Craig Wood set out from La Paz, Mexico, on March 25, aiming to cross the Pacific solo on his 41-foot aluminum catamaran Sirius II. Averaging 5 knots, he could’ve made the voyage in two months. Instead, after six weeks he’s still got about 3,000 miles to go, drifting along at half his expected speed.
The problem? Two damaged gennakers.
“The first was a brand new sail on a continuous fuller, but there was a burr in the furler that over time cut through the tack line,” he says. “The gennaker ended up under the boat. It dragged across the barnacles and created all of these little tears.” It took about three hours for him to get the sail back onboard, but it was in no shape to be reset. Then, a snafu with top-down versus bottom-up furling on the same drum had the backup gennaker in the water, and though he was able to rescue it much faster the second time around, it was also out of commission for the rest of the voyage.
“Now I’m at a point of no return. I can’t divert to Guam because of the hurricanes. Anywhere else you have to pass through the hurricane track. The safest thing is to keep going onward to Japan and hope to get there before typhoon season.”
The boat is down to jibs and main, forging onward a little slower and a little higher on the wind. With the soft mid-Pacific breeze topping out at 15 knots, at times Sirius II is clocking in at a gentle drift of 2.5 knots.
Still, the crew of one remains undaunted.
A Family Affair
The world’s first triple amputee to achieve a Yachtmaster status, Craig lost his legs and left hand in an IED blast in Afghanistan in 2009.
“My dad taught me to sail as a kid. [After the injury], he handed me some information about getting back on the water and said, ‘You’ve always loved sailing, and sailing is something that you can still do.” Logging the miles helped him regain a sense of freedom and purpose—and the expertise to cross oceans. Craig now has children of his own, and when he’s not sailing alone, he is passing his love of the water on to them.
“My son has a ‘why’ attitude,” he says. “He’s 4, and I try not to say to him ‘because I said so.’ I try to explain things, and there’s so much to learn by sailing. He’s understanding things about the planet that most people aren’t teaching a 4-year-old.”
The family of four lives aboard much of the year, and Craig video calls home first thing every day while alone on passage. He is already looking forward to reuniting with his wife, Renate, and kids at the finish in Japan. Though the voyage so far has been rewarding and spiritual, he says, it’s also been difficult to be away from them.
“It’s been amazing, but I’ve realized I never want to do a trip like this again, particularly being away from my family, from my kids at such a tender age,” he says. “I had a squall the other night, and I saw a lunar bow. It was amazing. But I’d rather see it with my kids and my wife. It wasn’t better because I was seeing it alone.”
Day to Day
Life onboard Sirius II is generally pretty calm, especially now that Craig is stuck in low power mode. “There are lots of relaxing days and a few intense moments of things breaking,” he says.
“I wake up, put the Starlink on, make a coffee, call my wife and kids. Once I’m happy with the weather forecasting, I go up on deck to check whether I need to jibe. I’ll look around and see if I can tinker, and if I can’t tinker, I’ll watch a movie, then I’ll feel bad about watching the movie and find something else to tinker.”
Every now and then he crosses paths with another vessel, which can be exciting or alarming depending on how much notice he has. An AIS malfunction has resulted in a few little surprises.
“My wife started a tomato plant, and I told her it’s probably going to die, but I’ve been quite happy to have something to nurture,” he says. The plant has begun to grow over the nav desk, and he jokes that maybe that’s what’s tampering with the AIS.
“A couple hours after sunset every day I hand steer. It gives the autopilot a break and keeps me in touch with the boat. I was listening to a John Kretschmer book once, and he said all sailors hate sharks, and I was thinking about that, because actually I feel quite shark-neutral. And then I felt someone grab my shoulder. And for a second I thought someone had stowed away and was grabbing me, but it was really a flying fish hitting my shoulder.”
Despite the fright and the shark ambivalence, the wildlife has been a highlight. He’s been quite happy to have the company of a booby for a good portion of the trip.
He says that being a triple amputee hasn’t affected his process onboard much. Shackles are tricky one-handed, but he’s replaced them with soft shackles where appropriate. And the electric winch helps to expedite things.
“Before I left, I overlooked a bit of a chafing situation in the reef line, so when that chafed through, I had to run a mouseline and replace it. It took ages. Nothing’s impossible, but some of it is harder.”
The Big Picture
Craig began his voyaging aboard a 40-foot ketch in the Med, but quickly found he was motoring it more than he was sailing it, so it was time for a change.
“I got a Beneteau Oceanis 46 and sailed across the Atlantic to Patagonia instead of the usual Caribbean route. I’ve always gone more off the beaten track. I like to go places where the crowds aren’t.” Despite loving the Beneteau, the rolling motion was becoming a source of frustration. The solution came in the form of another boat search, this time for a catamaran, preferably an aluminum one for some eventual high latitude sailing. As luck would have it, it didn’t take long for a word-of-mouth recommendation to lead him to the perfect boat.
“I’m a true believer that boats have souls. Some have good souls, this boat has…an odd soul. I absolutely love it to bits.” Sirius II didn’t need any major refits, and Craig says they didn’t need to do any accessibility modifications because she already had great brace points and handholds. Still, he and Renata are eyeing a couple cosmetic upgrades as they continue their way around the world.
They intend to someday sail back where it all began in the Med but are in no hurry. After all, it’s already taken years to get this far.
Beyond the Boat
In conjunction with his attempt to become the first triple amputee to cross an ocean solo, Craig is fundraising for two veterans organizations that helped him during his recovery, Blesma and Turn to Starboard. The former works with British servicemembers who’ve sustained lifechanging injuries to regain independence and normalcy. The latter uses RYA certified sailing courses to aid and enrich the lives of those affected by military operations.
Craig hopes, however, that the impact of the voyage will extend beyond the fundraising that he’s doing. “I’d like my story to reach two groups. I’d like it to touch the naysayers, for them to change their mindset about what amputees or disabled people can achieve. It’s about a positive mindset; instead of, ‘No, I don’t think you can do that,’ it should be, ‘What can I do to help?’”
“And the other group is the ones who are a bit lost and don’t know how to follow their dreams or are too scared to follow them. There are too many people dreaming and not trying to achieve it. At least try. The worst case is that you end up right back where you are.”
Despite the isolation at sea, in some ways this voyage has made Craig feel closer to the planet and the people on it. In a spiritual sense, it’s been quite a meditative experience. For him, sailing even touches upon a sense of the divine.
“I’m not a godly man, but if there was a designer, that designer was a sailor. I’ve been in perfect coves, exactly deep enough for a boat to get into, and in the trade winds, which are perfect too. This world was designed for sailors. And that makes me feel more at one with it all. I feel balanced.”
Click here for more information about his voyage and an interactive map with his progress, or here for information on how to contribute to his fundraising efforts.
