Land Ho!!! Seventeen days. A special feeling spreads onboard when the beautiful peaks of La Palma appear in the distance. The crew turns toward each other—Hah! We did it!
Normally you’d utter these words somewhere in the Caribbean after a 17-day tradewind transatlantic. La Palma, however, is one of the smaller islands in the Canaries. Off the west coast of Africa. You’d be leaving the island in your wake at the start of the so-called milk run. Onboard the Swan 70 Adrienne, flying the 59º North flag, however, the crew spotted La Palma off the port bow. Sailing upwind.
With our flagship Farr 65 Falken headed to the Pacific this year—and where she’ll stay until 2027—I had my radar tuned for opportunities in the Atlantic. Anytime we publish a transatlantic passage, they sell out instantly. Crossing the Atlantic is a once-in-a-lifetime, bucket list adventure, and our crews jump at the chance to sign on.
I was in Stockholm last fall, interviewing one of Sweden’s most famous sailors, four-time Whitbread veteran Gurra Krantz, for my On the Wind podcast. For the past several years Gurra, now retired from ocean racing, has been leading the Swedish TV production of a show called Över Atlanten, whereby he skippers his Swan 70 Adrienne from the Canaries to Sint Maarten with a crew of Swedish celebrities, showbiz personalities, and athletes, filming the whole ordeal. If you ask me, the coolest concept ever for a reality show! When we put the mics away, I asked Gurra what he does with the boat once the filming is wrapped.
“I pay my guys to deliver it straight back to Gran Canaria,” he said casually. Hmmmmmmm, I thought. We can do better than that. Gurra and I quickly agreed that 59º North would instead sail the boat back. Finding the crew was of course the easy part.
Adrienne left Sint Maarten on starboard tack and sailed north-northeast for four days. The easterly trades are created by the clockwise circulation of a relatively stable high pressure, known colloquially as the Bermuda High or the Azores High, depending on which side of the ocean you hail from. At the center of this high there is no wind—the Horse Latitudes—and to the north, the prevailing westerlies. However, those favorable westerlies come with a severe caveat: They’re also along the storm track, where deep winter depressions spin up off the continent and roll across to batter Ireland and the UK. Go too far north looking for a free wind, and you might just find yourself in the perfect storm.
When I published the passage route on 59-north.com, I made a looping dotted line, first north towards Bermuda, then east, and ultimately ESE on landfall in the Canaries, to show the typical route you’d take to avoid a three-week beat on the rhumb line—the inverse curve of the “sail south until the butter melts and turn right.” As it happened, Adrienne followed that dotted line almost as if she’d traced it.
“We are now in the dead center of the Azores High. No wind, glassy water. And we are swimming! Just 15,000 feet under our feet…” 59º North Skipper Erik Nordborg wrote as they reached their first turning point. Onboard the crew enjoyed the relative calm after days and days of sailing close-hauled, swam, showered, and cleaned up the boat.
A day later, they got what they had come north for. “Conditions are just amazing!” Erik, himself a professional meteorologist who relished the strategic challenge of this “backwards” transatlantic, wrote to the blog. “Broad reaching in 20 knots with clear blue skies. Huge, but very long-period 15-ft swell. Absolutely stunning!”
A vicious winter storm with hurricane-strength winds was spinning well to the north and generating that swell, but onboard Adrienne, conditions were perfect. Trade wind sailing, but in the wrong direction, Erik added.
And thus, the game continued. Sail too far north, and risk getting overrun by a winter storm. Too far south, and you’re beating against it. Too close to the high’s center, and you’re becalmed. On the home stretch, Adrienne found the northeast trades and made landfall on the south coast of Gran Canaria on port tack.
While I haven’t yet debriefed the passage with Erik, from where I sit today the Adrienne passage appears to have been a success. So long as the filming of Över Atlanten continues on the westabout transatlantic, we’ll be bringing her home in the other direction, and be able to offer six more lucky souls another bucket-list adventure.
“A seemingly endless ocean has separated us from the normal world,” the crew wrote, to end the logbook of the passage. “But in just a few miles we will step out of this universe. We will not leave empty handed—with us we keep wonderful memories, and countless stories to tell from this adventure. And new friends for life.”
May 2025
