What I Learned On My First Solo Ocean Crossing; Ship Handling to Sleep, Gear Failure to Landfall!

You know, I thought I'd really I thought I'd really thought it out boy. I got all these redundancies Well, guess what? None of those redundancies matter if you only have one cable or two cables on board one of them fails then you're kind of hosed Hello friends, it's a video to talk about some of the things I learned on my first solo ocean crossing This video isn't meant to be like a everything you need to know about crossing an ocean It comes from a point of like the next step into already Knowing about what you need for passage making or having passage making experience either solo or with a crew and it's just an outline of things that I Discovered On my passage and I thought would be a value to tell other sailors Now if you're new to my channel and you don't know me, my name is James. I'm sitting on board SV Trotea my 1965 Albert 30 sloop I Completely refit her and turned her into a serious blue water cruiser and in August of 2021. I departed Los Angeles and sailed for the Hawaiian Islands Halfway to Hawaii I lost all steerage with my rudder and Had to sell the the remaining 1,000 miles 18 days by using a drug I'm not going to go into a lot of that during this video. I've talked about it before There's a video that teaches you how to steer with a drug if you want to check that out So you can find all that stuff on the channel So in this video, I'm going to cover a number of different subjects kind of like case by case I'll be talking about things like redundancies and gear gear failure food and provisioning Sleep schedule when you're solo or shorthanded and talk about how I went about it Entertainment on board Ship handling and safety at sea as well as like making landfall before I departed on my solo trip I had over 5,000 miles of passage making experience under my belt I've sailed in places ranging from the Orkney Islands of northern Scotland to the Åland Islands near Finland And the Stockholm Archipelago I've sailed from Puerto Rico to Bermuda through the Bermuda Triangle and then from Bermuda to North Carolina And I've done the entire length of the west coast of the United States doing yacht deliveries So I had quite a bit of experience on the water on different types of vessels out at sea You name it. I had a lot of experience in that realm this was just my first solo crossing and There are a number of things that really make that different than sailing shorthanded or crude sailing So let's get into it and talk about what I learned First thing I want to talk about is gear redundancies and spares you always want to have as many spares for like mechanical parts as you can and Redundancies for crucial systems on board in June of 2020. I made my first attempt for the Hawaiian Islands and I departed Los Angeles in pretty high winds like 30 knot winds with like 12-foot seas in like a Pretty serious like wind front and I did that by design because I hadn't Shaken out the boat in really high winds and I thought it would have been a it was a good chance to be Sort of like starting the trip with like pretty gnarly weather that way if something was gonna break It would break closer to shore rather than halfway across the ocean And sure enough five days out my wind vane started failing The bolts stripped out on the unit and so I had to turn around and head back now on that passage One of the things I discovered was that I found like a weak link in my redundancy system So my main navigation is an iPad that I use Navionics with and I use it. My GPS signal comes from this Garmin puck and I love this puck. They're amazing and So this is my main navigation setup I my backup setup is an old iPad with Navionics and everything installed on it I also have an iPhone My new my current iPhone that I use with everything installed and an old iPhone In the debt in the chart table that also has all this software on it So, you know, I you know had all those bases covered. I'm like, okay great. Awesome I've got four redundancies for this system. So on that first passage attempt when I turned back the Cable I was using to charge my main iPad Started failing and stopped charging the iPad. So I was like, okay, so I dug around and turns out I only had two cables on the entire boat for the iPad and One of them had failed. I meant I had one cable for four redundancies Which is that's the perfect example of the weakest link, right? And it was like such an easy thing to overlook When you're in them in the chaos of trying to get everything ready for an ocean crossing and you know this and that and and You know, I thought I'd really I thought I'd really thought it out boy. I got all these redundancies Well, guess what? None of those redundancies matter if you only have one cable or two cables on board one of them fails then you're kind of host so That was like kind of an alarming wake-up call. I did have an additional puck GPS puck with a USB With open CPN on my laptop, so I could have used that I also have a GPS signal on my VHF radio, so I wouldn't have been totally hosed, but It just it's a it's a glaring example of how easy it is to find a weakest link in a system After you're already at sea so one thing I forgot to mention about your navigation software and stuff is you want to make sure that all of your Your primary as well as all of your redundancy Systems have up-to-date software and that you were actually logged in and it's all Usable before you leave the dock when you still have internet access or cell phone service So I came across this problem in the in Southern California not far from shore so it wasn't a huge deal, but I had opened up my redundant like iPad to like check something and found that I had been logged out of Navionics for some reason and It was impossible for me to use the software. I have no idea why that happened, but it was a good Sort of wake-up call about realizing you need to make sure that all your software is updated all of the maps You want to have downloaded offline or downloaded into the the tablet or that you're using if that's what you're using Or in your phone, so just just double-check that that you know your primary as well as all of your backups are In functioning order before you leave the dock now, let's talk about another bit of like gear redundancies that would have been good to have that I did not have and How crucial it was when I Departed in August. I was sailing off to the Hawaiian Islands My AIS which was digital yacht brand AIS worked perfectly fine had been working fine for years I even have video clip of me filming a ship Not far for me and I pan down and show it working on the iPad and Within getting three days offshore. It just stopped working. So then suddenly I'm doing an ocean crossing with no AIS and That's a real real bummer It makes everything far more difficult and far more stressful and and more dangerous now I kind of hosed myself a little bit with this AIS thing because when I was picking out my icon VHF radio I chose a model that was a little bit cheaper that didn't have the AIS built-in because at the time I was like Well, I already have a ass so I can get the cheaper one because I don't you know I'm already using it But that would have been an easy a really simple redundancy and so many of these VHF radios nowadays have AIS built-in that I would say if you're getting a new VHF make sure you get one with AIS because even if you have another system then You have the the peace of mind that you have a redundancy for your AIS It turned out to be kind of a real nightmare for me. I have a radium go and that's how I download all my weather And that iridium goes a satellite system that turns your iPhone or iPad into like a sat phone So you can download the weather every day and with that sort of top data plan you get unlimited texting You can't text images or anything like that But I was able to communicate with my shore team and my older brother was sending me shipping reports. He was watching Ships courses and and telling me when watch when to watch out for certain ships and when they might intersect so he was sending me their position and their their speed and course and then I would plot it out and figure out when what our closest point of Approach was gonna be and then I would set an alarm Till I get up and watch for them and I had a ship come within a mile of me Who I had to hail on the VHF and ask him to change course and he did so So it's really important if you have the option for AIS To have that on board. It'll make your life a lot less scary because one time I read in some book once Somebody was asking a ship's captain They're like well You know as long as you stay outside of the shipping lanes and there's no problem and they the cargo ship captain said Shipping lanes are created by men wearing suits sitting behind desks So that's kind of all you need to know about you know, you never know what you're gonna encounter out there So having AIS is like a really wonderful thing, especially now that it's so accessible now Let's talk a little bit about navigation Like I said, I navigate on Navionics and Compass course when I'm in the cockpit literally like I plotted out what my compass course would be and When I was at the helm or adjusting the wind vane, that's what I looked at was a compass so and then I would you know, double check my course and track and everything on Navionics, but From the cockpit standpoint. I was just sailing by compass Now when I'm at sea doing a passage Every 12 hours at noon and at midnight I write down my latitude and longitude in the logbook and I write down the time the wind speed all that and where I'm at and That gives me the ability to know exactly within 12 hours where I am If everything shut down, let's just say all GPS signal just vanishes even with all my systems I still I'm gonna know where I was within 12 hours now I've sailed with captain in the past that wrote dead wrote it down every six hours. So whatever you feel is necessary My boat does not move that fast or that far in in 12 hours time So I feel 12 hours is fine but the other thing I do is Every few days I would go ahead and log my position on a paper chart of the ocean that I'm sailing in So that if it came down to it if I lost everything I would be able to use dead reckoning and I have I know Celestial navigation have a working sextant on board and all the books to refresh my memory on using the sextant so if it came down to it, I would still be able to Navigate to where I was going using celestial navigation dead reckoning and my compass and plotting everything on a paper chart. I Did that? Here in the Pacific and I also did that in the Atlantic when we sailed from Puerto Rico to Bermuda I did celestial every day and I kept I did everything plotted it all on a paper chart I'm a big big fan of paper charts Especially for ocean crossings because it gives you a kind of foolproof backup if you lose all your electronics Let's talk a little bit about gear failures, um, I mentioned the AIS but My biggest obviously my biggest gear failure on the passage was my rudder in dealing with that some of the things I really wish I'd had on board that I'll have on board in the future is Number one. I really wish I would have had like a skateboard helmet because when I was getting in the water and having to dive on the rudder trying to fix it at sea and I'm in these Like bucking rolling seas I was my biggest concern was that the ship was gonna roll hit me in the head and knock me out and I was gonna drown Very possible and if I had a skateboard helmet, it would not it would have been fine. There'd been no problem So in the future, I will Certainly have one of those on board. The other thing I really wish I'd had on board There's a whole set of new ratchet straps like in my spares area because Had I had ratchet straps on board I could have I could have repaired the rudder once I was become that was become like a Week or a week and a half after and that would have been a good time for me to dive on the boat again in less Gnarly conditions and go ahead and secure the rudder with ratchet straps and just gone on my way regular So those were things that that stuck out to me that I really needed on board that I did not have on board Let's talk a little bit about sleep, which is very important and it's a tricky thing when you're sailing solo or shorthanded with just like If it's a couple or just two people on a boat it becomes very tricky and What's what what is possible for you to do as far as a watch schedule goes is very different than a fully crewed boat of three to four people for me the way I handled it is I Would start my like night shift at 9 p.m. And I would send alarm for the top of the hour for every hour until 5 a.m And I would lay down in my pilot berth, which was on the settee here in the cabin I had my lead cloths up. I call it my nest and I would lay down and Close my eyes and hope to sleep until the alarm went off when the alarm went off. I would climb out I would go up on deck spin a slow 360 look in all directions and see if I saw any ships lights And it's really important to look behind you as much as you're looking in front of you Because these cargo ships regularly do between 20 and 30 knots and they can just as easily run you down After as they they could from ahead of you. So, you know, you spin a slow 360 Look at that horizon Then I would check my course Check the sails adjust and the trim when needed and if everything was happy, then I would climb down climb back into my nest Close my eyes and wait for the next alarm in my 32 days at sea. I think the longest span I slept was two hours So you don't you don't get a lot of sleep if you're sailing so low Shorthanded it's probably a little easier but Like fatigue is your biggest enemy Like it makes you make poor decisions. It makes you sloppy with safety It's just all around really dangerous. So you really need to take care to try to get rest when you can get rest I personally don't drink any caffeine when I'm doing passage making I love coffee when I'm on land or even when I'm just you know coastal cruising But when I when I get ready to do a passage I don't drink any caffeine because I want to be able to lay down in the middle of the day and Get 20 minutes rest or an hour rest if it's possible That's one thing to point out is that it's actually easier for ships to see you in the daytime than at night Unless that's like really stormy conditions so a lot of solo sailors will kind of especially if they're along the coast they'll stay up during the day and Try to sleep a lot during the daytime I mean, they'll stay up all night in the cockpit and keep watch and then they'll try to sleep as much they can in the Daytime now in the daytime if it's stormy and there's like white caps and like gray clouds and stuff Then your boat kind of blends in with the sea. So you're you're in the same situation but if you have AIS working AIS on board you can set your alarms and it actually helps you sleep a lot deeper and You could get longer Sleep than an hour. I was doing an hour Because I wasn't having working AIS. So and then based on the ship traffic that my older brother was sending me I would set specific alarms to where I thought our closest point was gonna come and then if I got up if I saw ships Lights on the horizon. I would stay up until I felt it was not a concern and I could see they were moving away from me And there was one night specifically where there was a fishing boat. I didn't get hardly any sleep that night There was a fishing boat He was probably 30 miles 20 or 30 miles away from me. He was like running parallel with me all night long It didn't he never really got any closer to me But I got almost no sleep that night because I kept watching him like all night long Yeah, if I had had working AIS, I could have just set my alarm and been like well I'll know when he gets within this range now another thing to think about when it comes to Sleeping at sea is that a lot of times you'll lay down and the ship's motion or the sound will be too intense So you won't even be able to sleep then and I don't sleep with any kind of headphones in or your plugs or anything Because I need to be able to hear if something's happening with the boat and be able to get on deck as quickly as possible And if I'm like knocked out with like earphones in then I could crash jive or something like that Not know until it was too late Okay, let's talk a little bit about ship handling the way I was going about it is When it was when I was getting ready to kind of good, you know Start my night shift and start bedding down for the night I would reef the headsail into like 90 to 100 percent if the winds were the regular trade winds with your about You know 20 knots Dead downwind once I was in the trades. I didn't even and and I had my rudder failure I didn't even have my main up so I never had my main up at all Which slowed my progress but um, it was the only way I could have like run the the gone wing and wing in the trades, but With a preventer out and all that stuff But the thing that I didn't want to deal with for sure, especially being solo was that the squalls blow through regularly so and in the daytime, you can see them on the horizon and you have X amount of time and you know You'll feel the wind die off and you know, you're about to get hit with whatever the squalls bringing Which is usually I found on my passage was usually about 25 knots 20 to 25 knots of wind Up to 30 gusts gusts of up to 30 usually the regular trades run between like, you know, 18 and 20 depending So but at night I did not want to try to get out there and try to reef the main wing and wing With it like like pulled out pull all the way with a preventer on That sounded like a total nightmare very difficult and not safe So I just went ahead and kept my main down. I had enough to deal with with the drogue Go from there and usually like even when the squalls would hit at night I would just as long as she she didn't come about as long as she stayed, you know running she would run kind of up into the wind and overpower the The wind vane a little bit and then once that squall passed she would kind of fall back in line I got pretty good at being able to know exactly where my head saw needed to be at night It also got to where I could just from the sound of the wind and the ship I knew what the wind speed was and from where my pilot berth is I can look my navigation station is right where I can just open my eyes I could see my iPad with my course and see which way we're pointing and I could see the wind speed on the Raymarine readout Another really handy thing I have on the boat that I love have a tattletale compass on the forward bulkhead So anytime I'm in the cabin Like moving around I can look and see what course we have without having to go out and look at the compass out in the cockpit But yeah You get to where you know the sounds of the ship and and you kind of know what she's doing Based on either the movements or the sounds and he's become, you know, kind of easier once you get into that zone But yeah, so that's what I would do as far as like what kind of sail plan I would do at night And then in the daytime, obviously, I would keep as much sail up as possible Only reef down when the squalls would hit and then again put more sail out, you know regular sailing Now I left really late in the season I left in August and it's a terrible idea to leave that late in the season because hurricane season is kind of full throttle in Mexico and As I was sailing hurricane Linda was tracking directly below me and I had the screen grabs, you know from early on in the trip where she's just Cruising along and at any point she could have turned up into me and I could have easily lost my ship and my life yeah, it was uh, it was not smart, but Again, I don't I don't regret doing it, but I don't know that I would do it again Luckily she didn't she went well ahead of me and Crossed up between me and the Hawaiian Islands but Yeah, it was nerve-wracking to look on predict wind every day and to see this giant like black hurricane Right below my position and we're just you know, luckily she was much faster than me But if you choose, you know the right season to sail in any ocean chances are you'll never see anything greater than an average storm you can Know what season the research but also through pilot charts So if you get the pilot charts for wherever you're planning on sailing you flip to the month you want to sail You're gonna see the averages of gales and you're gonna see the average wind direction and wind speed It's kind of like foolproof as long as you sell in the correct season in whatever ocean you're planning on sailing across You should be totally fine So yeah, that's the responsive way to go about it wouldn't advise anyone sailing in the Pacific in August and September Okay, let's talk about safety at sea Safety at sea is always important But it is very important when you're solo because you got no one to save you no one to help you so it's very common practice for solo sailors to not wear PFDs and the reason you wouldn't wear a PFD is a solo sailor is that if you fall overboard in the middle the ocean and You have a PFD on and your boat sails away with her self-steering wind vane going You're just stuck in the middle the ocean floating and all it's gonna do is prolong your death. You're done for and you're either going to float there in your PFD until you die of thirst or You're going to have to unhook the PFD at some point and let yourself sink and drown Now if I fell overboard in the middle of the ocean a solo I'd much rather just tread water until I got exhausted and just accept my fate and sink It would be a lot harder to unhook that PFD and sink the easy way to avoid all that is to make sure that you're always clipped in with a harness when you go forward and that's very important and Everyone has their own, you know level of comfort or they know their abilities I'm more hopefully they know their abilities. So when when the boat is like Traveling very slowly and the seas are like less than a meter I have no problem walking forward sitting on the foredeck and watching the sunset but Anytime I went forward to do any ship's business or sail handling or anything. I was always clipped in day and night It is the kind of the only way to make sure that you know, you don't end up in the drink and fish food I did have one instance where I was clipped in. I was reefing the mainsail and I let go of the mast so I could tie the sail ties and The boat got beamed by a wave the boat rolled violently threw me in the air I landed on my back With my head sort of like against the lifelines with my feet in the air and I could have easily Gone overboard. Like I said, I was clipped in to the jack lines so I wasn't at risk of like going, you know, not being able to save myself back overboard, but It was like wow it could happen that fast and it's very easy to take place so Always stay clipped in when you're solo And if you're shorthanded sailing You know, then it's worth wearing a lifejacket with a clipped in harness still want to stay clipped in with a lifejacket But if you're shorthanded sailing at least if your partner even if they're sleeping You fall overboard and you're floating out there. Maybe they can come back and find you. I'm still not not foolproof but The key is to stay on board. Obviously, let's talk about two different instances where I had injuries even though they were slight but they were kind of like a wake-up call to be like this is like Very serious business being solo getting injured is a real a real concern The first one that I'll talk about was completely avoidable and Totally foolish on my part. I was I'd been becalmed for hours and hours and hours I was just kind of barrel. I was crawling along it, you know one knot and Pretty mellow seas. So I was like, okay This is the time to fly the drone and to try to get your own shots of Tritia So I got the drone up flying around and the drone the GPS signal was so weak because of the middle of the ocean It was flying very erratically I was it also had wouldn't let me change the setting to not make it return to home Which is where it took off from So I was watching my battery life trying to get it back on board before the battery got the point to where that it Automatically flies back to the home point as I'm trying to get it back on board. It's flying all over the place It starts trying to return to home and I just crash-landed it into the cockpit Because I didn't want the drone to go in the ocean I didn't want the plastic and the battery and all that stuff in the ocean and At least I would be able to like get the SD card and it wouldn't be a total loss I Did end up crashing it into I? Caught it with my hand because it was crashing into the side of the boat. I caught it Got it in the cockpit, but it kept trying to return to home So the propellers didn't shut down so I had to reach into the moving propellers to pull the battery out and They cut under all of my cuticles on one hand and then the other hand I got a really severe cut So I damaged or I injured both of my hands catching the stupid drone and Of course, you know, you know hindsights 2020 and and everybody's like, oh you should have like done this or done this and it's like well Yeah, it's easy to think about those things after the fact but Things that I know now is I will always wear gloves when I catch a drone Which my friend Kimberly would told me she always wears gloves because of that and another thing someone suggested I could have caught it with a fishing net and They said they've done that a number of times and never it's never never damaged their drone because as soon as those propellers Have like resistance though. It'll shut down So those are two options for catching a drone that wouldn't have resulted in injuring my hands. I can you imagine like Really bad injuries on your hands both hands as a solo sailor and you're still like I was still 12 days from land so that was so stupid and totally avoidable and Yeah, it really freaked me out a lot. The other accident happened about I think it was two days From shore where I was walking back from Like raising the mainsail or something and I stepped in the and the seas were fine. The winds were regular I stepped into the cockpit and when I stepped on the seat cushion, which is all snapped into place It slid out from under my foot right as I grabbed the hard dodger and it twisted my shoulder So it didn't fully blow my shoulder out But it really strained my shoulder and actually my shoulder has not still is not 100% from that injury and that was like oh man, that was a huge wake-up call to you because Sure, it's possible to do all the ship handling with one hand But or injured but you're gonna get so there's so much more It'd be so much more exhausting to try to do everything injured or with one hand and it just puts everything at risk and Yeah, that sort of situation was like made me be like, okay I need to really slow down think things through even though it wasn't rushing. I wasn't doing anything irresponsible when that happened it's that easy and one little slip and Things could happen. So yeah, that's one thing to really think about like always think it through go slow Slow your pace, especially towards the end of a passage. All right, let's talk about food a little bit I have a pretty simple diet and So I'm not sort of an example for everyone but um one thing I'll talk about food is that It's very important that you know, you have a lot of stuff you like to eat You're gonna eat all your fresh stuff first, but you want to make sure you have a variety of things that are easy To prepare foods so that when the ship's motion is completely insane and so unruly That you'll be able to knock something out One easy thing that I always make just instant ramen and then I'll keep kimchi in the fridge and Add to that so that at least it's more fun and and it's good for you kimchi is really good for you. So That's like a really easy quick meal to make, you know, it takes three minutes after the water is boiling to knock out ramen So sometimes the ship's motion is gonna limit your ability to make like a big elaborate spread You just want to make sure that you prepare for that ahead of time If you watch the passage video you saw my failed attempt at catching a fish, I'm not a fisherman I know very little about fishing. I'm just learning. I had tons of fishing gear on board I had my hand my Cuban yo-yo hand reel, which is a common piece of equipment on sailboats And I had a pin Rod and reel for ocean going stuff and line and lures and everything So people on the video are like why didn't you know, you only had one lure, you know No, I had plenty of fishing gear But the reason I didn't you know, like I said, I'm new to fishing So when that either the the knot failed on that lure or the line broke I'm not sure which but I lost one of my lures and I was like, look, I don't need any food I have plenty of food and I'm already in a situation of where I'm traveling under an emergency steering situation So if I end up having to have food because I'm adrift in some other scenario I want to make sure I have all my fishing gear on board in case I have to actually supply myself with food So I was not about to be like irresponsible and like waste a bunch of lures just you know, because I'm ridiculous I do have this book is what I've been like Researching and reading and I had this before I left and this is an amazing book cruisers handbook for fishing and it's specific to sailboats, he tells you everything from like different gear different fishing techniques how to prepare fish and You know, but I've never had anyone teach me. So it's a big learning curve for me, but You know, I did have everything prepared to supply my own food if need be I just did not need any food like when I arrived at the Hawaiian Islands I had provisioned so much that I still had like two weeks worth of food left And the same thing with the water when I arrived I still had you know Just under a quarter of my main tank Which is 35 gallons and I still had two jerry cans full of spare water and then nine gallon bladder forward So I had tons of water still left over and That's important thing. So one thing I noticed as far as like the food thing goes is the one thing I really wished I'd had was something fun to drink. I had no fun stuff to drink and that was a bummer. So Halfway through the thing. I realized I had two of those like plastic bottle Concentrate lemon and lime juice. So I was making like a poor man's Sprite and that was fun. But Once I got to shore, I found these like packets instant packets. This one's for like Arizona green tea, but I'm really into the Gatorade ones that don't have sugar because that gives you like it replenishes your electrolytes and all that stuff So when I leave for my next passage, I'll have a couple of cases of those That's like a good thing to have because dehydration is is very easy at sea The other thing talking about food and all that stuff. I lost 20 pounds on my passage now, I think a lot of that had to do with things that were happening in my life and Stress levels that were upon me As much as it had to do with you know Not eating as much it is a chore to cook and if you're just by yourself It's easy to sort of neglect yourself in that manner. So you want to make sure that you know You keep food in you because that's going to contribute to your fatigue Which as I mentioned is like the most dangerous thing that you're really faced with out at sea Now we'll talk about entertainment a little bit Again, I'm pretty minimal. I don't watch any TV shows or movies at sea I don't download anything or anything like that. So for me, I am I Read books I write and I edit video or I just sit in the cockpit and think and look at the ocean So so, you know what I do is not necessarily what everybody else is gonna do, you know Everybody knows what they need to Stay happy and engaged But for me, it's very minimal. I even I don't even listen to that much music when I'm underway On long passages especially on deliveries I and I'll download a bunch of podcasts or audiobooks and listen to that Um, you always want to just listen if you're on watch you listen with one headphone in if you're using headphones Because you need one ear for the ship at all times. That's the thing when I would take people on day sails I never allowed anyone to play music on my boat ever Especially if I'm taking out like landlubbers who don't get to spend a lot of time on boats because I believe the sound of the sea and the ship sailing and the interaction between the ship and the sea is as much a part of the Experience is actually being on the boat and if you're blasting weird out Yankovic or whatever you're listening to then You're gonna be removing a really important element from that experience Especially for people who don't get the the pleasure of being on boats a lot And then from a sailing perspective if you're blasting music You know this you need to be able to hear what your ship is telling you Like she's gonna tell you when something's wrong And if you're blasting music really loud, and you can't hear what she's telling you You're gonna find out one way or another and it's probably gonna be a rude awakening when you find out You know after the fact if she crashed jobs or something, you know something happens So you always want to be aware of that that you know You need to be in tune with your vessel and being able to listen to her and hear what she's saying and react accordingly Okay, the last subject is landfall it is Both exciting and extremely stressful to make landfall after a long passage you're like antsy to get ashore because you've been at sea for so long or You know and then you have like like they say there's nothing more dangerous to a ship than land It's much safer to be out at sea than to be close to land and it's always good practice to never approach a new harbor or Anchorage in the dark if you've never been there, and you don't know what the obstacles are the dangers Heave to stay offshore until the Sun comes up and then make your approach in the daylight It could be the difference between losing your ship on the reef or coming in happy and closing out a wonderful passage So it's easy to get like I said get antsy and just want to have it done But you know be smart because it's easy. You know you're gonna be making like Not necessarily rational decisions if you're trying to rush into shore So just like if you can time it you can also time it a day or so ahead So you can slow your ship down a little bit, so you don't have to heave to offshore Just try to make your landfalls in the daytime. You know if you've never been to that Harbor or Anchorage I'm sure after this video. I'm gonna think of a dozen other things I would like to tell you guys, but these are the things that really stuck out that I I learned on the passage Yeah, I just want to let you know you know from my experience What I wish I had known before I pushed off, so I hope you enjoyed this video if you liked it Please give it a thumbs up make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future videos hit me down in the comments let me know what you thought and Yeah, I hope this gives you some a perspective on Preparing for your first solo passage or shorthanded passage or even your first ocean passage, so thanks for watching and fair winds until next time If you enjoy the content on this channel and would like to contribute you can consider joining the patreon crew Thanks for watching fair winds until next time