Battling the Storm of a Lifetime ｜ Crossing the Atlantic in our 40 ft Sailboat 2023

We are Will and Olya, award-winning filmmakers on a global sailing journey in search of inspiring stories. Welcome aboard the Adventure Locker. Eight days ago, we set sail from Florida with an ambitious idea to cross the 3,850 nautical mile expanse across the North Atlantic Ocean between Florida and Morocco in North Africa. But right at the beginning of our journey, everything changed. We encountered the scariest electrical storm of our lives. The storm was intense, with thunder crashing and lightning flashing across the sky. It shook us to the core and made us rethink our plans. But for now, let's go back to the start, where Will explain And yes, regardless of the best laid plans, Mother Nature still calls the shots. This journey kind of started about six months ago when Olya decided rather than going to Panama, she wanted to go to Europe. So that presents a whole new logistical nightmare in preparation for the boat. That all started in Guatemala where we first painted her and that kind of gave us an idea that we don't have any soft spots. So box one, check. The second thing that we took on was the rigging, which was absolutely ----. But luckily, we've got all new rigging now. She's solid and sailing well. At the same time, we had a few issues with our sails, so the rigger was able to take on those. When we left Guatemala, we sailed up through Mexico, as you know, and then eventually to Marathon, Florida. And we had some people look at our keel bolts. We didn't realize how bad it actually was. And for those of you who are unaware, the keel is basically a big weight at the bottom of your sailboat that keeps it upright. And without it, you flip. Crazy thing about a boat is sometimes you don't know what you don't know, right? We saw a little bit of rust on our keel bolts. Lo and behold, they were all just completely rotten, which is not something you want to do when you're crossing an ocean, lose your keel. So really happy to get new keel bolts in there. All 10 of them are brand new. And hopefully, she's solid. It kind of makes you wonder, what else don't we know? But so far, like I said, ignorance is bliss. And we're feeling like we're ticking some big boxes here. Since arriving to Florida, we've started to replace a lot of the hardware on the boat as well. So we've got new Anderson winches, which are awesome. Ronstan hardware throughout. And then we've got New England ropes as well. So Bonita is looking pretty spiffy right now. Before doing a big crossing like this, we want to make sure that we're completely self-sufficient. You know, things like, do we need a water maker? Ultimately, we've decided that we've got two huge tanks on board. And understanding our usage, we've opted just to buy a couple extra jerry cans, and hopefully that'll be enough for us. On the flip side, though, we did decide to upgrade our batteries. So we've teamed up with Renogy. They've given us eight very good-sized 200-watt panels, as well as two 400-amp batteries. And it's been a game-changer as far as how we operate. In my brain, it didn't even click yet that that's what we're going to do. Hasn't registered yet? Yeah, not at all. So I don't know. I'm not nervous for some reason. No, I'm just happy to leave and just explore new countries for us. All right, jump on. It's like the entryway to our big adventure. Yeah. The sky is the limit when it comes to risk on any crossing. For me, I've always been fearful of lightning. And now that we're on a boat, we're on basically a giant lightning rod with nothing around us. For Olia, I think it's hitting something in the middle of the night, whether it be a stray container or even worse, a whale. You know, she would be devastated if she killed something out there. And let's face it, it would probably take us down too. We can mitigate as much risk as possible, but it's already June. We've had productions that have kind of carried us on into the year a little bit further than we'd like. And most of the boats left in March or April when the weather was better. The later that we wait for our departure date, the more unpredictable the weather gets. And that means inevitably we're going to hit some weather out there, which comes with a whole bag of unknowns. But we've decided it's time to go now or never. This is just the tip of a three-day electric bender. It's supposed to be like this for the next few days. So it's already exhausting. If you ever wanted to feel small and in your place, it's looking at an entire wall of electricity. We're at its mercy. There's nothing we can do. We're kind of at full speed going south. It's way faster than that. It's awe-inspiring. It makes me super nervous. I'm feeling a lot of emotions right now. But at the end of it, like, I'm just mesmerized. Like, all we can do... Holy cow! All we can do is watch. It's right behind us. This system kind of rolled in towards us. And unfortunately, we just weren't fast enough to get out. It's about... What did it come in around 2 a.m.? It's about 4 a.m. now. So we've basically just been like this for the last couple hours. It's just not fun at all. Over the next two days, we fought crazy winds, rain, and non-stop electrical storms. Yeah. After over 50 hours, the storm finally passed. But with no sleep, we were exhausted. And we weren't alone. As you know, our original plan was to sail from Florida to Morocco directly. However, nature had other plans, and we had to go directly south to avoid a huge storm. Subsequently, we used way too much fuel. And now we're headed to Bermuda, where we hope to do a quick pit stop, refuel, and we'll move on from there. Six knots of wind. And if I check the speed, we are currently doing five knots, which on this boat is impossible. But the reason is we found a current, and it's also going east. So we spent the last couple days going like 1.5, 2.5 knots. And now to finally get some traction going east feels pretty good, especially on a night like this, where there's just a few beauty clouds in the sky, nothing dangerous out there. Life is good. I could do a couple more weeks of this, but not that other stuff. Not the stuff where we're just up and down, and there's lightning and everything like that. It's these moments that I think are pretty surreal and enjoying the hell out of them for sure. I think because we went through all this, now we really, really appreciate moments like this. If it would be all our trip like this, oh my god, it would be boring. So I think the mix of different challenges are good. Literally a thousand miles from anywhere. Yeah, I love that. Oh yeah, to be so far away from civilization and just still have screeches. After nine days of ocean travel, we've arrived in Bermuda. Excited to go to shore, kind of explore a little bit for our next leg of the journey, which is going to be four times as long.