LAND HO ENGLAND! After 7 YEARS AT SEA _ Sailing Florence

You are joining us on board Florence just over halfway through the final ocean passage of our North Atlantic crossing from the Caribbean to England. Four months ago we set out to sail east across the vast expanse of the North Atlantic Ocean, 4,000 miles from the Caribbean to England with just the two of us on board our 37-foot sailport Florence. This passage has a fearsome reputation among sailors. The North Atlantic weather is unpredictable and gales can spring up unexpectedly to batter any boats in their path. Leaving the Bahamas behind we immediately experienced the unpredictable nature of the weather in this part of the ocean. Forecasted tailwinds turned into 30 knot headwinds and we had to hold on to Florence as we smashed our way upwind through the waves to reach the safety of Little did we know that that was nothing compared to what was still to come. The next leg would be 2,000 miles with no safe haven, all the way from Bermuda to the Azores. Expecting two weeks at sea and knowing that the weather forecasts are incapable of reaching that far out, we knew that choosing when to leave would be a roll of the dice. Sure enough one week into our passage, a thousand miles from the nearest land, we were hit by gale force winds. So when we sighted the stunning islands of the Azores it was with both joy and relief that we had survived almost unscathed. We drank in the beauty of the lush green landscape after seeing nothing but blue for the previous two weeks. That left one final ocean passage between us and England, but England was being battered by an unprecedented series of summer storms and we waited in vain looking for a big enough gap between those storms. Finally we thought we had found a window and set off. 50,000 miles have now passed under Florence's keel over the last seven years as we've sailed out all the way around the world with just the two of us on board. We left England behind way back in 2016 and now we are very close to seeing our home country appear on the horizon once more. We are aiming to make landfall in the Isles of Scilly which are a group of tiny islands off the southwest tip of England. We have been at sea for seven days since the Azores and although we still have over 400 miles left to sail we are already looking forward to sighting England from the deck of Florence for the first time in over seven years. Today is another amazing day for being out here and for sailing. Just had really consistent gentle breezes enough to push us along at we're doing like six and a half knots easily and it's just like a really easy gentle sea state. It's also the time in the passage which we find the most enjoyable that kind of day five, six, seven is just this really blissful state where we've got used to the routine of watchers. We both feel like we've got more energy and it's just so nice to be out here. We're both saying today how at home we feel out here and we realise that part of the reason for that is because we've lived on Florence longer than anywhere any other home in our whole adult life. So this summer is our seventh year on board Florence, that's seven full years and to put that into context I moved out of home when I was 16 and so for the last 20 years this is the longest that I've ever lived anywhere. We're making really great progress towards the Scillys but I don't think either of us are really in that much of a rush to get there to be honest, it's really enjoyable sailing. It's definitely not the weather that we expected on this passage, I have to say that I expected us to get a bit of a sting in the tail for the last passage back to the UK especially because this passage has got a bit of a bad reputation. We've just recently downloaded the latest weather forecast and it might be a little bit more breezy as we're approaching the Scillys and we've obviously got some some light winds to get through but yeah I can't believe how lucky we've been with the weather. Small tuna I think, bonito type thing. Just caught a skipjack tuna, a fairly small one but I'm impressed that we've caught a tuna this close to the UK. I wasn't really sure that we'd catch anything to be honest. So we're gonna have some fish wraps for dinner. I don't have many fresh things left and I started making a coleslaw and then realised that the grater has just like totally disappeared somewhere. I did find it slightly concerning when we caught the tuna because the orcas that are causing the problem all up the coast of Spain and Portugal and into the Bay of Biscay are supposed to be found wherever the tuna is so hopefully that was one lone skipjack. Yeah for those of you who haven't heard there's a family of orca which have taken a disliking to particularly sailing boats it seems and are attacking the interacting with the boat's rudders which is causing often for the whole rudder to be destroyed and occasionally has actually caused a hole to come into the boat and the boats to sink so I don't know how many boats have sunk so far I think maybe like three but there have been hundreds of interactions and they don't know how what's causing it and they don't know how to stop it so yeah a bit of a concern really. Hopefully our route though is we're well clear of the area where they're reported to be. No we're outside of the reporting area that's the reality. I'd love to say yes we're outside of the area of the orcas, no we're just outside of the areas that they report for in Spain I think. Thank you very much. How's the fish? Fish is good yeah tasty. As we sail closer to a goal of landfall in England the weather began to change to grey and breezy. I'd just let off the main to put a reef into the mainsail and Matt was sleeping down below and the fishing line went off as soon as I was doing it so it was all hands on deck and it looks like we've caught what we think is an albacore tuna. I hope it's tasty. It's a bit all on nothing for ages and then all on at once and the wind really picked up as Amy was reeling this in so instead of just having one reef in the main I ended up doing two reefs in the main and two reefs in the genoa whilst Amy was reeling in the fish and then we had to get the fish on board so we have a bit of blood everywhere. Much higher grade of tuna than the last one we caught so it should be tasty. Probably more tasty for orcas too but I'm trying to ignore that fact. And that was our lure, that's our new top lure. Over the last seven years and 50,000 miles of ocean sailing on Florence we've developed separate areas of responsibility once a fish is hooked. Matt is in charge of bringing the fish on board, dispatching and filleting it and then he hands it over for me for preparation and cooking. Catching our dinner from Florence means we get to eat incredibly fresh fish. Barely 10 minutes between landing and into the pan, sometimes we don't even bother cooking it at all. Today I've seared the fish and added a soya sauce, honey, chilli, garlic and sesame crust and then served it on a bed of vegetable rice. Sadly after this long at sea the vegetables had to come out of a tin. No matter what is happening on board we always sit down to share our evening meal together in the cockpit. It's another grey and rainy day today, it rained most of yesterday but we've got breeze and we're able to sail. It's just really light and variable so the wind's been shifting around all over the place. It's meant a lot of work to keep changing the sails and keep us moving in the right direction. Just this morning I had a wind shift that came so we were sailing with the wind dead behind us just off our starboard quarter and then it shifted 180 degrees so it's now forward of the beam and we're on the other tack. It's great that we can keep making progress and keep moving forward and we're not having to motor because the forecast at one point was saying that we were going to get at least a day of motoring. Luckily we also managed to drive between the rain showers because it's much easier to do all of that without the tent on and it looks like the rain is about to come back. We were sailing along really nicely in seven or eight knots of wind just gliding along at four knots over this really calm sea and then the wind's completely died and this misty rain has just come in and surrounded us. Before that came in we could see just ahead of us there was a fishing boat and on AIS you can see that's a group of fishing boats and over behind us to starboard was a tug and to port of us coming up behind us as well was a container ship and then the mist came down and just couldn't see anything and now we've just got this container ship appearing on the edge of vision just out of the murk. It's pretty weird being out in the open ocean but with so many other boats around that you can't see but luckily they're all transmitting on AIS it seems so we can see them there. Unfortunately our radar hasn't worked since South Africa which is also the last time we had fog when we were going up the coast of Namibia and we could have done with it then as well. We're just drifting along at about one and a half knots, not much point in us turning the engine on on motoring because once the wind does fill in we should get there not tomorrow but the next day in the morning and if we motor now and just go any faster once the breeze comes in we should be able to sail pretty fast. If we motored now we'd just arrive there in the dark in a couple of days time so there's no problem really going slow now because it'll just mean otherwise we'd slow down to get there in daylight later on. We're just sailing into what's going to be the last night at sea before we reach the They're just 55 miles in front of us now and we've had these beautiful calm sea state conditions now for days and days and this is not what we're used to out sailing across the oceans we're used to a rolling swell which rolls the boat around but this flat calm sea state despite the wind coming from different directions at different strengths has just been consistent and has made the second half of this passage just an absolute joy because it's so easy to live on board and Florence just glides through it instead of getting thrown around and in fact we've got 12 knots of breeze now and flat seas we could easily be doing seven knots. Florence would easily do that under full sail but in fact we're sailing along with a reef in the main and a reef in the Genoa and that's because we're now slowing down so that instead of arriving in the dark in the night because there's not much of a moon at the moment only a thin sliver of moon so it'll be a bit difficult to come into the anchorage in the dark and we decided it's safer to wait until daylight at dawn to do that so so tonight we're probably going to put yet another reef in the sail to slow down because we need to do no more than five knots and we're going to do short watches as well because normally one of us is sleeping at the time when we would we are now going to be coming into the isles of Scilly so we'll do shorter watches tonight to make sure that we both get an even amount of sleep before we arrive then once we're anchored hopefully we can have a good snooze then but the conditions like this I mean this is just absolutely beautiful out here absolutely stunning the only trouble is there are hundreds of fishing boats that we have to avoid and sometimes you think you're avoiding one and then it does 180 degree turn in front of you and come straight back at you and so it makes it a little bit stressful so hopefully it won't be too too many close encounters with fishing boats tonight we can have a beautiful last night sail before we arrive only 12 knots of breeze but Florence wants to go fast we're still doing six knots and we need to do five no more than five to get there at dawn in the morning or after dawn so despite the perfect conditions I am in going to stick another couple of reefs in another reef in the main another reef but slowing down like this is all part of cruising before we left England on Florence we were both out and out racers in dinghies and yachts pushing boats to their limits in search of speed now as we return we have learned the prudence and caution of the cruising sailor we're arriving safely without damage it's worth an extra night or two at sea dawn the next day found us waiting just outside the southern anchorage of St Agnes in the Isles of City as the sun peaked over the horizon we dropped the sails and motored in the last few we've just been sat here as soon as we got the anchor down and turned the engine off it's so quiet because most of the people in the anchorage are still asleep but even just the sounds make me feel like we're we're back I never thought I'd say this but I'm actually really enjoying just the sound of the the seagulls you don't get seagulls in the tropics so it's just the little things that make us feel like we've arrived gorgeous there's a cormorant just over there in front of the boat behind where was the last time you saw a cormorant? New Zealand oh it's beautiful as we came in it's quite busy in here there's quite a few boats anchored and quite a few boats on moorings as well and just as we were coming in two boats were leaving so this space that we're in now had two boats in it before but we're like that's handy that's where we'll go that worked out well it's beautiful this little little cove on St Agnes it's low tide at the moment so uh so there's a sandy beach here but high tide that should be completely covered yeah we've had to start thinking about tides as well the last time we had to think about tides I can't remember when that was it's like in the Caribbean it's like 30 centimeters tides whereas here you've got like I think two and a half meters at the moment so you do have to think about things a little bit more sailing around here yeah beautiful so calm and peaceful and such a good passage that was such a good passage such an amazing sail oh yeah we're home pretty much we're home put the kettle on kettle is on for a good cup of tea in British waters again we say we're home we've never actually been here before we didn't make it to the sillies when we were set off from the UK because we spent we were just rushing to get Florence ready and then we had two weeks uh just cruising down the coast of Falmouth before we we left so yeah it's going to be interesting to actually hopefully see some of the places that we missed on our way out and on our way back in I never thought that the passage back to the UK was going to be one of our smoothest and most enjoyable yeah that was that was really really lucky for the weather that we had there there's a sea state wasn't it that just shows how important the sea state is over the wind English breakfast tea in England next time we set foot ashore to explore the stunning before sailing on towards mainland England and the place we left her shores behind over seven years ago don't forget to subscribe to catch the next episode we release a video every two weeks as always we want to say a massive thank you to everyone who supports the making of these videos and especially our star patrons