Reflections of the First Mate...

… Broadsword Cherbourg to Gibraltar.

Two years had passed since I passed my Yacht Master Ocean theory exam, I just needed a successful qualifying passage to complete the certification. Covid however managed to cancel not one but two such passages for me. So, when a chance meeting in Coll with John and Lucy raised the prospect of this passage I jumped at the chance! It was brave all round … We had met only once before, two years ago and here we were committing to spend about 2 weeks together mostly out of sight of land in the confines of a 46-foot boat!!

John and I both have the Yacht Master Offshore certificate and the trip could have had the potential for conflict of opinions on the best way to sail or handle any one of the many situations that are thrown at you in a long passage, but there is only one Skipper on a boat and it is vitally important that the Skippers way is the only way. I actually found it relaxing for once not to be the Skipper, the buck did not stop at my door and it made for great nights of sleep. The fact was that there were very few areas of potential conflict anyway, John is a great sailor and his longer passage experience is well in excess of mine. I loved learning how to fly the Oxley (a downwind parasail) something I have never done before, as well as ‘goose winging’ with poled out foresail and Main.

Broadsword is also a fantastic boat, she cuts through the waves with ease and her electric winches take a lot of the grunt work out of sailing, the storage space is phenomenal and the ‘tech room’ is an engineer’s dream. In fact, a recent ‘Yachting Monthly’ review considered whether the Allures 45.9 might be the best blue water cruiser of all time!

I loved the whole 1,170 nautical miles of the passage immensely; the sailing, the wildlife, my sextant sightings of Sun, Moon, Saturn, Venus, Polaris, and Vega 😀, the night sailing, swimming in 200 metres of depth out of sight of land, the cooking ( it turns out that all three of us are pretty reasonable boat cooks), the chats and the great company.

I envy John and Lucy’s onward voyage around the world, the places they will go, the people they will meet, the things they will see. I am proud and delighted to have been a small part of it and I will never forget my 2 weeks aboard Broadsword.