Saint Helena Island to Recife
Posted by Graham Cox
The stage from Saint Helena Island to Recife always promised to be the easiest passage of the MGR. When John Guzzwell and TREKKA sailed this way, they had many days of light winds, just drifting along over a calm sea, helped by a favourable current, and numerous other voyagers have noted that this was a light-weather passage.
However, in 2026 the trade winds have been a little fresher at times, and the seas more boisterous, apart from a few delightful days mid-passage. Some skippers are also getting a little weary after sailing 24,000 miles across three oceans in a little over 12 months, and boat gear is getting tired as well.
Adam posted, “Is this the longest race in the world? I can’t think of any other sport where you would race more than once around the world.” Christian shared that sentiment.
It isn’t the longest yacht race in terms of NM sailed (the Clipper event, at 41,000 NM, takes that crown), but it certainly is the longest time-wise. And then there is that small issue of crossing the Atlantic twice. As Adam said, “LITTLE WREN is confused to be back in the Atlantic. She says she has already sailed across the Atlantic. We discussed it and agreed to carry on.”
Jakub, however, felt that he was just getting warmed up, and if he did not miss his kids so much and had more money, he might just keep sailing forever. Though even he admitted that it wasn’t always a bed of roses.
He said, “It’s my fifth day on the passage from Saint Helena to Recife, Brazil. The first three days were very difficult. I got very tired and frustrated. I couldn’t sleep in the night because I had to hand-steer all the time. But yesterday morning I finally passed those very rough seas. The weather came down a little bit and the seas became less confusing. Yesterday I was sleeping most of the day and trying to recover. I also slept nearly the whole night, so I’m in good form now. I am still doing a little bit of hand-steering.
“I should put a spinnaker up but don’t want to overload the boat, and we are still making good progress. I’m happy with what I have. So far, I managed to keep in front of Pilar. The one problem I have is that one of my daggerboard housings cracked and doesn’t hold the daggerboard very well anymore, but it’s not a big deal.
“The rest of the passage should be pretty much as we have now, and in Brazil I’m planning to lift the boat up on the shore and do a proper repair, because later on we might again be in big seas, and in those conditions, the daggerboards seem to be working well and helping a lot.
“I think I should be in a Recife in about 9 days which is excellent. My total passage should be about 14 days altogether. The only thing I struggle a bit with is that I couldn’t manage to buy enough fresh fruits and veggies, in Saint Helena. I still have 6 onions. I had to throw out my last 2 tomatoes because they became rotten. I still have a cucumber so I’m gonna have that tonight, and I still have a few pieces of garlic.
“I have a lot of veggies in cans. My favourite dish is when I mix canned veggies with a can of sardines or mackerel. I don’t eat a lot of the freeze-dried food because somehow it just does not taste very well. So, other than that, all good. Happy days, fully-rested, keep sailing. At the moment, I’m going goose-winged under A5 and A7, and I’m hand-steering.”
Josh, too, is in no real hurry to get back, and is already missing the adventure and camaraderie of the fleet. He was, he said, “just savouring the beautiful sunny skies and clear nights with infinite stars. I had a couple of days of decent speed, but as the saying goes, ‘Even a blind pig finds a truffle every now and then.’
“It’s been fairly plain sailing if not for a few bumpy days of confused swell. I’m still trying to sneak around the light winds forecast for this week. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”
Pilar, too, loved the beauty of this passage, despite working really hard to overtake Jakub. “At night I like to gaze at the stars. On nights as clear as tonight, you can see the entire sky, our Milky Way. Sometimes I mistake a star for the lights of a ship, but the stars shine brighter. Tonight, I may be able to sleep a little longer… the stars will watch over me.” It has taken a week of intense sailing, but by 26 January, PETER PUNK had crept a few miles ahead of BIBI.
There has been another intense tussle going on, between Eric on SUNBEAR and Keri on ORIGAMI, with the latter getting a nose ahead on 26 January, after Eric held him off for quite some time. Eric had earlier posted, “Great weather at the moment, dead run at 15 knots (of wind). I have Keri hot on my tail, and will make him work to get past me.”
He certainly did, with Keri posting, “You are certainly not making it easy, Eric! Do you never sleep???”
Despite putting up such a fierce resistance, Eric said that he was finding the heat tiresome. “Well, it’s so blooming hot inside, sunny today, 33° in the air. It’s quite overpowering outside. Really knocks you around. Can’t stay up there very long without getting worn out. So I’m inside, right on the centreline, between the bunks. I’ve got towels hanging up everywhere. I’ve got my sail and overalls hanging up in the ceiling, blocking the sun coming in. I’ve got a sail bag over my head.”
By the following day, Eric had once again snuck in front, after Keri went off north looking for more current. When talking about these intense tussles between various boats, Don McIntrye, race founder and veteran ocean racer, made an interesting point. He said that if skippers made a sustained effort, they might gain a fraction more speed, which can be seen perhaps in the case of Renaud’s ability to stay in front of Dan, or Pilar passing Jakub after several days of trying, not to mention Keri and Eric.
Conversely, laid-back skippers like Ertan, and cautious ones like Jakub and Josh, still get 98-99% efficiency out of their boats. They might not be line-honours contenders, but are still in touch with the leaders. To win an event like this, in a one-design class (acknowledging the different windvanes used etc), requires a deep commitment to performance.
Keri probably relished the challenge of passing Eric, as he admitted to being a trifle bored otherwise. “Dead running is so dull… At least the sea is pristine and the night skies breathtaking. I fixed my solar panels again; this time changing a corroded Y-connector (supposedly waterproof). For two days I had no battery power, so it was good to break out the sextant and 2026 Almanac.
“We are likely to have lighter winds for the next few days, so a less lumpy horizon should yield better fixes! I also fixed my tiller-pilot so have another steering option when wind and waves permit.”
Just before midnight on 25 January, Keri said, “It’s another lovely night here at sea, with a beautiful starry sky and a sort of quartering, and a following sea, probably about 2m high, not particularly big, but containing enough power to keep the boat yawing around a bit. We are running downwind under full main and a poled-out jib, just sort of plodding along in about 12 knots of wind.
“I’m trying to make my way a bit further north to get into a bit more of the South Equatorial Current. I think it’s a bit stronger further up. And when you look at the distances run over the 24 hours each time, you see that the lead groups have been in a bit more current, I think, than the tail enders.
“I am also trying to find a way around that upcoming (wind) hole as well. Josh looks like he’s trying to do the same sort of thing. The wind strength is about 12 to 14 knots. There are no real line squalls like you get in the northern Atlantic, but there are quite regular small cumulus clouds, and they bring a shift in wind direction and an increase in speed as they pass over you.
“They’re quite easy to see at night because we’ve got reasonable ambient light conditions. A few days ago, it might have been enough to encourage me to put the first reef in the main, but in the last couple of days I haven’t done so. If necessary, I hand-steer through these mild squalls.
“If I’m trying to get some rest, I can normally keep ORIGAMI on course by putting a reef in the main and leaving it to the Aries. I can definitely get more speed by hand-steering, but it’s not exciting helming because it’s just sub-planing – there is not enough power to get the boat up beyond its theoretical hull-speed. You’re just getting about 0.1 of a knot, 0.2 of a knot extra by hand steering. Quite a lot of concentration for not a lot of reward!
“I helm more when the combination of swell and wind direction is such that you can’t really hold the course you need under windvane. There’s a sort of 60° band in which you can’t really hold a course under windvane.
“Also, the wind shifts quite noticeably throughout the 24-hour cycle. In the southern hemisphere, it effectively backs at night. At the moment, I’m trying to head more WNW, but it gets to a point that the backing wind means that I’m almost better off gybing, but my gybe angles are about 30-40°, so it doesn’t quite work.
“I’ve used the tiller-pilot a bit now that I’ve repaired it, but it doesn’t hold a particularly good course in these conditions. I’m always worried about burning them out.
“I had a chat with Eric today. It took quite a while to overtake him – he kept some pace on. He was really trying hard. He joked, ‘Oh, please slow down, give an old man a chance!’ I saw his masthead lights for the last three nights. I think he’s sailing under his A3, like Jasmine was when I sailed past her.
“I’m tending to stay on mainsail and jib, and only put the A3 up when I think I can get it to draw properly. I find that there’s quite a narrow window when the A3 is really effective – the sail’s not very stable in these conditions because you continue accelerating and decelerating on the swell, and the boat is rolling, so the sail inverts quite easily. It’s only drawing at best about 50% of the time. I think the main gives me a bit more all-round drive in this sea-state. But when the main is up, and the wind so far aft of the beam, you have to compromise a bit on what you’ve got up forward.
“The yawing’s not too significant, but if we had just a little more breeze, and the opportunity to promote surfing earlier, if you’re sailing harder and pushing harder, you’d see the sort of difference in boat positions we saw in previous stages. This stage (Saint Helena to Recife) is just a procession really.
“It is boring for racing but absolutely brilliant for cruising and reading and literature. I reckon I could actually paint in these conditions. I nearly got my paints out today – it’s Sunday, and I thought, ‘I’ll give myself a day off and I’ll paint,’ but something popped up. There’s something to fix, and also the thought that I’m not really trying hard enough if I do that, but it was very tempting.”
“I’ve got a huge affection for the boat. My frustration is that there’s not a lot of space for exercise, and that’s partly the layout of this boat. I think if I were to build one now, I would change some parts of it to give more space; to have decent space in the cockpit that you can almost lie out properly and do exercises. Something that should be taken into consideration for people doing the MGR in the future is acknowledging that you need to do additional exercise to maintain your core strength, etc.
“I can do sit-ups, and also wide-arm press-ups between the cockpit seats, but I end up with my feet on the transom and my head is almost hitting the companionway as well. It looks a bit absurd, really. And the boat’s rolling around. This is just more difficult than it needs to be.”
Earlier, when Keri passed Jasmine, taking some great photos as he passed, NUMBATOU was hooting along under the A3, corkscrewing down the short, steep waves. In an effort to make the boat go a little faster, Jasmine crawled forward and sat on deck in front of the mast.
Two days after Jasmine left Saint Helena, her mum, Susan Harrison, reported, “She’s happy to be back sailing, although her skin is still really sore with chafes and sunburn, and she’s exhausted. She’s currently sleeping in two-hour intervals overnight. In the first 24 hours she sailed 131 miles, though it was a really rough night with big waves breaking over the side of the boat. That’s calmed now but the Hydrovane flip flop repair is not holding, so she’s reinforced it again. She’s also got a jammed furler which she needs to sort out.”
On 23 January, Susan said, “Having hand-steered until about midnight, Jasmine was happy spending a while chilling in the cabin early this morning with the Hydrovane in charge with the jib sail up. She’s making great progress but decided to try out her really big Rotary International spinnaker. Unfortunately, it didn’t go to plan, and she had a frustrating couple of hours whilst she danced with the sail trying to untangle it, with the tack line ripping through her hands, and at one point it tried to send her overboard (she’s harnessed on). So, content that she’d tried, they agreed to try again on a calmer day!
“Jasmine has already sailed over 600 miles from St Helena since Monday, there’s another 1150 miles to go to reach Recife, which will take about 10 days. The sailing is steady away using the trade winds and not pushing the boat. This means Jasmine can relax a little, and take the best care of the sails and herself.
“The Hydrovane flip flop frame repair #2 is holding for now, but the team have been working with Hydrovane to get a new one shipped to Brazil. It’s a bit of a gamble as it could get held up in Customs, plus there is a 110% tax on the product and delivery. Meanwhile, Jasmine is counting down to the time she can cuddle her dogs.”
Ertan, as usual, the wizard of the MGR, always makes it look so easy. He was just cruising along, and making the journey seem effortless. He had the A7 poled out opposite the A5, with TREKKA’s Hydrovane steering all the time while he reclined in his cot, rising occasionally to shower, shave, put on fresh clothes, and contemplate his kingdom. Sometimes he rolled the sails in a little at sunset, so he could guarantee spending all night in his cot. In a video interview, Don McIntyre tried to get him to admit that it was at least a little bit tough at times, but he just smiled.
He posted, “TREKKA sailing towards Recife on her own. Plenty of rest, still have lots of fruit, veg and eggs procured in Saint Helena. Looking forward to two weeks of land holiday in Brazil.” He seems to be the only entrant who managed to get a good supply of fresh produce on Saint Helena, provided by the hotel he was staying in. No doubt he will find an equally-suitable establishment in Recife in which to take his leisure.
At the back of the fleet, Josh posted, “So far, we are going along well, if a little slower than I would like. Nice breeze, but the confused sea-state makes it difficult to have enough sail up and still maintain a decent course, as when I put up enough sail for decent speed, the boat is swerving all over the road like it’s had too much to drink. Just have to be patient and I’ll arrive eventually.” Later, the seas eased, and SKOOKUM began sailing well. At 2000 UTC on 24 January, they were averaging 5 knots.
Winds have increased slightly at the front of the fleet, and the leading boats are powering along, with CAPUCINETTE averaging 6 knots and covering 142 NM on Sunday, 24 January. It seemed that the leading pack were also getting a small boost from the South Equatorial Current, giving them a bonus of up to 10 NM a day.
In a note on 26 January, Renaud wrote, “The sea is not very big compared to the Indian Ocean. But for the last three days, waves are messy from 3 or 4 directions, who make CAPUCINETTE learn how to dance Samba, Flamenco, Macarena, Lambada. Less than 500 NM to go, hot, sunny and fast.”
Aussie Dan was only 23 NM behind Renaud; a position he has clung to throughout the week. Holiday Dan, who first put in an appearance on the leg from Lagos to Lanzarote, and who has tended to open a lazy eye whenever things get too hectic, appears to have dozed off again, and IMMORTAL GAME is barrelling along before the steady trade winds. There is only one sailor who can stay in front of Dan.
Earlier, Dan posted, “Day 3 into the passage from St. Helena to Recife today. Starting to get back into the swing of things and getting back into routine at sea again. Hard to believe I am going to be in Brazil in around 10 days!”
In a later update, he said, “Everything has gone relatively smoothly so far, although the sea-state has been a bit messier than I anticipated. Last night I even dropped off the side of a wave and my phone went flying out of the rope bag, straight into the drink, which was annoying. I was steering and listening to music at the time, and it took me a while to realise why it had stopped all of a sudden.
“Anyway, just had a feed of beef bolognese from On Track Meals for dinner, with some cous cous, which was nice, and now getting ready for another evening in the South Atlantic!”
On the morning of 25 January, he added, “Enjoying the ride, a tad bumpy; lacking sleep. Threw a lure in, broke said lure… I’ll try again today. Looking forward to reaching land and exploring Recife.”
Christian was sailing steadily along. During the evening of 25 January, ARGO was averaging the same speed as Renaud, though some 180 miles astern of CAPUCINETTE.
“I’ve got my favourite configuration flying when going dead downwind – twin A5s. The sea-state is really unpleasant and the windvane is not able to steer the boat unless I reduce sail area dramatically. So, I’m trying to hand-steer as long as I can.
“But the wind shouldn’t get any stronger. Yesterday there was a little bit less wind, but the waves were still messy. The night before, the wind died down and I could let the windvane do the job and go to sleep.”
He estimated the wind strength to be between F4-F5 (11 to 21 knots), but it was the cross seas that made sailing fast problematic. “Sometimes I get splashed in the cockpit, so I’m pretty wet. But the temperatures are okay here.
“The wind has been very good, varying a bit in strength sometimes, but we’re sailing along quite nicely. The conditions where I can sail really fast with ARGO is when there’s a little bit more wind, so that the others may possibly reduce their sail area. Then I can push a bit, and that’s what I’m trying to do right now. I suppose I’m probably more loaded again with stuff. I left Saint Helena with 150L of water, because I was thinking of taking more showers, which I did. So yeah, not in racing mode.”
He said ARGO was a bit messy below. “You can’t imagine. The boat is going from one side to the other. When I have to go down quickly to switch something on or grab something to drink or to eat, the windvane can’t do the job and the boat rounds up. I get thrown from one side to the other like I am in a rodeo!”
Sleeping is sometime difficult due to the need to hand-steer for long hours, and also because of the pain he is in from his damaged shoulders. “Most of the time, hour-wise, I get enough sleep, though last night it was a bit fatiguing because I was steering very long hours. My shoulders are troubling me. The cortisone injections that I got in Cape Town are apparently not as effective as the ones I got in Fiji, or perhaps the situation has just become worse. – I don’t know. With the boat moving so much in the waves, it is really painful, and it is difficult to find a sleeping position that doesn’t wake me up when the boat moves.”
ARGO, however, is in good condition. Christian managed to get his A3 repaired at Saint Helena, though is not using it much. He also did some repairs to the A5s himself. He often joked in the early stages of the MGR that he’d still be building ARGO when they arrived back in Antigua at the end of the event, but he has now resolved most of the issues created by not having enough time to sort his systems before the start. He began building ARGO in 2021, but the project was delayed by the delivery of poor-grade plywood initially, and by other supply problems.
Eating is also a problem as he could not get much in the way of fresh provisions on Saint Helena. “I managed to get 7 bananas and I had maybe 7 apples, plus I’ve got 2 paprikas, 1 carrot, and 3 dozen eggs. So that’s it. Sadly, I didn’t so far catch any fish on this passage. But I am trying to catch Adam! LITTLE WREN is not too far ahead of ARGO.” (16 NM on the evening of 25 January. By late evening on 26 January, ARGO was 2 NM ahead!)
Adam was also finding the conditions a bit taxing, and his Starlink signal kept cutting in and out, making communications difficult – something that has been a persistent issue during the MGR when boats are rolling heavily.
“It’s been a real struggle. I didn’t think I’d ever hear myself say that I’ve just had enough of downwind sailing. It’s just very difficult to keep the boat straight and the self-steering is not really an option for me at the moment. I don’t know how Josh is getting on with his South Atlantic windvane, but mine’s not coping, due to the combination of downwind sailing and this terrible sea-state that we’ve got.
“The sea-state settled a few days out from Saint Helena, and we had some delightful sailing, but we had a big blow come through last night and it’s been terrible ever since. I am trying not to do a lot of hand-steering. I’ve got a tiller-pilot that I’m using probably three quarters of the time, and hand-steering a quarter of the time. But the tiller-pilot gets very hot, and I don’t want to wear it out.”
Asked how much sleep he was getting, he said, “Not much. I sort of hoisted the white flag last night. When it’s whistling through the rigging and you’re sailing downwind, you know it’s blowing pretty hard, and I couldn’t really cope to be honest. I just dropped everything and put up a poled-out jib. I did get about three hours sleep during the night. I put some more sail up this morning.
“It’s the first time I’ve had to do that, just sort of capitulate. It’s the combination of the wind gusts and the difficult sea-state. When the gusts come, they last for a few hours, so I can’t really call them gusts. We’ve got probably 3m seas coming mainly from behind, but then from port and starboard as well. Probably near 4m.
“It really feels like the boat is just a little bit of balsa wood, and it’s not sitting in the water. We haven’t got any main up, so you can’t really use that to anchor you either. It’s possibly been toughest leg, just because it’s very frustrating. I can see other people, particularly my nearest rivals, gaining a lot of ground on me, or maybe they’re just doing things better than I am. Oh f***, hang on!”
The call terminated yet again, and although Adam reconnected shortly after, the signal was bad and it was obvious we on a hiding to nothing – or at least Adam was – so we signed off.
Eric’s signal also dropped in and out during our conversation. “She’s pretty rock and rolly, mate. Very bad sea-state and quite hard to sleep this trip. It’s not very windy, about 15 to 17 knots right at the moment, it is just the messy seas. It was quite good through the night. It was a beautiful evening last night. Yeah, stars were out.
“It was quite a good sail, actually. But I was up for about 18 hours from daylight till about midnight. It’s just very difficult to get rest; you’re either up on deck or below deck keeping out of the sun. The sun’s been quite oppressive out here. It’s been up around 33°C in the cabin. I was hanging things all around the boat yesterday to keep the sun out.
“I’ve been having a good race with Keri. I’ve been trying to keep him at bay, but he’s got the jump on me now. He’s just in front of me, but he’s gone out to starboard more. I’m actually in good current where I am, so I don’t know why he’s gone out further.
“At the moment I’ve got an A7 up, the headsail poled out, and a triple-reefed mainsail. But most of last night I had just the A5 and poled-out jib up, and SUNBEAR was going alright. I’ve had a few sail variations during the day. I’ve been running the A5 and the A7 recently, but I’ve got to watch my A5, because it’s getting old and tired.
“That’s been a good combination. Yeah, so I’m going along, chugging along alright, mate. The boat’s good at the moment. The systems all work, everything is charging well. It’s been quite an enjoyable sail apart from the rock and roll. We’re doing a lot of downwind sailing, dead running, and there’s a lot of boat movement. So as I say, it’s hard to sleep.”
“I was speaking to Keri yesterday and he asked me what sail plan I had up at night because he couldn’t catch me. He could see my masthead light for three nights. He’d been running a full main and jib poled out, and sometimes even hoisted his A5 or A7. I told him that I don’t even run the main half the time.
“I don’t know what the other boats are doing, but I would think, with these wind angles, you wouldn’t be using too much main. I find that even when I put a triple-reef in the main, you can see that the main is blanketing the headsail. So very shortly, I’ll drop the main, and I’ll run with just an A5 and an A7 probably. They fly in cleaner air that way.”
Speaking about how the boats roll downwind under twin headsails without the steadying influence of the mainsail, he said, “You can counteract it a bit with the rudder, but it puts a fair bit of stress on it. I also put my daggerboard all the way down.
“Also, weight distribution plays a huge role. Yesterday I slept right in the centre of the boat, on the floor and more towards the bow. With the A5 and A7 flying, the boat sailed as straight as an arrow all day – it just didn’t falter. But the sea-state was pretty good yesterday. It was a beautiful day.
“It all comes down to sea-state and weight distribution. I’ve got a fair bit of weight packed aft, so I balance the boat out by sleeping forward if conditions allow. We go faster if I move a bit of weight forward. Renaud was telling me that he puts all his extra bits and pieces up in the bow compartment.”
Asked what he planned to do that morning, he said, “I’ll probably change these sails first and get the boat moving a bit quicker. I’ve already looked at Windy, so I’m in the current. I’m pretty happy with the course, but I’ll probably try to get back to 300°. We are doing around 320° at the moment, so not too bad actually. I can nearly keep this course for a while.
“So, I’ll change the sails over and then I’ll have breakfast and just settle back into the day before the sun comes out and bloody fries me again.” Talking about frying set him off dreaming about putting a lamb chop on the barbie (Aussie joke), but he will have to settle for more of his long-life food for now.
Rolling down to Rio – or in this case Recife – is not always as idyllic as it sounds!
