$10,000 // 24 Days

Synopsis

Join us in Las Palmas, Canary Islands to serve as Trans-Atlantic crew to Antigua on this demanding 3,000 nm crossing. Set sail on a long, trade winds passage with the winds at our backs. Expect many days of spinnaker sailing and plenty of downwind helming experience.

Note:

We now reserve two spots for women on all of our passages! Learn more here.

The Route

Expected Weather Pattern

Expect easterly and northeasterly trade winds and North Atlantic swells so lots of downwind sailing. Squalls and gales are possible. Average daytime air temperatures in the 60s (F) and nighttime air temps in the 50s. As we move south toward the Caribbean, air temperatures will rise into the 70s during the day.

Note:

We now reserve two spots for women on all of our passages! Learn more here.

Tentative Itinerary

Apr 21: Meet onboard ICEBEAR in Las Palmas, Canary Island at 17:00. Marina TBD.
Apr 22: All-day safety briefing & boat orientation
Apr 23: Departure! (Weather dependent)
May 15: Disembark in Antigua by 12:00 Noon

Travel Logistics

Fly into Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Airport (LPA) Canary Islands.
Fly out of Antigua’s V.C. Bird International Airport (ANU).

How to Join

To register, complete the Offshore Passage Registration by clicking the 'Sign Up' button above, or at the bottom of the page. You'll be asked to complete the form - make sure you hit submit. Indicate '2023: Trans-Atlantic: Canaries - Antigua' as your preferred passage.

Once we receive your registration, you'll be sent an invoice for 50% of the balance, due immediately. The final 50% of the balance will be due 60 days prior to the passage date. Terms and conditions are in the registration form, and you'll be asked to agree to them before submitting your deposit. Please read them carefully.

Featured

May 1, 2023

Travel Logistics

May 1, 2023

Click here to read in general about the best way to get to & from the boat. Specifics on each trip will be emailed to you in a series of newsletters once you register. It's ocean sailing - be flexible in your planning!

May 1, 2023

What's Included in the Crew Fee?

May 1, 2023

Click here to read about what you get - and what's not included - when you sign-up for this passage.

May 1, 2023

How to Book & What Happens Next

May 1, 2023

Click here to read more about how to register and join us offshore!

May 1, 2023

FAQs

May 1, 2023

Click here to read some of our most frequently asked questions from crew who have sailed with us in the past.

May 1, 2023

Jan 1, 2023

What to Expect Onboard

Jan 1, 2023

Click here to read about what you can expect on an ocean passage onboard ISBJORN or FALKEN.

Jan 1, 2023

Sign Up

Related Blogs:

Featured

Passage Logs

ISBJORN Trans-Atlantic p. 12/Finale // Re-Entry

Passage Logs

This is different. ISBJORN’s been at sea over 20 days now. The world we’re about to re-enter won’t be the same from the one we left. Three weeks is enough time to guarantee that. We’ve been well and truly cutoff. Not so much as in the old days - I can text friends and family and we get weather reports of course. But no email. No news. I have no idea if the US government has re-opened yet, nor do I know anything else about the world outside our little bubble. Sailing across oceans is like traveling in a steam-punk time machine. In slow-motion, we’re moving into the future with no knowledge of what’s happened in the interval.

Passage Logs

ISBJORN Trans-Atlantic p. 11 // Oops. There Goes the Spinnaker...

Passage Logs

Welp, we did it. Mia & I got complacent and paid the price of letting our guard down. I figuratively kicked myself the first time I was at the top of the mast in the dark, freeing a horribly twisted spinnaker halyard, and then promised myself I’d not make the same mistake twice the second time I was up the rig cutting the wrapped sail down from the forestay and swinging around in the swell like an idiot.

Passage Logs

Passage Logs, Andy's Blog, Philosophy

ISBJORN Trans-Atlantic p. 10 // Fixing Broken Things

Passage Logs, Andy's Blog, Philosophy

About a week ago I had found a broken screw on deck, and had quizzed the crew at dinner to figure out where it had come from. I knew of course that it had come from the pole track on the front of the mast (it’s never good by the way to find broken screws that have fallen out of the rigging!). At the time we noticed just that one and two others - three, total - that had succumbed to the shearing forces of the sail on the pole. We just repositioned the car higher or lower on the track and figured that’d be fine.

Passage Logs, Andy's Blog, Philosophy

ISBJORN Trans-Atlantic p. 9 // Time!? You’re Talking Time Man?!

Passage Logs, Andy's Blog, Philosophy

A whale came to visit on my mom’s birthday, after I had written that tearful post about stargazing early in the morning, before dawn. Later that day the rains came while I was on watch, again alone, and RIGHT next to the boat a 20-30-foot minke whale made his presence known with a puff of air and a glimpse of his dorsal fin. He stayed with me for over an hour, diving and playing under the boat.

Passage Logs, Andy's Blog, Philosophy

Andy's Blog, Passage Logs, Philosophy

ISBJORN Trans-Atlantic p. 8 // A Pre-Dawn Cry to Celebrate Mom's Birthday

Andy's Blog, Passage Logs, Philosophy

My mom would have turned 69 today had she lived. Today marks the second birthday I’ve celebrated at sea on this trans-Atlantic passage - mine, with Mia’s birthday balls dessert on Jan 25; and mom’s this morning, where on my 0200-0400 early morning watch I shared a quiet cry and contemplated the sea and the stars for two hours by myself in the cockpit, gazing out at the vastness and just being.

Andy's Blog, Passage Logs, Philosophy

Passage Logs

ISBJORN Trans-Atlantic p. 7 // 50 Knots on Gilligan's Island

Passage Logs

The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed.
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The MINNOW would be lost! The MINNOW would be lost!

Passage Logs

ISBJORN Trans-Atlantic p. 6 // Turn the Wind On!

Passage Logs

Note: The title - and gist - of this post will come back to haunt me in the next installment…

So much for the January Trades. Shortly after my birthday balls celebration the weather pattern took a turn for the weird. A not-unheard of cutoff low spun up at the tail end of a strong cold front much farther north and began meandering around to our north, just west of the Canary Islands, disrupting the classic easterly tradewind pattern we were so very much enjoying prior. By sunrise on the 25th, the wind had started veering into the SE, then S, and getting lighter...we dropped the spinnaker that evening as the apparent wind moved forward, and have been fighting for every mile since.

Passage Logs

ISBJORN Trans-Atlantic p. 5 // Birthday's at Sea

Passage Logs

In the days before accurate longitude at sea, trans-Atlantic skippers followed the by now cliched “sail south until the butter melts, then turn right.” Once the New World was discovered, and in turn mapped, sailors knew where the different islands in the West Indies lay, north-south anyway. They’d have known the Virgin Islands were about 18º30’ N, for example. Or that Nelson’s base on the south coast of Antigua was at exactly 17º N. They’d have known too, with a good trade wind blowing, roughly how many days after the butter melted it would take to get there. But they wouldn’t have known exactly.

Passage Logs

ISBJORN Trans-Atlantic p. 4 // Roll the ol' Chariot Along

Passage Logs

We’ll roll the ol’ chariot along
We’ll roll the ol’ chariot along
We’ll roll the ol’ chariot along
And we’ll all hang on behind.

Passage Logs

ISBJORN Trans-Atlantic p. 3 // Rut or Groove?

Passage Logs

NOTE from Andy, Feb 14, 2019: I’m hesitant to publish this, for risk of it being too personal, causing too much interference with the public persona I’ve created about myself and of the business. But you know what - f&%k it. If I don’t publish this, anything I do publish would just feel like propaganda. Yes, there are certain things I’ll never publish - to this day there doesn’t exist an online photo from our wedding, for example, and while I talk all the time about the decision to have kids or not, you can safely bet that if the day comes, you won’t read much about it here. That said, re-reading this now, which I wrote over 3 weeks ago while tired and just getting started on the trans-At…well, as I sit on the new Swan 59 publishing this, all the feelings I describe below are basically gone - I’m STOKED! But, this is how I felt then…here goes.

Passage Logs

5 // FALKEN: Trans-Atlantic! Las Palmas – Antigua // 3,000 Miles & 24 Days // $10,000 // WAITLIST

$10,000 // 24 Days

Synopsis

Note:

The Route

Expected Weather Pattern

Note:

Tentative Itinerary

Travel Logistics

How to Join

Related Blogs: