Crossing the Atlantic Under Sail
Every November, the pontoons of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria fill with cruising boats wearing courtesy flags from thirty nations, their decks stacked with jerry cans, bananas and freshly serviced liferafts. They are waiting for the same thing sailors have waited for since Columbus left these islands in 1492: the northeast trade winds. The classic crossing from the Canaries to the Caribbean covers roughly 2,700 nautical miles and takes a typical cruising boat between 16 and 24 days. It is the most travelled ocean passage in the world for amateur sailors, and with sound preparation it is well within reach of an experienced coastal crew making their first ocean voyage.
The trade-wind route and why it works
The North Atlantic circulates clockwise around the Azores High, a semi-permanent area of high pressure. South of about 25 degrees north, this circulation produces the northeast trades — steady winds of 15 to 25 knots that blow toward the Caribbean for most of the winter. The traditional advice, attributed to generations of square-rigger captains, was to sail south until the butter melts, then turn west. In practice, most skippers leave the Canaries heading south-southwest toward the latitude of the Cape Verde islands, around 16 to 20 degrees north, before curving west toward Martinique, Saint Lucia or Antigua. Going too directly west too early risks the light and variable winds on the southern edge of the Azores High, where a becalmed week can wreck your provisioning maths.
Timing the departure window
The crossing season runs from late November to early February. Departing before mid-November carries a residual hurricane risk — the official season ends on 30 November, and late storms such as Lenny in 1999 have tracked east through the islands. Departing after February means arriving as the Caribbean season winds down. Most crews leave the Canaries between 20 November and 10 December, which lands them in the islands in time for Christmas. If you start from Europe, work backwards: the Bay of Biscay is best crossed in August or early September, Portugal and Madeira in September, and the Canaries reached by mid-October, leaving a month for repairs, provisioning and crew changes in Las Palmas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife or Marina Rubicón on Lanzarote.
Rally or independent: the ARC question
The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, run by the World Cruising Club since 1986, takes around 150 boats from Las Palmas to Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia, every late November. The entry fee buys safety inspections, weather briefings, daily position reporting, seminars on everything from rigging checks to provisioning, and a ready-made social scene in both ports. The ARC+ variant routes via Mindelo in the Cape Verdes, breaking the passage into legs of roughly 850 and 2,150 miles and usually finding stronger trades on the second leg. Independent crossing remains entirely viable — thousands do it every year — and saves a fee that can exceed two thousand euros for a mid-size boat. The honest trade-off: the rally enforces a departure date whether or not the forecast is kind, while an independent skipper can wait for a clean weather window.
Preparing the boat: a twelve-month timeline
Serious preparation starts a year out. Twelve months before departure, commission a full rig inspection — standing rigging more than ten years old is routinely replaced before an ocean passage, because chainplates and swage fittings fail from fatigue you cannot see. Nine months out, address the big systems: autopilot or windvane self-steering, battery capacity and charging (solar arrival has transformed trade-wind passages), and sails. Six months out, haul out for antifouling, check the rudder bearings, replace seacocks showing corrosion, and service the engine including the heat exchanger. Three months out, complete safety equipment: liferaft service, EPIRB registration, AIS, satellite communicator, jackstays and tethers. The final month in the Canaries is for provisioning, fuel, water, and the hundred small jobs that surface during the shakedown sail from mainland Europe.
Downwind sails and self-steering
The trades blow from dead astern or nearly so, and a standard sloop rig sails badly there. The most reliable trade-wind setup remains twin headsails poled out on either side, which keeps the boat balanced and the autopilot working gently. A cruising chute or asymmetric spinnaker earns its keep in lighter spells, while many crews simply run with a poled-out genoa and deep-reefed main, accepting half a knot of loss for simplicity. Self-steering matters more than any sail: hand-steering a 20-day passage with a small crew is misery. A windvane such as a Hydrovane or Monitor consumes no power and thrives in steady trades; an electric autopilot needs a robust drive unit and the battery budget to run day and night.
Provisioning, water and crew routine
Budget for 25 days plus a 30 percent reserve. Fresh produce from the Las Palmas market lasts surprisingly well — green bananas, cabbages, squash and citrus keep for weeks in netting out of the sun. Water is the critical number: without a watermaker, carry at least three litres per person per day in multiple containers, never one single tank that a single failure could contaminate. Most crews settle into a watch system of three or four hours within the first three days, and the passage acquires a rhythm of flying-fish breakfasts, noon position rituals and the slow westward crawl of the plotted line. Squalls arrive mostly at night, visible on radar as compact bright cells, bringing 30 knots for twenty minutes and then leaving you becalmed in their wake.
Landfall and the arrival ports
Rodney Bay on Saint Lucia, Fort-de-France and Le Marin on Martinique, Falmouth and English Harbours on Antigua, and Prickly Bay on Grenada absorb most of the transatlantic fleet. Le Marin is the largest yachting hub in the Eastern Caribbean, with haul-out yards and chandleries to fix everything the ocean broke. Clearance is straightforward across the islands; the French islands use a simple computerised self-service system, while Saint Lucia and Antigua use the SailClear online pre-arrival portal. The first night at anchor — rum punch, steady ground, the smell of green land after three weeks of salt — is the moment every crew remembers longest.
The return route and the bigger circuit
The Atlantic is a circuit, not a one-way street. Boats returning to Europe leave the Caribbean in May, ride the southwesterlies north of the Azores High via Bermuda to Horta in the Azores — around 1,800 miles — then complete the 1,200 miles to Gibraltar, the English Channel or Biscay in June or July. Horta's Peter Café Sport and the painted harbour wall of yacht names are rites of passage in their own right. Plenty of crews instead spend hurricane season in Grenada or Trinidad, below the traditional insurance line, and enjoy a second Caribbean winter before heading home.
Explore on the map
A crossing is really a chain of well-chosen harbours: Biscay refuges, Madeiran marinas, Canarian departure ports and Caribbean landfalls. Open the interactive map to trace the whole trade-wind route, from Las Palmas and Mindelo across to Rodney Bay and Le Marin, and to browse marinas and anchorages at every stage of the circuit. It is the easiest way to turn a dream line across the ocean into a list of real places with real facilities.