Dan Lenard speaks: “This is how I crossed the Ocean without instruments or autopilot.”

“I have little time, at 12 o’clock I leave for Miami, I have more than a thousand miles to go.” He is in a hurry to finish his sailing, superyacht designer Dan Lenard. In fact, he has already accomplished the feat: he sailed solo from Cadiz, Spain (from where he left last Jan. 20) to Antigua, Caribbean, for nearly 4,000 miles (it took him a month) aboard a 10-meter boat, Scia, which he made by recycling parts of different boats.

To make matters worse, he sailed completely without instruments or an engine. No compass, gps (he only had a transponder with which those following him from the ground could display his position, but he could not use it to figure out where he was), not even a more “nostalgic” sextant. Nothing. Aboard wake not even a generator. We told you about it HERE.

THE REAL ENTERPRISE? BE WITHOUT AUTOPILOT
“The real feat,” Dan revealed to us by phone from Antigua, “was sailing without autopilot. That is the real difficulty. Not being able to rely on the autopilot means that you have to plan your day down to the smallest detail, especially when you are at the carriers under gennaker. You must also anticipate when you will have to let go of the tiller to eat or pee. To sleep, I would lock the tiller with two rubber bands, secure the mainsail with the restraint and put the jib on the neck. Then I would wake up and go again. But disadvantage is also advantage: the fact that you have to helm nonstop makes you 100 percent aware of the navigation, you understand how far the boat is going, how it glides over the waves, whether there is any fine tuning to be done. You are truly the architect of your own destiny.”

HOW DAN USED HIS WATCH
Then he continues: “And here I thought the most difficult hurdle was navigating without instruments! They are right when they say that even a piece of wood thrown into the water in the Ocean, sooner or later comes to the Caribbean, you can’t go wrong! It is the winds themselves that bring you here. You really have to make an effort to end up somewhere else, forcing the course. Specifically, I helped myself with my watch, setting it to the time on the island of Saint John’s (Antigua and Barbuda). I knew exactly the sunrise and sunset times on the island, so it was always clear to me where to point the bow.”

BLOODY GOOD WEATHER
Having started off quietly, with no routing or weather advisors, Dan had to face several times the true enemy of navigators, becalmedness. That’s why, according to him, he couldn’t make it in time for the Miami Boat Show (Feb. 14-18): “The only ‘bad luck’ I had was the low wind. I was dangling eight days in total flat calm. It was a miracle that in that very long time (and trust me, for a sailor like me to stand still is a pain) I managed to grind out about fifty miles westward, thanks to Code 0, Code 2 and Gennaker. And even on days when there was a breeze blowing, it never did for more than 8-10 hours. At sunset, it would wane.”

LONG WAVES AND BREAKDOWNS
How did the boat perform? “The boat rows, I guarantee it. In light sea conditions, it is a blast. In light wind conditions, however, having to deal with ocean waves, which are wide and long, it suffered the upwind phase. It was not easy!”
An additional day Lenard lost when he experienced a failure of the furler off the Canary Islands: “I had to disassemble the furler drum and fix the forestay in the bow before proceeding with the repair. An operation that, performed solo, takes a lot of time!”

He now expects to arrive in Miami in (at least) 6-7 days, the distance between Antigua and Miami is about 1,150 miles. Before saying goodbye, he recommended, “If you can, tell everyone who wants to come to Antigua to moor at the Antigua Yacht Club Marina Resort Falmouth Harbour. They welcome you big time!”

E.R.

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