The classic is to wait until life’s success permits the big escape. For thirty-somethings Jessie and Jan it was different. With disappointments in work and a mindset prompting adventure before starting family, they sold up everything, bought Contest 48CS Adhara mid-pandemic and sailed away, writing a wonderful blog in their wake!
Some stories just tell themselves, simply confirming that decisions made were right. So, let’s not begin at the beginning. Let’s join Jessie and Jan one year on from buying Adhara, in that time having sailed her straight from Plymouth, UK to the Canaries for the first winter, then back to the Mediterranean for the next summer season, before out again to the Canaries readying for a transatlantic to the Caribbean.
We step aboard as the couple start their way south, to ‘where the butter melts’, that legendary staging point for the big turn to the west. We’ll stay for five days, five great days, from which, spoiler alert, we’ll all likely decide it’s time we tried this, too! over to you, Jessie …
Friday 10 Dec 2021 Departure Day
As I write this, we are sailing down the coast of Tenerife with 23 knots at 150°, flying at 8.7kn! Today is an incredibly beautiful clear day and we can see Mount Teide in its full glory, no cloud in sight! We should reach the southern tip of the island in a couple of hours where we’ll catch up with our buddy-boat heading the same way. I must remind Jan it’s not a race!
We’re just rrr-really excited right now to finally be heading towards new shores!
Saturday 11 Dec 2021 Good Day
The first 24 hours of our passage down to the Cape Verdes have passed and one could say that we have had a bit of everything already: the first 18 hours of the trip we were averaging 7.3 knots with a top speed of 12.1 knots coming down a wave, and winds up to 27 knots. Wow, if only one could dictate the winds! After that, the wind dropped to around 7 knots on the aft beam, so we changed course and headed straight to Africa to keep moving.
As usual, I only slept an hour on the first night of a passage. The excitement, the motion and thoughts about the upcoming days keep me awake. Have we thought of everything?
Did we download weather? What will the sea state be like? And so forth … It usually gets much better on the second night!
Sunday 12 Dec 2021 Day 3
It’s 11pm now, Jan is finally getting some rest down below as I sit in our cockpit simply listening to the waves around us for a moment. It’s a beautiful night, the moon shines its silver light, and I can see stars all around us. Looking out on our port side I see Orion hunting across night sky and following the three stars of Orion’s belt down to the next brightest star, Sirius, the Dog Star! Now looking for the next brightest star, another couple down 1, 2, 3 … oh yes, there she is, Adhara, our namesake!
Monday 13 Dec 2021 Day 4 – Just Cruisin’
It looks like we have found the current which flows along the African coast southwards towards the Cape Verdes and gives us an extra boost of 0.5 to 1 knot. I know it does not sound much but over the time of four days, a 1-knot difference in average speed can mean that you arrive a day earlier – or later!
Tuesday 14 Dec 2021 Day 5 – Under Attack
We’re making good speed and reached the halfway point [to Mindelo, staging point in Cape Verdes] some hours ago. The nights are still cold, I wear my full offshore outfit on my night watches. So, the feeling of ‘sailing along the African coast’ hasn’t really sunk in. Alone in the cockpit, at around 3am this morning I heard myself cry out “WHAT THE **** !!”, as the sky suddenly lit up as if struck by lightning, and the glowing tail of a massive shooting star slowly faded away. That must have been the start signal for what was to follow. All around us, mere seconds apart, it started to shower shooting stars. There were so many, sometimes two right next to each other.
It felt unreal and the thought of an alien attack crossed my mind. Suddenly I see little light bursts in the water, then a dolphin jumps out in front of our bow, spinning and landing on its back sending out a firework of bioluminescence in the black waves. Here I am, grinning stupidly into the night whispering “Is this real?“ Ocean sailing is … just freakin’ magic!
Jessie and Jan came back to earth with a crash, though, sailing into Mindelo and Cape Verde’s stringent Covid quarantine rules. And that permits us a return to earlier days in this story as all this shape-shifting happened in line with the pandemic’s take-off.
Although the pair had started talking loosely about adventuring in 2019, it kicked off in earnest just as Covid took hold, making the future of Jan’s travel business uncertain. That started the thinking: why not do it now?
“There’s always been something of a dream in my head that someday it would be nice sailing across an ocean, or even around the world,” says Jan, who hails from Hamburg and keen sailing parents, while Jessie is from Austria and more ski instructor than sailor, and who laughs, “Jan’s parents’ place is lined with sailing magazines from everywhere in the world.
And funnily enough, after we had bought Adhara, Jan’s dad dug out and gave us the original copy of an old sailing magazine with a Contest 48CS on the cover! So, this is how far back the obsession goes!”
The talking had led to a lot more watching and reading of vloggers and bloggers. “I didn’t want to watch them at first,” says Jessie, “I thought it so unrealistic, so unattainable, and to be honest watching didn’t make me feel good about my own life. I was very unhappy in my job and quite jealous.”
Then, with so much information out there on how to make the decisions, and how to make things happen, the conversation moved on. “We started calculating, quite naively,” says Jessie, “but then when was the moment we decided to buy a boat? Really, more than one big thing it’s a lot of tiny steps you take towards this idea, and then one day you’re on a one-way flight to London having basically bought a boat on FaceTime!”
So, there it was, straight back into the days of Covid with Jessie and Jan working within the controlling constraints to visit the Contest yard, where, with extensive discussions with the Contest Brokerage team, Jessie and Jan reeled in and almost landed first a Contest 44CS and then 48CS in Medemblik.
But eventually, still talking with the brokerage team, they settled on another, 23-year-old, 48CS conveniently more sorted for their intended sailing, but less handily over in the UK mid-travel prohibition. A difficult situation remarkably well recovered by the pair engaging and handing extended responsibility to an eminently empathetic local surveyor who went way beyond the extra mile.
Jan explains, “With the Covid rules we knew that we couldn’t travel to the UK to see the boat in person, but we also knew this boat’s layout was the same as the ones we’d seen in the yard, so seeing the pictures and going through the spec we knew what to expect.
Also, the specification was higher, with this one actually ready-set to go cruising. Talking with the surveyor I felt comfortable he could represent us well and he did, right through to sea trials and more.” So, the deal was done. “Then on the day in July that Britain opened,” Jan continues, “we jumped on a plane with everything packed we’d need for a two- to three-year sail … still without previously having seen the boat!”
A case in point and possible concern? Yes but no! Their adventure needed to begin: the only other possessions remaining after their selling-up amounted to four boxes in storage! Busying themselves aboard – between sailing locally in Cornwall, enjoying Helford River and more – , through summer to mid-winter Jessie and Jan upgraded to lithium batteries, bigger outboard for the dinghy, replacement generator, and new mainsail. Then come December it was time to be away to warmer waters.
Remember how Jessie felt before? That such adventure was neither realistic nor attainable. Well, that had changed: it was happening to them, for real. Yet that’s not to pretend it’s always as perfect as in the blog entries further up the story. As Jessie says, bad days happen, too, and whereas the good might be ‘sailing days’, she describes gloomier times as ‘selling days’! And when it comes to what gets shown online and some of their earlier ‘naïve calculating’ and later of their own blogging, “People don’t really want to see someone complaining, which I understand, so it can be hard to find an honest balance. You feel like you don’t want to complain because you are able to do this amazing voyage. Sometimes it’s hard to find that middle ground.”
And that unsettling and unexpected is at times about circumstance, not just from the general way of life aboard. In the couple’s second passage out to the Canaries, in a big seaway 40 nautical miles free of the Strait of Gibraltar, out of the corner of the eye something was spotted afloat a distance away. Alarmingly, two migrants in distress hanging onto deflating inner tubes. Unseen, no way would they have survived, but still even found they might not have lived.
With conditions too rough for safe recovery from Adhara with only two aboard, Jessie and Jan had no choice but to radio for assistance and standby in the hope of help, which thankfully appeared in the form of a Moroccan naval vessel in time to save the casualties. An encounter not only shocking but life-changing … for them all. Experience never wished for, yet sadly valuable. Had Adhara not been out on adventure those two migrants’ lives would have been lost.
Perhaps that star high above at the story’s start had chanced to look down from its stellar transit. With the men saved, Adhara the yacht, continued her own transit, in due course arriving in Martinique with a world-wakened crew, as Jessie’s blog clearly tells!
Thursday 6th January 2022 Day 17 [From Mindelo] – Time To Hoist The Flag
Honestly guys, this last day of our crossing brings mixed feelings with it. We have said that we’ve had passages where we were just so desperate to arrive. Somehow, and probably thanks to the fact that the past couple of days out here were absolute bliss, we feel like we could go on a little longer without losing our minds. We’d have enough food for sure. Caught Mahi Mahi Number 5 yesterday! And there’s still an enormous amount of food squirrelled away in every corner of the boat. Fresh fruit and vegetables are slowly diminishing but I still have two zucchinis that I bought in Tenerife that are still fresh! Unbelievable!!
Jan has finally found his peace of mind and I find him most mornings sat in the shade at our bow, leaning against the mast listening to an audiobook. He looks so relaxed, it’s a joy to watch him sat there, playing with his beard (it has grown quite long now) and staring onto the horizon. I’ve found my favourite spot for the morning hours, too: leant against a fender under the shade of our solar panels. Just remind me to make better choices for my entertainment next time. ‘Everything you wanted to knowmabout the Titanic’ is a poor choice for a podcast. And reading ‘Dune’ while surrounded by water makes it hard to be pulled into the story.
75nm to go, friends! How does it feel? Not likewe’ll soon be arriving in the Caribbean. It’s gonna come as quite a shock I believe. Hoisting the courtesy flag always gets your mind into arrival mode. We have some friends waiting for us in the anchorage and can’t wait to share our stories with them and hear their experiences from the crossing.
Jessie and Jan settled quickly into Caribbean ways, cruised the islands for a few months, particularly enjoying Dominica and its free-diving, which became the couple’s main thrill over their scuba and surfing which took a bit of a backburner. Then, with the weather clock ticking, it was into Grenada for Adhara to sit out the hurricane season while Jessie and Jan headed back to Europe and decide their next steps.
Panama and on through the canal into the Pacific beyond had tempted, but with 12,000 miles sailed, 17 countries visited, and their original time limit nearly spent, there was instead a return for the next season moving on to the BVI for blissful sailing between the islands and more fabulous diving before Adhara was sold and Jessie and Jan headed into their next life-adventure, ashore in mainland Europe … and happily still blogging about sailing and the sea!