Today we have a guest blogger: Adrian Whaley is joining Offbeat for his second ocean adventure having crossed the Atlantic with us on ARC+ in 2023. Hugely experienced he also, somewhat foolishly some might say, sailed round the world against the wind with the BT Global Challenge back in 1996….. Alway happy and positive here is his update on the first week…..

Doing an adventure like this can appear glamorous – flying to beautiful locations such as St Lucia, blue skies, warm seas 27 degrees and some fantastic locations to visit along the way. However, you have to get there first and that’s where the reality is much different! Preparing the boat, maintaining it, fixing it and provisioning (there’s no supermarkets on the way!) all takes a lot of time and planning. Fixing things is never easy and ocean sailing is a war of attrition. Spending a day in the boat trying to fix the WhatAndSea was like working in a sauna (we are trying to run the boat as eco as possible and with solar panels and the WhatAndSea (a generator that hooks off the back of the boat) we may get some way there)).

On the water the boat has to run 24 hours a day – there’s nowhere to stop at night! It’s a large boat – 53ft long, over 25ft wide and weighs 20 tonnes. The loads are enormous and everything you do has to be done with caution and your wits about you. And there’s only 4 of us on board.

During the day we all keep an eye on things but during the night we run a 3 hour on watch system with just one person on watch at a time. If conditions change and we need to change direction or alter the sails we have up, we will all get up and sort. Every manoeuvre usually takes 30 to 40 minutes!

Sleeping below can be a challenge. Whilst the boat is a catamaran so provides a reasonable-ish stable platform it still moves around with the wind and waves. Trying to sleep is like lying between 2 washing machines – one on full wash and one on spin. Water rushing down either side of you. There’s no Aircon so getting any airflow through the cabin is difficult.

One of the certainties of ocean sailing is that things will change and often without too much notice and often at night. The picture shown is of one of our navigation screens on the first night.

Every boat has AIS so we can see other yachts and ships around us – very useful as on the first night we had another yacht (not in the World Arc) pass 1/2 nm ahead. We can also have radar on this picture (we don’t run with it all the time as it consumes too much power) and this helps us not only spot other boats but also rain squalls (which often bring an increase in wind). The picture shows a rain cloud to the north of us and on this evening we took the decision to gybe away to keep away from it (one of the other boats further north of us had already done so and Pia on board this yacht is a meteorologist on Swedish TV so we thought she probably was giving us a good pointer 😀).

A few nights ago was a good example. I was on the 12 to 3 in the morning watch. Usual routine is go to sleep after dinner. At 9 whilst in deep sleep the call goes up to take the Parasail down (a big spinnaker sail on the front of the boat). Winds increased and it’s pitch black. First the mainsail has to go back up to provide some cover for getting the Parasail down. Then it takes all 4 of us to bring it down, followed by getting the Genoa out to replace it. 40 minutes later job completed. So, after a little bit more sleep it’s on to the 12 o’clock watch. Nothing stable about this evening though – 50 degree wind shifts, torrential rain, wind going from 13 to 24 knots and back again. Learning how to sleep when you can is a trick you have to learn.


Off the coast of Columbia now and on the final run to the finish line off the San Blas Islands, Panama, the end of the first leg!