So I sailed 1000 miles upwind in the ocean (with a 50-year-old 9-meter)

When the Ocean calls, it is hard not to answer. I tell you about my crossing from Cape Verde to Madeira. Nineteen days of non-stop sailing in two in the Atlantic Ocean on a 1971 Scampi 30. Not without problems.

MY OCEAN ON A SCAMPI 30

Chat name can be given to a vertical Atlantic crossing? That is, not from east to west or vice versa. A rather peculiar “crossing,” actually, especially for the time of year. A thousand miles upwind in the Atlantic Ocean between December and January when the Trade Wind blows to the Caribbean. If, on the other hand, the route goes from Mindelo (Cape Verde) up to Porto Santo, a small island near Madeira (Portugal), well, all that’s left to do is sail: 19 days of non-stop sailing to make, as the crow flies, more than 1,000 miles.

The boat? A 1971 Scampi 30, Shalom II. Returning to the original question you will understand well that “traverse” is not good because it does not render the fatigue of ascending at an average of three to four knots. And let’s drop “lift” right away, which smacks of a ski lift. So here we are telling you about an oceanic “salmoning” (what better name?) against current, waves and wind. On board were Giovanni “Gianni” Chiappino, age 54, shipowner and tireless globetrotter, and me, Gregorio Ferrari, age 22, at my Atlantic baptism.

End up in the ocean because of a tea

Foreword. Gianni and I before this adventure together did not know each other. “You know, I met a person down in Cape Verde, he needs some help bringing the boat up, possibly in the Mediterranean.” Speaking here is ocean sailor Matteo Sericano. We are chatting over tea on a dreary November day. Matteo has just returned from Sao Vicente (Cape Verde) where he was forced to fall back after breaking the keel of his Mini 650 during the Mini Transat. I don’t mind the prospect, in fact. I reflect on it for a good two minutes and mature a decision. “Hi Gianni, this is Gregorio. I can be there by December 12.” “Perfect,” he replies, “I’ll start preparing the boat. See you soon.” This conversation will be followed by hours of evening calls to discuss weather windows, rigging, trackable routes, and galley, until day X. We arrive in Sao Vicente on December 12 and spend a day of frantic preparations. The time is propitious to leave.

We still don’t know that it will be 19 days of naked upwind, with surprises, breaks in the middle of the night, winds predicted and then never seen, many, many stars, and even a bit of bad luck. A first veiled clue we have after we cast off our moorings, Dec. 13 at midnight. In addition to having the wind in its face, just to get the hang of it right away, the windvane gear gets caught in the transom of a nearby boat, blowing the fuse that holds the blade in the water. Also on board with us is the legendary Yuki, an 8-year-old Yorkie who is better off in the boat than at home.

Setting sail on Friday the 13th and getting superstitious

After refitting the windvane steering gear, which will remain unused for the first few hours, we launch full of adrenaline into the dark of night with a 20-22 knot wind that should have us windward fast. It should, yes, because we are in the channel between Sao Vicente and Santo Antao where the current makes us sweat every millimeter and we can’t grip the wind as much as we would like. The high wave completes the work. The balance of the first day is 80 miles traveled and 40 miles between us and the starting point. I forgot to mention that the target at departure was the port of Almeria in southern Spain, just beyond Gibraltar. As anticipated in the introduction, we will never get there, but we will stop first.

Seasickness: “my” Cape Verdean solution

The day follows suit, and for the first time in my “career” I experience a new feeling. Seasickness. This minor major inconvenience accompanies me for about two days relegating me between cockpit and bunk. Everything in between, including eating, I avoid. In retrospect I still don’t quite understand at what point it ended, but credit is probably due to some corn cookies taken in Cape Verde. Bite after bite the seasickness is beginning to pass. In the meantime there are two best moments of the day: sleeping, because I was sleeping, and being in the cockpit adjusting, as little as possible actually, the sails. An unparalleled skipper was at the helm anyway: the wind rudder. Meanwhile, the course is discussed with Gianni. Easy, upwind. Always upwind. With the wind swinging from “very in your face” to “considerably in your face.”

“Are we in rumbo (“on course” in Spanish)?”

“If this keeps up, we’ll get to the Azores!”

“Come on, let’s tack and try to get back in a little bit.”

We spend more than 20 hours upwind returning to Africa. Finally I look at the GPS and the distance to Mindelo, Cape Verde, where we started. Here I finally found out what the phantom “psychological component” is. It takes patience to go a long way at sea and be serene. Let me explain further. As I look at the GPS the only thing I think is that we haven’t moved. On a map, with a long way to go, especially in the beginning, the boat always seems stationary. This is also due to the fact that Shalom II sails at an average of about 3.5 knots.

I never thought it would be a relaxing cruise, partly because it’s not in my wheelhouse, but seeing the boat sail for 20 hours and always seem to be glued to the same spot as before was hard to understand, especially at first. But one thing that, without a doubt, can be learned aboard a Scampi 30 in the Ocean is patience. And you have 24 hours a day, round round, to exercise. Yeah, during the day in principle you don’t have too much to do. Checking that the boat is on course, that the course stays that way, cooking, eating, checking the weather and sending messages home, “All good! You?” In short, regular navigation. But then the sun sets.

Because if something breaks it is always at night

After the sun set, a series of wake-up calls began at which we took turns getting up to check that everything was in order, about one every hour. One night, it’s probably the second or third, and the sea is coming into its own. Around it a complete darkness, the moon is hidden in the clouds, and Shalom is advancing like a small candle (the street light) among the waves, flapping rhythmically and not too softly.

Then, around four o’clock a sharp pop brings us both into the cockpit at lightning speed. It is the harness of a low rigging that has given way. The mast of Shalom II has an order of spreaders with one high rigging coming to the masthead and two low ones. I first remove the windvane rudder and tack, to lighten the load of the high. With the shrouds downwind without tension I keep the boat upwind while Gianni digs into the great bazaar that is the boat, where all sorts of blocks, lines and spare parts can be found. And that’s too bad. He comes out after a few minutes and starts tinkering with the headlamp on the moors. Within an hour everything is settled and we resume going the right way. Upwind, ça va sans dire. Another certainly noteworthy night was the one after that. If the low jumping rigging is not pleasing, seeing the jib furler drum detached from the deck and held by hand is certainly worse. I honestly have no precise memories of what happened or even how. We were probably rolling the bow.

What I remember next is Gianni in the bow holding the jib from the drum and shouting something excitedly. I don’t understand what, but in the end there are two of us screaming to try to keep the sail, half-rolled, on board. We manage to close it completely by turning the drum in two, by hand. I have no idea what we could have (physically) done if it had run away from us and unwound completely at that moment. We remain for a few hours without a genoa while at the bow work begins on securing, pardon the city council definition, the forestay, left alone to take charge of the mast. Everything is taken care of by Gianni, solo in the bow with his ever-present head flashlight, with a solution that will accompany us without any more trouble until Porto Santo. He basically put up a forestay with a tackle on which to gird another jib. The other was now unusable. The boat is safe again and we can safely depart.

Going back to what was said earlier, the days, once the seasickness has passed, flow rather smoothly and straightforwardly. The kitchen is usually taken care of by Gianni, at times when we get hungry. From rice to pasta with canned goods of all kinds although perhaps more variety should have been brought, partly because after 10 days upwind, with as many to go, you feel like eating anything not on board. I still remember distinctly dreaming more than once of a bakery pizza with bacon and eggs, a hearty snack prepared two summers earlier (and never really digested).

In the last few days of sailing, once it was realized that Gibraltar would not be reachable, it clicked, being so close to arrival, to make New Year’s Eve at home. Although Gianni would probably have stayed there, the goal was to arrive by the evening of December 30 in Porto Santo. On the 29th we sailed at a record speed of four and a half knots on average, peaking at five. A first for Shalom II in this salmon-laden, baggage-laden, undersized jib. Our destination is only about forty miles away. On our left stands tall Madeira.

Upwind is tough. Standing still is much worse

Having reached this point I must make a clarification: it is not true that we always had wind in our faces. That night between Madeira and the Desert Islands we had virtually no wind. The Desert Islands, in fact, prevented any north-northeastward breeze from passing through. After the charge of a day “running” at more than four knots each passing moment at 0.3 knots seemed an almost surreal counterpoise.

We thought we would arrive in fluency, eh? That night, moving a few inches at a time, the goal seemed to get farther and farther away. The sails unable to inflate are flapping to the rhythm of the slow waves of the Ocean, and the moon is invisible above our heads. It almost feels like being lost in a giant puddle, and all dreams of glory slowly fade away. In addition to shattered dreams of glory, there were also a few pensive sighs: flights, after the 31st, would cost for at least a couple of weeks more than 600 euros, each.

Eighteen days in the Ocean upwind, however, teaches you patience. It is not that it grows immediately, mushroom-like, but it is rather sown and at the right time it can be harvested. I spend that night of the 30th at the helm, cursing over and over as the boat never gets over the speed knot. We are trapped, and I have to stand at the helm because even the experienced windvaneer, when the wind is lacking and the wave flaps the sails, can do nothing. Gianni meanwhile shuttles between the bunk and the cockpit, seeing if the situation improves.

In the morning, however, comes a first great little reward: an exaggerated sunrise bursts from the Desert Islands to our right that for the first time we can see clearly. They are large 400-meter walls, on the sea (we knew this even before the light came out, but seeing them still made an impression).

As the sun rises, we begin to carburize and go from 0.3 to one knot, then two, then, two and a half. By mid-day we are almost out of the quagmire, almost “rumboing” for Porto Santo, with Madeira slipping downwind and the Desert Islands slowly ending. We leave both of them behind on the early evening of December 30: ahead of us, to the north, is our destination.

Between us and the goal, relentless, a north-northeast wind. Even that last, fateful, night there is still about 20 miles to windward. We travel at almost four knots, clutching the wind as if it were the race of a lifetime. With adrenaline running high – in retrospect I cannot explain why, it will be the taste of the challenge – I also spend that night at the helm. Shalom is in a sprint, the wind is still rising, and by now we are stable above four knots, with Porto Santo beginning to take shape with its lights in front of my sleep-soaked eyes. At 6 a.m. it is 400 meters to the port. We did it. Perhaps. Maybe not.

Land-sickness: I avoided it by mooring under sail in 25 knots

We start to lift jib and turn on the engine. Yeah, the engine. Shalom is a 1970s boat with an unusual feature: it is 100% electric. There are no heat engines on board. And in the last 72 hours we haven’t gotten much sun because the boat has been mostly lurching westward. Basically, the batteries don’t have as much cue, but we will find that out later. At 6:10 a.m. there are 25 knots, current flowing, and the boat, with mainsail alone, is sailing at less than two knots. We arrive in front of the harbor entrance and also lower the mainsail. As usual we are bow to the wind to enter. At full throttle the boat starts to drift and we can’t move forward. I am at the helm, Gianni at the bow hoists mainsail and jib again. Steering with the calf (always praise be to the tiller), I put the boat to windward by caulking – with some cursing – jib and mainsail.

We take ourselves over the dam again and sail into the basin. We haul again, but the wind is still too much and the engine just can’t handle it.

After a couple of tries, scrabbles and insulting phrases to fate, we decide.

“Gianni, let’s moor under sail!” “Okay.”

We lower the jib and remain with just the mainsail. I go aft, the boat goes 2 knots. Fifty feet from the dock (positioned “upwind” from the wind) Gianni also drops the mainsail, and I throw the boat to the heel. We drift, with the boat perpendicular to the wind, to the concrete pier. The arrival is a bit abrupt and we have to jump ashore to pull the boat to the bollards. This, however, has a nice advantage: I don’t notice that I’m touching the ground, so engrossed am I in the situation. Let me explain further. In the days immediately preceding the berth, I was bothered by the idea that, after experiencing seasickness, getting off the boat I might suffer “land-sickness.” I believe that docking with breathlessness and adrenaline pumping was the best way to avoid this problem.

Ready to make New Year’s Eve…by plane

We moor, put the boat in place. Gianni and I did it. A long, salty, liberating hug with slightly wobbly legs enshrines the successful accomplishment. In 19 days, two of us on a 1971 Scampi 30 shot 1500 miles of Atlantic upwind. It’s 6:40 a.m., I haven’t slept for two days, and my eyes and cheeks are full of saline. And at 7:50 a.m. I have a flight leaving Porto Santo. Let’s fix the boat some more; the marina wouldn’t open for another hour at least. At 7:20 a.m. I’m on the ticket, with a hot American coffee in one hand and a dubious piece of toast in the other. I don’t know yet that I will spend nearly 15 hours in the airport between Funchal and Lisbon including a sleepy New Year’s Eve on a plane over Spain to Milan. But by now, after the most intensive course ever, I have patience to spare.

Gregorio Ferrari

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