530 Miles, No Land in Any Direction || Sailing SV Goat ep 116

530 miles. Four days. No land in any direction. We spent a fortnight buying the perfect coastal toy — a proper RIB with a real outboard, the dinghy I have wanted since we bought this boat — and one evening on a beach in Portugal being fed by complete strangers. Then we left the coast altogether. This is the crossing to Porto Santo, the first island of the Madeira archipelago, and the first time this boat has been properly offshore. Dennis came with us as extra crew. We left before dawn on the 26th and made landfall on the 29th. Some things about a passage that nobody tells you. The orca fear we have carried since Gibraltar — the hand-steering, the five metres of water, the watching for fins — simply stops. Not because anything is resolved, but because the water goes to eight hundred metres and the problem is physically behind you. And then, having been frightened for six weeks, you are left with four days of not very much at all. It gets boring. That is the honest answer. Until the third afternoon, when a front came through, flipped the wind sixty degrees, put it dead astern, and left the Code Zero and the jib and the main with nothing useful to do. So the spinnaker went up for the first time — the blue-and-white one, which has never been on this channel before. Night watches under red light. Sunrise and sunset with nothing on the horizon in any direction. A fishing rod that caught precisely nothing in four days. Vlad crossing an ocean. And then, on the fourth grey morning, a shape. Next week we are ashore on Porto Santo. CHAPTERS 0:00 “The most beautiful day” 0:32 The boatyard 0:48 The dinghy I deserve 1:47 She takes the wheel 2:18 A fire in the sand 2:31 Bart, from Holland 3:37 “Hopefully never” 3:52 We can make water again 4:12 Before dawn 4:24 Finally leaving 5:04 Sunrise 5:37 Three hundred and fifty metres 5:56 Dennis 6:35 The first Atlantic passage 8:24 Golden hour 8:35 Sunset at sea 8:51 “My favourite time” 10:00 Moonlight 10:15 Sunrise, day two 10:46 The rod goes out 10:51 The empty ocean 11:25 Between watches 11:49 The third day 12:22 Watching the sea 12:53 The first ocean squall 13:36 “It was not a decision, it was a need” 14:26 The spinnaker fills 14:52 “What more do you want” 15:03 Engines off 15:10 You sign up for days like this 16:24 Vlad crosses an ocean 16:44 The sea through the hull window 17:09 Land ho 17:48 The biggest waves I have ever seen 18:25 The island appears 19:10 Porto Santo Filmed aboard SV Goat, a Lagoon 400 we live on full time. Vlad supervises. #SailingLife #Liveaboard #CatamaranLife #Lagoon400 #SailboatLife #SailingVlog #Catamaran #Atlantic #OceanCrossing #PortoSanto #Madeira #Spinnaker #NightWatch #BlueWaterSailing