way on a journey that I absolutely love the fact that the future is completely open. For example, I can actually imagine sailing around the world together with someone. But with a bigger boat that gets thrown around less by the waves 😉. This is the first time I can picture that at all. Before this, I simply had no idea whether something like that would suit me.
At around 12:00 the clouds disappear and it becomes lovely and warm. Since there is still absolutely no wind, I decide this is a perfectly good moment to take a swim in the middle of the Bay of Biscay. It’s around 4,600 metres deep here. For safety I throw a long line overboard with a fender attached to the end. There is no wind at all and no current either. But still, it’s simply a safety line. Just before I get ready to jump in, a plastic bag floats past about 50 metres away. Hmm, that could also be… Nah, surely they’re not out here. They live in warmer water. And I jump in. Wonderful! I really love swimming. It’s also a perfect opportunity to have a look at the hull below the waterline. I do this fairly regularly, also simply because she’s so beautiful. A few harbours ago some boat neighbours gave me an outdoor shower and I’m now making grateful use of it to rinse the salt off myself. Shampoo and washing happen in the ocean. I start the engine again, dance around a bit and do the dishes that have been piling up. That is considerably more pleasant now with less swell.
In between everything, I have enough hours to philosophise a little. Why do you live? Why do you do what you do? You don’t sail so that nothing can or may ever break. You don’t sail just to arrive somewhere. You sail for freedom. Me and nature. Completely alone. What I mean by that for myself is that I’m trying to control my thoughts, or actually trying to stop focusing on my thoughts so much. If you’re constantly occupied with control and therefore fear, then what is the point of sailing? That applies to everything in life of course, but sailing gives you a very direct experience of it. Because you’re so dependent on the weather gods. If something goes wrong, well, that can have unpleasant consequences. Does that mean you shouldn’t do it? Or that you should give it an enormous amount of headspace? My belief is that you shouldn’t. With these thoughts I loosen my focus on the fearful thoughts. Or at least loosen it a little more. Practice makes perfect 😉.
These thoughts also come up because there is no wind. I could decide to simply wait for the wind and lie there. But the forecast showed thunderstorms in Cudillero, where I’m heading, for Saturday evening. I obviously can’t update the forecast in the middle of the sea because I don’t have internet, so I decide to assume it is still correct and keep motoring. In the end the engine will run for 30 hours. Ah well, it also gives you confidence in what your engine is capable of. During this day I see a total of 13 Portuguese man o’ wars. I only learn the Dutch name later, otherwise I probably would have realised earlier that the plastic bag might actually have been this extremely painful creature. Their tentacles can grow up to 50 metres long… Ah well, all was good. We just decided not to live in fear. Oh wait, I decided that a long time ago. Sometimes you just need to remind yourself of it, particularly in situations you can’t control.
Notes:
‘Actually, I’m really enjoying this! I’m already starting to feel sad that I’m going to arrive.’
‘Long sailing passages are really chill to do alone because you get to make all the decisions yourself.’
‘Fruit fly problem’
‘Everything is slowly becoming salty’
‘Make sure that the freedom and peace you’re doing this for don’t get lost in all the practical things you can also become completely occupied with: jobs around the boat, planning, the next harbour, diesel, water, provisions etc.’
‘Jesus, there are barely any waves and we’re motoring and somehow we’re still going up and down as though god knows what is happening. Is that really necessary?’
22:00. It’s dark now. Yes, sails up and engine off. Finally a bit of wind. The euphoria unfortunately doesn’t last long.
22:30. Genoa furled away, engine on. 8 to 10 knots of wind on a beam reach, but on a downwind course the speed drops back to 3, 4 or 5 knots. I did notice that the mainsail helps with the swell. So I leave it up with one reef in for stability.
A little later I lower the mainsail because it is flogging in the light wind and you can feel it through the entire boat.
01:00. Sails up. Wind! I feel like sleeping outside, so the cockpit cushions that double as a mattress and the blanket come outside with me. I want to keep an eye on what the wind is doing. I’ve switched the autopilot from wind mode to heading mode because the wind isn’t particularly strong and is very ‘flappy’. This prevents the autopilot constantly correcting at low boat speed and killing what little speed I still have.
05:00. One reef in the mainsail, the wind is building.
06:00. Two reefs in the mainsail. The genoa is already reefed, which is fairly easy to do from the cockpit and I adjust it every now and then as needed. I now have 15 to 20 knots of wind from behind. Nice! We’re making about 6 knots in the right direction!
I don’t sleep much this night, I think around 1 to 2 hours. I don’t make much effort to either because I know these are the last few hours of the trip. I’m nearly there!
At around 10:00 I see land for the first time again! Beautiful. Mountains. A large bank of clouds has been lurking ahead of me for a few hours. It slowly slides past and after four hours of looking threatening, thankfully not much comes of it. At around 11:00 the harbour wall appears, with the beautiful imposing cliffs behind it. They’re incredibly green, which rather suggests that the weather here isn’t always as lovely as it was for me yesterday. I arrive in what I think may be one of the smallest harbours in Spain and I had imagined this slightly differently when I made my passage plan. Of the two visitor berths, one turns out to be permanently occupied by a small fishing boat that they would honestly be better off letting sink, and the other is occupied by a large, heavy wooden Norwegian boat. Wonderful. The owner is on board and lets me come alongside, which makes me very happy. I can’t see any other way of leaving my boat somewhere safely and I reaaaally want to stop sailing for a while and sleep. And admittedly, as a solo sailor it is also simply nice when someone gives you a helping hand with the lines when you’re coming alongside. Every new harbour is another little puzzle of figuring out where you can safely put the boat. Unfortunately, the difference in weight between our boats creates a strange jerking movement in both boats, and my boat is already not exactly light for a 32 foot boat at 5.5 tonnes. Weirdly enough I’m not very tired either. There is probably quite a bit of energy in the dose of euphoria I’ve just received.
After spending an hour attaching his boat to the quay with about 10 spring lines, nothing seems to help. We decide that I’ll move alongside a half decayed little sailing boat that is attached to four mooring buoys. Its owner happens to be there as well and he doesn’t mind at all.
‘Oh my god.’ The boat is finally still! What a relief. And of course the stress about the jerking potentially damaging the boat disappears instantly as well. I inflate the dinghy and entertain myself with it for another few hours. I do a few laps around the boat and potter about a little. At 22:00 I go to bed and sleep all the way through until 11:30. That was nice. Although when I wake up I feel a bit like a half baked frozen pizza.
At 02:00 during the night I did get out of bed once to fish the bow line that had been attached to the neighbouring boat out of the water and secure it again. By then I was lying sideways across the water and my anchor was once again happily cuddling the neighbour’s boat. Oops.
At 07:00 I get out of bed once more to admire the forces of nature. A heavy thunderstorm passes overhead. The boat vibrates with the lightning.
How did I experience the solo crossing? I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. I genuinely think it was a beautiful experience. And I’m looking forward to all the sailing experiences still ahead of me. I don’t see it as an achievement, but more as a continuous learning experience. Six weeks ago I cast off from Herkingen and even locks and bridges still felt slightly intimidating. Then came unfamiliar waves at sea, anchoring overnight for the first time, dealing with tidal waters for the first time. It has all been a beautiful learning curve, not only in practical sailing experience, but perhaps even more in mindset and letting go of control.
Plan: 300 nautical miles, 2d 12h at an average of 5 knots, 150 litres if motoring the entire way
Actual: 367 nautical miles, 3d 1.5h, average 5.1 knots, 15 litres used
