atlantic crossing 2026
I sailed across the atlantic to get back to europe from the americas this year. it was my first ocean crossing, but not my first time sailing. I had already spent a couple of months at sea, cruising and doing deliveries. it seemed like the natural (and most iconic) next step to sail back to my home continent. sometimes the novel things must be done!
for the curious, below is a map of our trail. I constructed it from our logbook entries, which in turn, I had extracted for the sake of constructing empirical polars for our boat when we were running low on fuel and needed to make very calculated decisions on which course to take. this was one of the most fun optimization problems I’ve ever worked with! (and I did 5 years of mathematics at KTH). once that was all sitting in a .csv, it felt like a waste not to do something more with it, so instead of just polars, I turned it into the interactive map below.
we'd written in the logbook at every watch change (every 3 hours) logging our position, wind, wind angle, speed, battery, diesel, etc. in the map below I included LOG (total nautical miles), COG (course over ground), SOG (speed over ground), our coordinates and our observations at the time.
Drag along the timeline, or click a point on the track, to see its entry.
common questions, answered
I get a lot of questions about this passage. so here are some of them answered.
didn’t you get bored?
oh, yes. I did not suffer from it, however.
did you go through storms?
no. we routed to avoid storms. sometimes the weather, waves and sea state wasn’t super pleasant of course, but we regularly checked the forecasts to avoid entering really heavy weather. there are no coast guards out there who can save you, so you better be on the safe side!
did you go mad?
a certain level of madness was required to begin with.
were you ever scared?
no. I’m too dumb. it is dangerous for sure. if you fall overboard when you’re alone on watch you’re dead. no one’s going to find you. but my brain could not comprehend that danger. I sometimes found myself standing on the edge of the deck and staring into the black waters and fully knowing that if I fell in I’d drown. but it’s simply not dramatic enough that I felt any fear.
what did you do?
made boat go? and when there was little else to do I mostly stared at waves. did lots of writing. hung out with the crew. normal stuff really!
did you have internet?
we had a starlink. we tried to use it as little as possible though. personally I tried to only turn it on once a week or so, to send out updates to a little transatlantic email blast I was maintaining.
did you get seasick?
yes. but I got over it quickly.
tips for people who want to sail but get seasick?
just do it. your body adapts eventually. until then; it feels better if you lie down. it feels better if you stay above deck. it feels better if you manage to occasionally wash up, brush your teeth and just care for basic hygiene. drink lots of water. throw up when you need to. motion sickness glasses don’t work, but they add some comic relief to the situation so you can try that.
how did it feel to reach land again?
indescribable–sorry. you'll only know if you spend weeks at sea yourself.
tips for people who want to do the same thing?
ask and you shall recieve! there are plenty of boats crossing the atlantic each year. most commonly sailors cross west -> east in spring, to get to the mediterranean for the summer season and avoid hurricane season in the caribbean. then they cross east -> west in autumn to catch the caribbean winter season and escape the european cold. you can find boats looking for crew on sites like crewbay and crewfinder, or in various facebook groups for sailors.