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The engine came out in Lisbon. It had been failing for a year, and when the quote to rebuild it came in at more than the boat had cost, Ana and Tomás made a decision most sailors would call reckless. They would cross without one.
“People think the engine is for emergencies,” Tomás says. “Mostly it is for impatience. Take it away and you learn to wait for the wind, to plan the tide, to come into harbour slowly and properly.”
Learning to wait
The first lesson came off the Canaries, where they sat becalmed for four days within sight of La Palma. They read, repaired a jib, and watched the same pod of pilot whales pass twice.
When the trades finally filled in, they filled in hard. Wren ran for eleven days at six knots under a poled-out genoa, the wind-vane self-steering doing work that would otherwise have needed a crew of four.
Take the engine away and you learn to wait for the wind.
Tomás, skipper of Wren
What they would change
- A second, smaller headsail for the squalls at night
- Two more solar panels, because the fridge was the first thing to go
- A proper sculling oar for harbour manoeuvres
They tacked into Prickly Bay at dusk on day 27 and dropped anchor without a sound. A neighbour rowed over to ask whether their engine had died. “We told him it never came,” Ana says.
Proper seamanship. I sailed engineless for ten years on the Clyde and it made me a better sailor.
What wind-vane did they use? Thinking of fitting one before our crossing next year.