3000 Miles Aboard the Kinetic

A transatlantic journey, from East to West

Bruno Grassotti,

February 2024

Mosquitoes. Fucking mosquitoes. The sun was frying my cheeks, and there wasn’t the slightest breeze to ease the tropical humidity soaking us in our own sweat. The lack of wind shaped my days off. I was teaching people from all over the world how to master the beautiful sport of kitesurfing, and for that, you need more than just a light puff of air.

There I was, lying peacefully in a hammock, pen in one hand and notebook in the other, watching the bugs try to suck my blood and wondering what the odds were of catching dengue, judging by the sheer number of bites.

I was also thinking about other things, like what I’d do after leaving beautiful Sri Lanka, which had hosted me for three calm, sweaty months. I decided to travel through Asia for a few weeks, hopping between countries and enjoying the freedom of being on my own. No one to answer to. No responsibilities except staying alive and not blowing all my money.

By then, I already knew that in June I’d be expected in East Africa, on the island of Zanzibar, where I’d be working again, as an instructor.

To be honest, I don’t remember exactly when, but at some point, the idea of crossing the Atlantic popped into my head. After Asia and Africa, going to America just made sense.

I remember being obsessed back then with chasing big adventures. One that ended up staying on the list was Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa. The problem was that climbing it costs a couple thousand dollars. There’s a well-oiled “mafia” in place that forces all foreigners to hire guides, porters, and get a pile of permits.

I had to cross it off.

So I kept thinking. And then, on another calm day, sitting on the beach in Paje, Zanzibar, I saw one of those mtepe, traditional Swahili boats, floating in turquoise water, waiting for the tide to leave them stranded in the sand for a few hours before lifting them up again…

Tides dictate much of life for fishermen in that part of the world, and for instructors too. We’d wait eagerly for that window in the day when the water level wasn’t so low that you saw nothing but white sand stretching out for hundreds of meters, nor so high that students had to tiptoe in vain to stand up, like ballet dancers.

I saw the sea as a place to call home. A home that’s always changing. Sometimes gentle. Sometimes wild.

In a way, that uncertainty makes me feel more at ease than a flat, predictable, comfortable life.

That very same afternoon, I started looking for a boat to cross the Atlantic, east to west.

It took me about a month. I sent hundreds of messages, reached out to friends and friends of friends, and in the end, it was Facebook that connected me with Captain Keith. He had posted on the platform that he was planning to cross, and the timing couldn’t have been better: late December, which gave me a bit of leeway to finally reunite with my people after a full year.

We exchanged a few emails and came to an agreement. The peace I felt after weeks of searching, finally locking in a boat and a captain, was immense.

October came, the season ended, and I took a flight to Cairo. There, I met up with Ahmed and Khaled, dear friends I’d made in the previous months, and together we spent ten days between pyramids and lagoons with perfect wind.

Eventually, it was time to head home. From the chaos of Cairo to noisy Barcelona.

It felt strange to walk once again through those streets that, twenty something months earlier, had been my home. I stayed there for a few days, training in sea survival down in the harbor, and soaking in the company of beautiful souls, my fellow adventurers: Elmo, Leo, Maria, Greta… and many more.

I kept visiting my brothers, scattered around the world. Samuel, in the Netherlands, where we spent a week full of live music, mushrooms, walks, good food, and the love that only timeless friendship brings.

I also visited my brother from another mother, Adrián, in beautiful Bilbao, where we dedicated ourselves to surfing both waves and asphalt.

Eventually, I flew to Gibraltar, to spend a week aboard the Brodie Girl, a forty foot sailboat. We sailed across the Strait, stopping in Ceuta and other ports along the Spanish Mediterranean coast, like La Duquesa.

It was a week of intense training. The practical and theoretical work earned me my Day Skipper qualification.

And now, yes, I was finally heading home. Tarifa.

The idea here is to tell you about the crossing itself… but I can’t skip over what I felt returning home.

It felt like a dream, one of those dreams where, when you wake up, you’re not sure if it was real or not. Even though it had only been a year, it had been the most intense year of my life.

Everything was still there. Nothing had changed. I was happy to see my mother, and I also realized there was still a lot to heal in our relationship. My father, at fifty, is in better shape than I am… I felt proud of him.

Miguel, Lunita, Luna, Selena, all the beautiful souls I was lucky enough to see again at home, I send all my love to you from here. My sister, still growing, becoming an amazing young woman. I visited her in Granada, where she’s studying, a magical place.

In fact, that’s where I said goodbye to the Iberian Peninsula before heading off to the next chapter.

Let’s hit fast forward.

The boat was leaving from Gran Canaria. I flew there at the start of the year’s final month. Once again, surrounded by my people.

Before going on, I want to thank Jack, Idris, and Felipe for welcoming me on the island, for giving me a roof over my head, and for being the kind of family I can always count on.

I spent the first week with them. Surfing. Dancing. And above all, an intense job hunt, because I didn’t want to reach the other side of the ocean without a solid plan to earn my bread.

At this point, you might be wondering whether I’m ever going to actually start talking about the crossing. Don’t get all worked up, my friend! Some context was necessary.

The Kinetic of Cardiff was resting in the marina of Mogán, on the southern coast of Gran Canaria. After spending a week in Las Palmas, the island’s capital, the time had finally come to meet the crew and the boat.

I walked from the bus stop to the harbor. Along the way, I found myself swallowed up in a cloud of tourists, mostly retired Brits, dragging their bacon laden bodies through the town’s charming streets, exuding that unmistakable sunscreen scent.

The stroll took no more than five minutes. I entered the marina and started searching for the small blue sailboat, steel built, just eleven meters long.

I still remember the first time I laid eyes on her.

Am I really going to do this? That was my first thought as I imagined myself floating in the middle of the oceanic desert, aboard little more than some sheets of metal, wood, and a single aluminum mast hoisting a generous set of sails.

I grabbed one of the two dock lines keeping her moored to land and pulled the bow toward me. My first step onto the deck was the confirmation that all those weeks of preparation and waiting were finally becoming real.

At last, I could put faces to the names I’d known for months, the crew that, along with the captain and me, would make up the full team.

Hubert was the first I met. I immediately knew we’d be good friends. I saw the excitement in his eyes, the hunger for adventure, the thrill of what was to come. Even though our lives were, in many ways, completely different, that look in his eyes mirrored my own, and that was all we needed.

A proper Dutchman, light hair with a hint of red, fit, and taller than me by a couple of inches.

Next, I shook hands with Jonáš, from the Czech Republic. It didn’t take long to sense his deep emotional and energetic sensitivity. He was close to 30 and, in his words, had fought several internal battles, but those struggles had only brought him closer to seeking truth and love.

He spoke with gentleness and didn’t shy away from any topic. Slim, with taut, wiry muscles, his gaze seemed carved into his skull, hard to read, and a golden beard framed his thoughtful face.

And what about Captain Keith, you ask? Well, believe it or not, he was about ten kilometers away, lying on a bed in Maspalomas hospital.

This was a surprise to me too; I only found out once I arrived. The night before, he had apparently suffered from something they referred to as “twisted guts”, not exactly a medical term, but that’s how they put it. Whatever it was, the captain was hospitalized, and nobody knew if he’d need surgery or if, with a bit of luck, a few days of rest would be enough for him to recover.

Three days went by, three long days filled with worry and speculation. What the hell were we going to do if he didn’t recover? All our plans revolved around this crossing. Of course, we cared about Keith’s health too, but if I’m being honest, it was mainly the vital role he played, the fact that, without him, the whole operation would be canceled, that had us all on edge.

During those three days of waiting, I met a young Australian traveler, who, in her words, was “following the sun.” Apparently, the sun had taken up residence in the now-empty captain’s cabin. We spent a couple of days enjoying the rocky coves, baking under the blazing star, swimming naked along the shores near the marina, and having loveless sex in the aft cabin.

On the third day, a message popped up on Hubert’s phone: “I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”

When Keith arrived, sweat was pouring down my forehead. Possibly because I was rushing to gather all the scattered evidence of the previous days’ adventures with the traveling sunflower. Luckily, Keith never suspected a thing, and after getting to know him better, I doubt he would’ve cared much anyway.

Seventy years old, tall, with what you’d call a proper beer belly, more like a Guinness belly, he stepped onto the boat and lit a cigarette. We shook hands and introduced ourselves.

We agreed to wait a few more days to see how his health held up. In the meantime, we kept preparing the boat, tuning winches, fixing broken parts, cutting wood, building new cockpit benches (the area where we’d be spending most of our days), and checking off dozens of cleaning and maintenance tasks.

The original departure date, December sixteenth, had already passed, and with each passing day, the tension only grew stronger.

“We are leaving this Saturday”. During one of our meals outside, exposed to the countless stares from passersby, we celebrated having a new departure date. It was time to stock up. Can you imagine a thousand-euro grocery run? The whole boat filled up with grains, pasta, legumes, all kinds of sweets, fruits, vegetables, juices, sauces, cheeses, meat, ten jars of peanut butter, and bottles of water that, together with the two internal tanks, would supply us for the weeks ahead. If you’ve made it this far, thank you. The crossing begins now. Everything you’ve read so far I write from memory, sitting in a café on the northeast coast of Mexico.

What follows now is a direct transcription of the two notebooks I filled religiously from the first mile to the last. While you’ll find some sailing-related technicalities, these paragraphs reflect another kind of journey. One that lasts as long as life itself. One we all get a taste of. Welcome to this small slice of mine, stretching across more than 3,000 nautical miles, from the Canary Islands to anchoring in the Caribbean.

Day 01

Majestic. That’s what I thought when I saw Keith at the helm, steering the boat he had built himself over twenty years ago. With a smile he maneuvered, as if he had done it a thousand times, because he had, towards the harbor exit. Smiles and shouts of excitement as we watched the island grow smaller and smaller. Southerly wind, about twenty knots pushing us southwest, dark clouds to port, and a couple of reefs in the mainsail. I won’t play tough, those first hours were hard on my stomach, until I took the helm. Behind it there was nothing but the sea, the wind, and the compass resting on the binnacle.

Day 02

My first watch started at dawn, from six to twelve, it was the first of many nights in which my gaze searched the sky for the light show offered by the celestial dome. When I finished, I cooked my famous oat and banana pancakes for the whole crew. They were well received, but I paid the price for that little kitchen adventure, as the boat’s interior once again left me feeling unwell for a few hours. I distracted myself by setting up the fishing rod, choosing a good lure, and diving into the books we had onboard to figure out the most suitable techniques. I decided to cast 50 meters of line with a small squid-style fish. By this point, we had been out of phone signal for several hours, so all available information lived in the two dozen books resting on the shelves of the main cabin, or rather, the saloon, where Jonáš and I also rested. In this saloon were two sofa beds, 50 centimeters wide and just long enough to lie down horizontally and rest for a few hours. I claimed the starboard one. I didn’t catch anything on the hook, but I didn’t mind, as Hubert was at the stove cooking up a tasty parmesan risotto. We devoured it to the rhythm of a buttery sunset and a playful pod of dolphins that dissolved any worry.

Day 03

Our Christmas gift was a mahi-mahi that, after cleaning it, I grilled and served with some couscous. A steaming black tea, deep conversations between four men with four completely different lives, and ten knots of northwesterly wind on our tail. Of course, no alcohol— the boat had to remain sober for the entire crossing, which didn’t make much of a difference for me, as I had already been sober for more than ten months at that point. I said goodbye to the last lights of Tenerife. They were the last we would see. No more land in sight. My watch was at midnight. I wrote in solitude, barely needing the red headlamp I wore on my forehead, as the immense full moon was more than enough. A sailboat was moving alongside us, about five miles off our port side. I took the handheld compass, and after several measurements, I saw a potential risk of collision, so I woke Keith from his deep sleep, as we had agreed in these situations. His response left me speechless. The conversation went like this; through groans, he asked if it was a sailboat, to which I replied yes. He said it was most likely made of fiberglass, and therefore, our dear Kinetic, built in steel, would cut it in half in the event of a collision. I was stunned. I changed course and never woke the captain again.

Day 04

Main sail hoisted, calm winds, still from the northwest, which probably meant we were on the lower edge of the Azores High. I say probably because we only had a VHF radio and our GPS onboard, no weather bulletins or synoptic charts of any kind. All I knew was that high-pressure systems rotate clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and low-pressure systems rotate counterclockwise. The barometer read 1020 (high pressure). We spent hours trying to figure out the actual situation, what was happening on a larger scale, and how that translated into the winds we were experiencing. It actually became our favorite pastime during the night watches I shared with Hubert. We said plenty of nonsense, but I like to believe that sometimes we were right.

Day 05

Between delicious meals, scattered readings, a few tacks and gybes, and short hours of sleep, we were nearly a week at sea. It was during these days that we began using La Morena. That’s what we decided to name our wind vane, which we started using on the third day of the voyage. Every day, one of us would lubricate the device religiously, following the captain’s orders, and for some reason, giving it a feminine name felt like the right thing to do. This little machine gave us even more free time, as it was able to hold the course relative to the wind. It was like an autopilot that, thanks to a wind vane and a pulley system, adjusted the designated heading. I started to feel at home. The guys were kind to me and I to them. Our motto was “Treat others the same way you would want to be treated yourself.” Hubert and I began to take celestial navigation seriously, inspired by a small onboard book, and Keith, who had spent half his adult life teaching the subject, agreed to instruct us on the use of the sextant. Determining our latitude and longitude without any electronic device seemed simply magical to me. From that moment on, every day we buried our elbows in that book, deciphering completely new concepts for us, which were then questioned and further explored with our teacher.

Day 06

I woke up staring at the water. That deep blue made me feel the dense vastness of the ocean, and I felt it so strongly that I asked myself if maybe that was how our minds worked too. Let me explain. The vastness of life might just be too much to grasp. And maybe that’s why we so often become obsessed with the “boat”, after all, it’s what keeps us afloat. We become so obsessed that we forget everything around us and turn that small space into our entire universe. This can be helpful. Also limiting. I delighted in feeling tiny for a little while. The calm took over for the rest of the day. Some cooked, others slept… the sailing was easy, uneventful. Jonáš cooked a rich vegan stew with legumes. The vegetarian meals he often prepared didn’t really please Keith. The relationship between the two of them hadn’t been smooth, even before we set sail. I think food preferences were part of the problem, but undoubtedly, the huge difference in their ideologies was what caused friction between them. One was a free soul who wanted nothing to do with money or society, and well, the other was seventy years old, and despite the adventurous lifestyle that comes with being a sailor, he was clearly more old-school. I tried to keep my distance and not get too involved. All those thoughts disappeared when the reel started to scream aggressively, I dropped my chickpeas and began the fight. It looked like a tuna, over ten kilos, from what we could see of it as it fought and leapt out of the water. Unfortunately, just a few meters from being ours, it managed to escape. That night I dreamed of all the dishes I could have made with such a beast. Still, I caught the fourth mahi-mahi, and we passed the 500-mile mark before midnight. With those wins, I could handle the loss of 10 kilos of sashimi.

Day 07

We dropped the gennaker, hoisted the genoa. It’s six in the morning and the stars still pierce the sky. Even without sleep, I feel still. The gusts of over fifteen knots had made us reduce sail. When we finished, we reconnected “La Morena” to the helm, which worked wonderfully in these conditions. Hands free, my head filled with ideas. I started to marvel at the endless possibilities life offers. To fantasize. Out of nowhere, I found myself wishing—wishing for things different from what I had in front of my eyes. In that moment, gently, I returned to the journey, to the moment, to the sunrise now unfolding in a display of light. That morning was the first time I held the weight of the sextant in my hands. This particular one was over forty years old. I imagined the ancient sailors, centuries ago, the true explorers, venturing into the unknown, trusting only their knowledge and a couple of metal plates that measured the angle between the horizon and the chosen celestial body. In our case, our chosen body was the Sun. After a few attempts, I got my first reading. Truth is, with just that, you can’t do much of anything, but the joy of learning something completely new and unknown was immense.

Day 09

Thirty-one. Life follows its relentless course that destroys and at the same time creates space for the new. The soundtrack of the night watches is built from the sea meeting the hull, the tired sails creaking to the rhythm of a gentle aura. That’s how we entered the last day of the year. I won’t deny that the curry from the night before also added to the orchestra I describe, in the form of high-frequency flatulence. A day of deep reflection. I wrote phrases like: “This fragmented sleep distorts the concept of day and night. When some watches begin, all I can think about is the moment I’ll return to my little bed, but after a few minutes that feeling passes.” Others, more transcendental, “I feel the need to bring order to my life on such a meaningful day. Twenty-one, one hundred euros in the bank, heading to the Caribbean on a sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic. I know I want to work aboard a boat, to dedicate myself to this, at least for a chapter of my life. I don’t know how or when, but I will.” And finally, about the beauty of the surroundings, “The sky I see, without a doubt, is the most star-filled sky my pupils have ever absorbed. As we slice through the Atlantic, tiny specks of bioluminescent plankton can be seen alongside the boat, glowing all around us, opening up the big question, what is up and what is down?” To top it all off, that day we caught the biggest mahi-mahi I have ever seen in my life. After struggling with it for a few minutes, I got it close enough for Hubert to strike it with the big metal gaff. We gave thanks to the sea for providing food and shelter. Cleaning the beast took a while, but once I finished filleting and saw the amount of fresh fish we had for the next two or even three meals, I felt satisfied. Lastly, I’ll add that on this day, I gave in to convention and also set an intention for the new year. The idea of meditating daily had been with me for a long time, but never with much success. So I created a practice called “twenty-two minutes”, which consists of sitting down and spending eleven minutes meditating, and the remaining eleven working with the breath, doing pranayama exercises. Of course, always motivated by the same thing, trying to find some clarity and peace in my life. How long do you think it lasted?

Day 10

I’m writing from inside my sleeping bag. I look up and through the hatch I see a clear blue sky, not a single speck of white. Another hot day. The first of the year. To celebrate, Hubert cooked an American-style breakfast full of grease—eggs, bacon, pancakes and cheese. We hoisted our spinnaker for the first time, a moment we had been waiting for over several days, but following the captain’s orders, we waited until the conditions were ideal. Eight knots from the east. Wind on our tail, literally. That day it was my turn to mark our position on the big map that covered most of the Atlantic, the west coast of Europe and Africa, and the east coast of America. I punched in the coordinates and calculated how many miles were left. Eighteen hundred. Truth is, we were moving slowly, and after ten days we hadn’t even covered a third of the total distance. My flight to Mexico was departing from the island we were heading to. Missing that flight would be a big problem, simply because I didn’t have the money to buy another one. The beauty of it all is that it doesn’t matter. There is absolutely nothing you can do. So I relaxed, got to work breading the fish we caught the day before, then fried it, and combined with vegetables, that became our lunch. Fresh veggies were getting scarce, and more and more we started relying on other types of food, mostly canned goods and carbs like pasta, rice, and quinoa.

Day 12

The days are quiet, sometimes too quiet. Today, in this stillness, I calculated my first latitude, with a precision of two miles. Two miles. Less than four kilometers. If the idea that with just a glance at the sun, a sextant, and a nautical almanac, you can define your latitude with that precision doesn’t seem absolutely mind-blowing, think again. Taking advantage of the calm, I spent a few hours sewing our spinnaker, which had suffered some minor damage. Jonáš taught me the art of thread and needle. In fact, it was him who, during the first days of the voyage, helped me repair the jacket that kept me warm every night. A jacket my father had given me before we said goodbye, and which is now even more unique. My sleep patterns, which changed every day and rarely lasted more than five hours, had a curious effect on me—I had started dreaming again. It had been years since I woke up remembering my dreams. Flying boats, sensual women, and deserted islands colored my naps, and always brought laughter to the crew when each morning I recounted my tales in full detail.

Day 13

First dry tank. We had expected it to last longer—it should have. Now we were left with one more tank, also around 100 liters, and a few bottles of water that barely added a dozen more liters. We started joking about death by dehydration, because there wasn’t much else we could do. We began rationing this precious liquid, each of us getting a liter and a half per day. I was assigned the task of refilling each crew member’s bottles every morning for the rest of the trip. After some basic calculations, I realized that if we were delayed even slightly, we’d run out of water. I chose not to alarm the crew and kept my worries in the pocket of my jacket. The wind was blowing gently from the east. Still, we were making about five knots. No doubt thanks to the gennaker flying off the bow. I remember the story Keith often told about that sail. He loved repeating stories. The thing is, years ago, at some port in England, he was enjoying his beloved pint of Guinness at a pub near the marina, when he overheard a gay couple arguing. It was the same conversation he had heard earlier that day, when a classic wooden sailboat was furling its gennaker in the harbor. They were arguing about how this sail had given them several headaches. Keith stepped in and jokingly offered to buy it for fifty pounds. Ten years later, it was pushing us forward. It also passed through my hands, which repaired the small imperfections of daily use. That night I made my adaptation of “patatas a la riojana”, which turned out to be a stew of potatoes, onions, chorizo, chickpeas, and a handful of herbs. As every night, we ate together. The banal conversations, talking about women, intellectually void jokes, and little stories were the perfect side dish for our varied meals.

Day 14

Two weeks at sea. Today I realized I miss the sound of birdsong. Incredibly, we still had conditions close to dead calm. It was getting frustrating. I decided to move my body, get some exercise. 300 squats, 50 pull-ups, 50 dips, and 60 pistol squats made up the session that day. While sweating on deck, the following idea came to me: “If you trade wishes for actions, self-inflicted suffering disappears.” It had been eight days since we last saw another boat on the horizon. And several days since anything bit the hook, not since the giant mahi-mahi. I put my phone to charge, connected to the batteries powered by the two solar panels aft and the wind turbine. I had downloaded some music and a small book on the science of breathing. After turning on the device, I played “El ataque de las chicas cocodrilo” by Hombres G. I can promise you, dear reader, that I have never enjoyed a song more in my life. You might think the sea was starting to affect my mental health, and it was. But in the most incredible way. In that moment, I understood that life is full of pleasures, but we’re so saturated with them that we’ve lost the ability to enjoy them. Sounds cliché. Sometimes clichés hold a bit of truth—after all, there’s a reason they get repeated so much, right?

Day 15

For a few hours, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Zero knots. We refused to turn on the engine—after all, this was a sailboat. We took our first dip of the journey. Personally, the idea of floating above five thousand meters of depth beneath my ass gave me a bit of vertigo. It passed with a few somersaults and a race with Jonáš and Hubert to see who could swim four laps around the boat first. The wind returned after a couple of hours, and with it, the night, shyly presenting its constellations. The Little Dipper crowned our mast, and once again we floated between stars and plankton. Another coffee holds my eyelids from total collapse. I write while Hubert captains the boat. On nights like this, where there are almost no maneuvers to be made, we even take naps on deck while the other is at the helm, one eye open and the other closed, ready for action if needed.

Day 17

Finally, the strength of the Atlantic showed itself. Rain, swell, and about twenty five knots. The lines were finally squealing, the boat heeling over more than thirty degrees, and time passed more quickly, reefing the main, reducing the jib, and making sure we didn’t collide with any cargo ships. We were on our watch, as usual Hubert and I, when we saw something that looked very strange. It was the kind of lights you’d see on a motor vessel, but after a second glance we spotted red lights, about a mile off the stern. The first thing that came to mind was that there was some kind of emergency, that someone was floating out there in the middle of the squall. It took us half an hour to understand what we were really looking at. It was a tugboat, pulling a metal line more than a mile long, connecting it to a large load behind. We hailed them on the VHF and adjusted course to avoid passing between those kilometers of cable.

Day 20

One can of mushrooms, three of mussels, two of squid, one of peeled tomato, a few handfuls of rice, all soaked in the very seawater we were sailing on. Canned paella, that’s what I named it. There were two reasons for creating this delicacy. The obvious one is that there was nothing fresh left on board. The second is that we had spent the last two days being pushed around by strong winds from every direction, with more than three meter mountains of water moving alongside us. Not the ideal situation for gourmet cooking. The pressure cooker was our greatest ally for pulling out flavor, and more importantly, creating huge portions to satisfy the insatiable hunger of the crew. Sailing becomes more demanding as conditions worsen. Falling asleep, and staying asleep, is a tough task. The small hull is hammered by waves and arched by wind. Pure rock and roll. Tired, and happy.

Day 22

Human bodies start to release smells I didn’t know existed. Living together gets a bit heavy, but just a little. Northerly winds finally give way to easterlies, softer and kinder. I start the stopwatch on my little Casio. Every day since I made the commitment, it’s marked twenty two minutes. Those give me shelter. After three weeks, the need to create space for oneself becomes natural.

Day 25

Ribera Del Duero. That was its name. We spotted this Norwegian cargo ship, three hundred meters long, about two miles away. Remember we’d been rationing our water supplies for days? Truth is, I hated the water from the tank. I had this theory that it was incredibly harmful to our health, because of the chemicals it needed to keep algae from growing in it, and because of its source. No one in Gran Canaria drank tap water. Those thoughts led me to ask the captain the following question — why don’t we call them on the VHF and ask for some supplies? Said and done, we grabbed the radio and gathered on deck around Keith, who calmly, following standard procedure, asked if they could hear us. A female voice came out of the speaker. We all started to fantasize… what would she be like, what was she wearing, what was her story? It was our first female contact in twenty four days. We switched to channel 06 and handled the operation. After forty five minutes sailing in their direction, we dropped sails and, for the first time since departing, turned on our little engine. A hundred meters from that metallic giant, our little sailboat looked even smaller. We had requested around forty liters of water. We had to use the spinnaker halyard and after a bit of a struggle, the huge bag was ours. When we opened it, we found not forty but eighty liters of water, along with three delicious bars of Norwegian chocolate. Grateful, we waved goodbye with cheers, sincere greetings, and a wave of euphoria. It was magical. In the middle of nowhere, groups of humans meet and help each other. I felt so alive. I felt the excitement of our crew and theirs. For both of us, it was an unforgettable moment.

Day 26

The morning breaks in black and white. I dreamed of beautiful women and glasses of wine that used to erase my memory and judgment. I stretch before starting my watch. Keith always wakes me up a few minutes after the scheduled time. I don’t know if it’s an act of kindness or just forgetfulness. I like to think it’s the first. I jot down a few lines on deck, part of the nightly routine of pressing pen to paper. That night I wrote about the past, about women and places. The Greek islands that took me in, a relationship that slowly burned out, a distraction in the form of a young Italian girl, in that hotel room on the coast of Crete. By the time I’m done rolling in memories, I can switch off the red light beaming from my forehead. We’ve got two reefs in the main, the waves, though moving in our direction, hit us hard. The northeasterlies push us through the final stretch toward our destination. The clouds whispered rain, and they kept their promise a few hours later.

Day 28

I stared at a mist that seemed oddly low and dark, off the port bow. It took me a few seconds to make out the shape. Land. I jumped up to alert the rest of the crew. We hugged and roared the word “land!” until our throats were dry. We were close. Time to swap the massive Atlantic chart for one showing the northern windward islands of the Caribbean Sea. None of us slept that night. The monotony of the open ocean broke into waters swarming with boats, rocky areas to avoid, and a precise course to follow all the way to Simpson Bay, on the island of Saint Martin.

Day 29

It took a while to find a place to anchor. We entered the bay under the cover of night. The anchor was already resting in the fine sand, with barely five meters of water between us and the bottom, when dawn revealed the green mountains, the white beaches, the turquoise of the sea, and the other sailboats floating just meters away from us… And it was while we looked at all that beauty that we turned our gaze back to ourselves. A handshake, a hug, and congratulations. That’s how we sealed the crossing — Keith, Hubert, Jonáš, and yours truly. I remember looking each of them in the eye. All I could see was respect and love.

Saint Martin

I spent four nights on the friendly island, as they call it. Four days cleaning what had been our floating home, four days exploring the island, four days getting used to solid ground again. Despite spending a month sharing a half-square-meter bathroom, Hubert and I kept hanging out most of the time in Saint Martin. With the tiny dinghy, which could only fit two people, we cruised the marina looking for girls who might want to have a good time with a couple of newly arrived sailors. The Dutchman had better luck on this mission. In fact, that night started with two things I love — pizza and reggae.

Seeing my buddy was in full seduction mode, I decided to retreat in time. The problem came when I got into the dinghy, planning to return to the boat, and found there wasn’t a single drop of fuel left in the tank. I grabbed the pair of oars, luckily still in the inflatable, and after half an hour of paddling through the dark, I made it back to my dear bed. At three in the morning I was woken by the sound of someone walking on deck. I opened my eyes, and there was Hubert, completely naked and soaked. The rascal had swum all the way to the boat in the middle of the night. Apparently the fish he caught had work the next morning.

My flight to Cancún took off on a hot morning. At the airport I ran into Jonáš, who was heading to Mexico City. On our layover in Santo Domingo, I ran into Hubert again, this time flying to Cuba.

I looked out the window. The clouds I had spent the past month observing with curiosity, wondering whether they belonged to a high or low pressure system, trying to guess what winds they would bring us, now lay beneath me, while my ass rested in the comfort of an airplane seat. In a few hours I’d be landing in the big city, and just a few more later, I’d be teaching the art of using the wind to glide over water.

There’s still a lot left in the inkwell — better that way.

Until next time.

Footage by Hubert. Thanks, my friend.