What an adventure! Very inspiring...

Very interesting, I'd love to do an Atlantic crossing someday.

Amazing story! Thanks for this!!
I'm getting ready for the Atlantic myself with Contessa 26. I still didn't make final decision which wind vane to install. Tempted to put Pacific Light as in the article above, but may go with Monitor as it has proven record. Any advise ?? Thanks a lot ! Fair winds!

Sorry, I didn't find this tale inspiring at all, I found it a comedy of errors right from the start. What was he thinking? Sailing across the atlantic with no experience? Never sailed at night? Chose the wrong boat? Left without a motor? Exchanged roller furling for hanked-on sails when he had physical problems? This is another example of a fool doing something that he shouldn't and just got lucky to survive. Even a man with a lifetime at sea can disappear leaving no trace; Joshua Slocum? He got lucky to survive and is certainly not an example of how to sail across the atlantic single-handed.
Michael Nagy, SV Sunshine Lady, (Nicholson 32), 10 years and 36,000 nm experience, all single-handed.

At what point was there a claim that his tale was supposed to be inspiring? How about you let everyone else make up their mind about how to feel about his actions, Mr. Judgy? Even if you're right, there are still things to be learned by reading this article.

Dear Stefan you are missing the big picture here. If we let guys like this show how they did it and nobody criticizes them for not being prepared in so many ways, what will new sailors think? Will they attempt a passage just like this guy with little experience and poor preparation? Could they conceivably end up dead instead of making landfall? Wouldn't it be better to show just a little more concern to do the right thing?
P.S. Halcyon Yachts said in the very first post that this story was inspiring. If they meant how one man's will power can overcome a lot of mistakes, yeah, you could say that. That's where I got the "inspiring" idea. It is up to us as experienced sailors to point out the dumb things that can get you into trouble at sea. I would wish everyone would make every passage a safe one but every year I read about boats that come to grief and the people on them, often they come to grief by making mistakes. I love to point out my own mistakes in the hopes that other won't make them as well, but I find there is nothing of this in this story. That is why it is judgmental.

I totally agree with you. The part that appalled me most was the completely un-necessary 'Mayday' call. A 'mayday' distress call should be an absolute last resort as the implications can potentially put other peoples lives in danger in order to save your own. For that reason alone I feel like this article is grossly uninformed in its delivery. This article should have been titled "how NOT to perform a solo passage" with a seasoned veteran dissecting every one of the careless errors of judgement so that beginners can have a better understanding of how to protect themselves at sea. I'm very happy the author made it there in one piece, but not even knowing that you need to clear in and out of your country of Origin and destination shows an appalling lack of research performed for his trip.

People like Muggoch and Slocum say "It can be done and Ill do it or die trying" guys like you say "It cant be done, those people are stupid" and die in old age homes with feeding feeding tubes down their throat. Way to quote your experience too everyone's really impressed.

you quote and paraphrase well, but this is an example of bad seamanship, and as such would benefit someone who would wish to cross the ocean on their birthday.

Surely an ICC should mean more than just having completed the shore based courses and should only be issued after successfully completing the practical and being awarded a full Offshore or Ocean? On my practical the examiner failed the whole boat except for me and I could see why, the rest of the candidates, four of them, were all experienced boat owners in their 40's and 50's but their seamanship was of a poor level, they made too many basic errors which the examiner noticed early on and I saw him test each one individually several times during the three day exam to confirm it.