With my arrival today, January 29, 2025, in Fort Lauderdale (my North America landing), I have completed my solo voyage to 7 continents and become the first person to both fly and sail solo to all the continents. There aren’t any official records, and I don’t know what solo sailors have done over the years in terms of sailing to all the continents. However, I do know the few other solo pilots who have landed on all the continents. None of them are offshore sailors so I’m pretty sure I’m the first person to do both.

It’s a seemingly insignificant longitude except for me. Crossing it today, January 20, 2025, at 0928z marks the completion of my solo circumnavigation. I’ve now sailed  around the world, crossing all the meridians and the equator.

Some may wonder why that didn’t happen when I crossed the longitude of Tangiers, my farthest excursion east in 2022. Those of you who have followed my voyage recall I took a break at home after successfully sailing to Antarctica and back.  During the break I had a crew from Puerto Williams in Chile deliver Phywave through the difficult channels of Patagonia to Puerto Montt. When I returned to Chile, I resumed my solo voyage from the Reloncavi Yacht Club marina in Puerto Montt. The longitude of that marina is 78.9875 degrees West Longitude so it marks the beginning of my solo circumnavigation. I’ve now completed the circumnavigation by crossing that longitude again. Even though I didn’t return to my starting point, it’s still considered a circumnavigation.

In my last post I explained that the port side autopilot drive unit on my boat had failed, something I only realized when I disengaged the AP and tried to manually steer the boat upon arriving in Antigua. I was able to find a new replacement drive unit and get it to Antigua but I decided not to install it.  Removing the failed unit and installing the new one would have been a fair amount of work in a tight space in an aft compartment of my boat. In diagnosing the original problem, I also figured out I could make the starboard side AP completely independent of the port side AP so it can successfully steer the boat on its own. There was also a favorable weather window opening on January 15 for sailing north I wanted to hit which didn’t leave me time to install the new drive unit.  I’ll wait to replace the failed unit until I get to Florida. It means I’m now sailing with only one working AP but most boats only have one AP anyway. Having a backup AP was a luxury I wanted when I ordered Phywave back in 2020.  It turns out I needed it. 

I’m now en-route from Antigua to Rock Sound on Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas. I expect to arrive there on Wednesday.

Conch fritters, stormy cocktails and a great reggae band at the Sea Dream restaurant was a pretty good first night in Jolly Harbour after a 4,000 nm, 30 day passage from St. Helena Island in the South Atlantic.

The first half of the passage, south of the equator, was sublime with solid following winds and sunny skies.  Crossing the equator into the InterTropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) the weather became cloudy with occasional rain squalls, one of which accelerated the wind from 15 kts to 40 kts, and change direction by 40 degrees, in less than 2 minutes. Fortunately, that one occurred during the daytime and I saw in coming, confirmed its location and approach speed on radar, and was able to reduce sails in preparation for it hitting me.  If a squall comes at night when I’m trying to sleep it will usually be a big surprise causing me to quickly scramble out of the rack and get on deck to reduce sails.

North of the equator there are also strong, looping currents that retarded my progress. The weather forecast showed a large area of very little wind along my direct route (about 300 degrees true) from St. Helena to Antigua. I had to divert west from that to avoid the worst of the “no wind” zone.  Still, I had single digit wind speeds for a few days and was lucky to get 4 kts boat speed.  When you’re trying to get passed a crossing current of 2 kts with slow boat speed it results in a lot of crabbing, sometimes up to 30 degrees. It’s miserable sailing.  I finally ran the engine for 6 hours to get out of the last of the strong crossing currents. The wind eventually picked up and I had a reasonably fast remaining week into Antigua although the 1-2 meter waves were right on the beam of the boat causing a lot of rolling and an uncomfortable ride.

Finally motoring into Jolly Harbour, I disengaged the autopilot (AP) and was shocked to discover my manual steering range at the helm was greatly reduced to about +/- 10 degrees from the normal range of +/- 35 degrees.  I was barely able to steer the boat enough to dock by the immigration and customs office.  Once I had completed the clearing-in process I was faced with getting my boat into my berth at the marina, typically requiring a lot of tight turns and full rudder steering range and the bow thrusters. I called the marina dockmaster on the VHF and explained my problem.  With his help and another guy, we finally got the boat passed the tight turn into my berth.

Needless to say, I can’t leave Antigua with this steering problem.  Once tied up in my berth, I started taking things apart. My boat has 2 rudders, 2 steering wheels (one connected to each rudder), 2 AP computers (one as a backup) and 2 AP drive units which convert the signals from the AP computer into the “muscle” needed to actually move the rudder.  There is a heavy steel bar that connects the rudders to always keep them in sync. After disconnecting the mechanical components, it was clear the port side drive unit had failed such that it restricted the rudder range of motion. Once I disconnected that drive unit from the rest of the steering system I had my full range of steering back. It’s unlikely I can fix  it so it looks like a replacement is needed.  Sourcing it, getting it to Antigua, and installing it will be a challenge.

I thought my stop in Antigua would be a holiday but it seems an offshore sailboat is a demanding taskmaster never relenting on what’s required to keep it going.