Royal Engineers complete first leg of 15,000-mile Atlantic adventure
A crew of Royal Engineers have completed the first leg of a 15,000-mile adventure across the Atlantic.
The crew of new and experienced sailors set off from UK waters, with the yacht set to travel all the way to South Georgia, deep in the South Atlantic.
Adventurer of Hornet is a 72ft Challenger class yacht belonging to the Joint Services Adventurous Sail Training Centre (JSASTC), and the opening stage of the Royal Engineers' adventurous sail training and mountaineering expedition, 'Atlantic Quest', has now seen the crew arrive in Lanzarote.
Corporal Kris Sellers, on board the yacht for the first leg of the journey, said after setting off: "The Solent was not nice to us at all.
"Getting out of the Solent was not easy as there was a racing event going on; when we finally got out into the English Channel it was really rough which had a massive effect on all crew members through seasickness," he said.
"It lasted about 24 hours but once we got out of the Channel it was pretty much plain sailing.
"We went across the Bay of Biscay with no problems as the weather was kind to us."
Their first port of call was A Coruňa on the Spanish coast, which saw a pod of dolphins follow the crew into the harbour.
After a stopover in Spain, the crew set sail for Madeira – with the passage seeing a force eight storm predicted.
This led to the skipper making the call to re-route the yacht to avoid the storm.
Cpl Sellers said it worked and the crew did "manage to escape the worst although we did hit the tail end of it so we did have some rough seas and strong winds".
As they progressed towards Madeira, the further south they sailed the warmer it got.
After a short break on Madeira, it was on to the leg's final destination, Lanzarote.
"It was a super quick crossing out to the Canaries; it took just over 40 hours due to the wind being in the right direction and the tide helping us along," Cpl Sellers said.
"We caught sight of more wildlife along the way, dolphins and a few glimpses of whales, which was absolutely amazing to see.
"Coming into the Canary Islands the views were pretty spectacular."
After the completion of the first stage, the crew handed the yacht over to the second leg's crew – who will prepare her for the challenge of the transatlantic crossing to the coast of South America.
The challenge has a total of six legs, with the third leg taking her down the eastern seaboard of South America to the Falkland Islands.
Leg four sees the crew start their push towards South Georgia, with a team of specialist climbers travelling to the island to scale the island's mountain.
The final two legs will see the yacht make the return passage back up from Port Stanley to the Caribbean, where the crew will hand her back to the JSATC for her next voyage.
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