Here’s a gripping story from British sailor and author Ben Good recounting his first North Atlantic crossing. The boat was the 60-foot ex-Clipper sloop Rubicon 3. The crew of 11 was comprised of two professional skippers and nine more or less inexperienced crew. The route was from Nassau, The Bahamas, to Bristol, England.
Along the way, they blew out the mainsail, they lost the wheel steering and had to use the emergency tiller, they faced gale after gale and, all the while, this boat load of strangers got to know each other.
But, along the way, Good and his fellow crew made great new friends, mostly, learned a lot about seamanship and even were intoduced to celestial navigation.
