In 2018, Sasha is 25 years old. She has just finished her studies and decides to take a year's sabbatical to embark on a rather crazy project: to reach New Zealand by boat-hitchhiking! Here is her feedback.
The search for boats and the financial cost
Sasha researched the online platforms "The Crew Exchange" and "Vog with me", which offer a co-browsing service with offers and requests for boarding. She selects the offers, exchanges with the owners and manages to find a way to reach New Zealand thanks to two boats :
- 1 re part of the trip: Crossing the Atlantic. Departure planned in November 2018 from A Coruña in Spain to reach the West Indies on a Wauquiez Pilot Saloon 47.
- 2 e part of the trip: Crossing the Pacific. Departure planned for January 2019 from Colón in Panama to New Zealand on a 50-foot American sailboat.
As far as financial expenses are concerned, Sasha validates with the owners "the board cash register" in which she will have to participate. The owners asked her for a flat rate of 15 euros per day for food and she also had to contribute to the cost of diesel. Good to know: each owner decides what he wants, there is no charter. It is therefore important to check this beforehand.
On paper, the objective looks achievable, but you will see that once on the water, everything does not always go as planned: weather, experience at sea, crew behaviour... here is his feedback.
1 re stage: A Coruña - The West Indies: capricious weather!
Accompanied by a friend, Sasha joined a couple with children in A Coruña who were looking for 2 people to accompany them and help them manage the night shifts .
"As soon as we arrived on site, the captain informed us that there was a favorable weather window and we would be leaving the next day." Sasha's entry into the sporting world, 4 days of sailing where the depression arrived faster than expected. "The sea was very bad, 4 to 6 metre high waves, winds over 30 knots, I was sick during the whole navigation, my friend was not very experienced, so I did the watches with her, 12 hours of navigation a day. We arrived in Cascais, I was exhausted!"
As the weather is not good, they will stay for 3 weeks. "We took advantage of this moment to get to know each other, visit Lisbon and do some work on the boat at the owner's expense: changing a rusty link on the chain, tightening the rigging, sticking patches on the sails to prevent them from being damaged by the spreaders, security inventory and pharmacy. An important check-up to do before crossing the Atlantic..."
With a new weather window looking favourable, the captain decided to set off again towards Lanzarote... Once again, the low is arriving faster than expected. "I don't know if you remember the weather conditions during the Route du Rhum in 2018... well that's what we had to face." Impossible to reach Lanzarote, the weather conditions are too bad, they have to divert to Africa. "The problem was that we were sailing completely blind, the Navionics charts of this continent hadn't been downloaded knowing we weren't supposed to stop there and we had no network." They will arrive in Casablanca in a commercial port where the docks were higher than the sailboat! Impossible to moor, they will be advised to go to the port of Mohammedia. They arrived at night just in time before the storm. They will be blocked again 3 weeks on the spot because of the weather and will take advantage of this time to discover the surroundings and continue to prepare the boat.
Sasha had a great time with the family, but also some very stressful times. "I realised that they didn't have a lot of sailing experience, it was their first big sail, they didn't know their boat well yet and I didn't really feel confident about making the Atlantic crossing. So I followed my intuition and we warned them that we would look for another boat once we got to Lanzarote."
Lanzarote: happy coincidence or not..
Arriving in Lanzarote at the end of November 2019, Sasha had the chance to meet a Dane who was sailing on a Dufour 40 Performance that she had met at Mohammedia. "This 50-year-old man had a lot of experience, he had raced regattas, prepared boats and sailed around the world. He was planning to cross the Atlantic with a 35-year-old who was on a training course with him and agreed that my friend and I would join them for the crossing free of charge. I learnt a lot at that time: how to trim the sails, do routing with the specific tools for the regatta, we started to prepare the boat and sailed a week together in the Canary Islands to do some tests before the big start". It won't go any further, because after a drunken evening, when everyone was asleep and they were not yet ready for the start, "The captain went into a fit of madness and decided to cast off, shouting that we had betrayed him... We had to struggle for 30 minutes until the captain burst into tears and we managed to bring the boat back to port. So we decided to cancel the crossing."
Bad experience, timing too tight to find a new boat, Sasha puts an end to the Atlantic crossing. Nevertheless, she decided to continue the adventure and take a plane to join her second stopover boat in Colón, Panama, with whom she had an appointment at the beginning of January 2019.
2 e stopover: Discovering the Pacific
Arrival in Colon, Panama, Sasha embarks on a 50-foot American sailboat built by a private individual. The crew consisted of a 60-year-old captain, an American woman who had lived more than 30 years on a catamaran, a 35-year-old woman cook on a sailboat, a French student and Sasha.
"The rules are set from the start: we'll take turns cleaning, washing up, eating, everyone has to take part in the tasks. Everyone has already sailed, so it's going to be a wonderful adventure."
The master had planned this voyage well upstream and had validated the passage through the Panama Canal. "It will take us two days to get to Panama City. The crossing of the canal is impressive, we pass first 3 ascending locks, then 3 descending locks. The gates are huge, made of metal, I feel like passing through the gates of Mordor in the Lord of the Rings! We find ourselves next to enormous liners: imagine that under water, there are still 3000 cars stored, it's impressive! As we pass through the last gate, a new world opens up to us, the Pacific!"
They refuel in Panama City and leave in the direction of the Pearl Archipelago where they pass from island to island, each one more deserted than the other, for a month.
They set sail again for 12 days to reach the Galapagos Islands. Sasha feels at his place, in communion with nature. When she is on watch, alone at night, this is the time she prefers "I knew that when I saw Saturn, my shift was over. The world was offering me beautiful sunrises and sunsets." It was during this crossing, on the 1st.. er february 2019 that she will make the decision to leave her career as a scientist to devote herself to sailing.
The Galapagos: The last leg of the journey
"To be able to anchor in the Galapagos, for 20 days (the maximum time allowed), it will have been necessary to pay 3000 dollars for the boat and crew and make the reservation 2 months in advance. We had given our Go to the captain before departure. When we arrived in Puerto Barquerizo Moreno on the island of San Cristobal, a dozen people arrived to make a total inspection of the boat and make sure that we were not importing foreign species and organisms..." The boat will have been fumigated due to a fly on the boat and they will be asked to go out of territorial waters (40 miles) to remove a bernic (mollusc) that was under the hull.
Sasha will have the chance to discover this unspoilt archipelago and this will mark the last leg of his journey and also for the whole crew. During the crossing, the captain will have had many tantrums, will not have wanted to take part in the night watches, will have had some violent gestures and will have fallen into the water relying on the lines, as the maintenance of the boat left something to be desired. Impossible to find another boat to reach New Zealand, there were only 4 yachts in the Galapagos at the time. She then decided to return.
Sasha will return to France transformed and determined to devote his life to sailing - here's his journey since this adventurer e.
Through Sasha's boat-hitchhiking experience, one realizes that this is an extraordinary adventure with ups and downs. The sea is not so easy to tame, spending several weeks in a closed room with people you don't know can be complicated. It is always important to put your safety first and follow your intuition. What is certain is that a hitch-boat adventure will not leave you indifferent!
So you feel like going on an adventure? You can discover in the following article advice to prepare your next trip by boat-hitchhiking.
