We made it across the Atlantic!

For our first ocean crossing, we were terrified of the unknown! Those who had done a crossing told us it would be easy and fun while those that hadn’t done a crossing told us it would be dangerous and difficult.
Once we finished our first ocean crossing, we realized that it really was fun and easy; which made shoving off for our second ocean crossing all the easier.
We knew how to provision, read the weather, what gear to have and what to leave behind. All we had to do was just shove off and go to sea!

The crossing was a bit lengthy, totaling around 27 days to make it from Cape Verde to Suriname, along the way we experienced all the weathers: too much wind, no wind, perfect wind, and everything in between.
The biggest problem we have encountered on the crossing was arriving in a country with very poor internet!
There will be many posts to come that take the typical in depth look at everything we learned and you should know before you go out to sea on your first bluewater passage!

Stay tuned!

Back to Wisdom

It has been a while since we have sailed on Wisdom! First we took a van trip for several months, then we hopped onto a friends boat to sail to the Balearic Islands for another month, but now we are finally home and doing what we do best!

The thing that makes this video extra special is this is the first video of wisdom with our new cameras. We used to film everything with a GoPro Hero 5. It worked but it has its limitations as a camera.
Now we are filming with a combination of GoPro Hero 8 and a Nikon D7500. The video quality is just miles ahead of our old GoPro which means that the videos are just stunningly beautiful. I really could have just watched the yard worker power wash the hull all day through the lens, it was just beautiful!

Enjoy this video and be prepared for from here on out, we are sailing all the time! We are leaving Europe and heading back across the Atlantic for a second time. Every leg we sail is well over 1000 nautical miles and the videos are purely about sailing once again!

Beginning our next Transatlantic Voyage

It is time to cross the Atlantic and return to the Americas!
We are currently in Cape Verde and setting sail today for Suriname, on a different continent and the opposite side of the ocean. To make things more interesting, I’m going to be crossing only using traditional methods. No GPS, no weather information, no electronics! Just a weather eye, a sextant, and a sound boat.

Follow along as we cross the Atlantic Ocean right now!

We are embarking on a rather long voyage, from Madeira to Suriname (with a short stop in Cape Verde). For the duration of the voyage, we will not have internet access so the blog posts will pause for a bit. Once we make landfall, they will resume again!

During our voyage, you can follow us along in real time on our live tracking map and even message us directly to the boat! All you need to do is become a Patron on Patreon to receive the password to the map.
We look forward to hearing from you!

Herby and Maddie

Become a Patron!

Starting our second Atlantic Crossing

We are almost ready to leave Madeira to sail to Cape Verde and then on to Suriname. The batteries are all charged up, the water tanks are filled to the brim, the food lockers are stuffed to capacity. We are ready!

Except we forgot to download movies on the iPad! Weather windows and tides can be ignored, there is always a “next one later.” Crossing the Atlantic without any movies would make for a very long crossing, so our departure time has been rescheduled to “whenever Netflix finishes downloading.”
For our first crossing, I was much more nervous about all the unexpected and unknown that awaited us out on the open ocean. Now, I know to expect endless blue swells and the need for some entertainment. We have books, games, conversation, and plenty of editing to do for our YouTube channel; but sometimes it’s nice to just turn off your brain and unwind with a silly movie.
Out at sea, we will watch anything. It can be good, it can be cringeworthy bad, but it’s the only thing we have so we will watch it for the duration of the passage.
Yes, a properly downloaded movie collection on the iPad is a requirement for going out to sea! A large enough requirement that it could postpone the very start of our long voyage. 1,100 nautical miles to our next island in Cape Verde and then 2,600 nautical miles to Suriname. We are expecting to be disconnected from the outside world until mid November, so having some shows is always a comfort.