$4,000.00 // 10 Days
Start 2019 Offshore!
Join Isbjorn for our first passage of 2019, and the first leg of the return Trans-Atlantic. You'll join the boat in Lisbon, Portugal, where we'll spend a day or two prepping to go offshore and watching the weather. Once we depart, we'll follow the northerly winds down the coast of Portugal and cross the infamous shipping lanes heading into Gibraltar and the Med, so we'll pay close attention to the radar and AIS!
Once 'off the deep end', so to speak, it's 800 miles or so on the rhumb line to the city of Las Palmas on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands. Soft winds blow off the Sahara from Africa, and on our last passage along this route in 2012, we had 5 days of easy, dry sailing.
Easy flight connections are available from both Lisbon and Portugal.
The Route
Planned Itinerary
Mia and I sailed this route (almost) on Kinship, the Saga 43 we completed an Atlantic Circle with back in 2012/13. Then, we departed from Lagos, on the south coast of Portugal, but just around the corner from Lisbon. Portugal is amazing - the people, the food, the weather and the scenery! A place not to be missed, so make sure you arrive a few days early to explore the markets and the scenes around Lisbon (the photo on the cover here was from one of the many produce markets in Lagos, a fantastic cultural experience!).
Once settled in on the boat, we'll depart Lisbon and point the bow straight for Las Palmas, the city on the north side of Gran Canaria where the ARC Rally departs from every year. They'll be long gone by the time we get there (they leave in late November), so it'll be a mellow place to come in to. Gran Canaria is a super island, with a mountainous interior and beautiful coastline, so try and stay a while afterward to explore! Our friends Danny & Annika run a surf school on the south coast, so check them out!
The passage itself was calm in 2012, with lots of spinnaker sailing and cool, dry weather. We'll be going later in the year (January), than we did on Kinship (September), but it's a short enough passage that we should be able to wait for a good weather window.
