Very few Atlantic crossers are primarily concerned with getting to the Caribbean. Rather, for most, the journey there is the goal. In other words, the days out in the endless expanse of the sea. With the elements. With the ship. With their fellow sailors. And also, or above all, with themselves.
As soon as they arrive in sunny climes, most of them immediately hop on the next plane back. Only a few lucky ones don't have to return home straight away, back to their jobs, back to the daily grind. Some continue their journey, a few weeks in the Antilles, then back across the North Atlantic to Europe. Or further west, on the barefoot route around the world.
At the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, which starts every year at the end of November, you meet them all - the skipper couples, the family crews, the berth charterers, the regatta freaks, the catamaran and monohull sailors. It's a colourful bunch, and yet they are united by a common goal: to sail across the Atlantic.
Some have already done this several times. For many, however, it is the first time.
The expectations, hopes and dreams in the run-up to the trip are correspondingly different. And everyone experiences the trip itself differently anyway.
We asked sailors before they set sail what exactly they were expecting, what they hoped to find out there at sea and why they were putting themselves through the rigours of the 2,700 nautical mile trip. With the risk of being exposed to doldrums or storms, exhausting night watches and having to cope with other people in a confined space. And also having to put up with yourself.
When we arrived in the Caribbean, we asked again for information about how it was, what turned out differently than we had hoped, what was good, what was bad.The sometimes astonishing, but always revealing comparisons of the answers before and after the trip can now be read in the new issue of YACHT (issue 4/2012, available now in magazine shops).
Pascal Schürmann
Editor YACHT
