Topic 'Planning'

Four guys, one boat, 14-30 days at sea crossing the Atlantic. Toss in the fact that one is British, one from Sweden and two of us from the Italian part of Switzerland. Different backgrounds, cultures and first languages. How do you feed this crew for the crossing and keep morale high? How much food to buy, where to store it, how to find it when we’re underway and how can four guys with different culinary skills best prepare it.

An excellently done book that makes you want to get in your yacht and take off to explore the places Jimmy has been too. We should all be so lucky as to be able to do a small part of this book in our lifetime. The photography is excellent as well.

The best one yet on all aspects of an Atlantic circuit. Picked this up while in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria waiting to leave on the ARC. It’s an excellent reference for not just the circuit but weather, customs in the Caribbean, safety and security at anchorage, etc. A very well-crafted book.

No matter what the size of the yacht, there are only 24 hours in a day. Divide this by the number of crew onboard qualified to stand watch and you have the number of hours each crew member will be standing watch. The longer the passage, the more important this is as fatigue is a cumulative effect. Coming up with the right number of crew for a particular passage is crucial but more so on the longer passage and the one in challenging weather conditions.

Another classic reference for those us who want to venture beyond the coast. Beth has an extensive amount of first-hand knowledge that she shares with her readers. For me, planning to cross the Atlantic, this book comes at a good time as there’s a lot of information I can directly apply to my challenge.

The tagline is “1,000 routes from the South Seas to the Arctic”. After reading most of the book, I would have to agree. Jimmy Cornwell has done an absolutely amazing job of detailing routes from just about anywhere to somewhere else. As I’ll be doing the ARC this year and then the reverse ARC next year to bring the boat back to the Mediterranean.