A Challenge That Put Wind in His Sails

But there was also the mystical kinship with the wind and sea that no sailor can ever adequately explain. Atkisson puzzled over the richness of the cobalt hue of the deep ocean. He awoke in wonder in mid-Atlantic at the dust on his deck from Sahara sandstorms a thousand miles to the east. And he delighted in the accuracy of the classic transatlantic sailing instruction as old as Columbus: From the Canary Islands sail south until the butter melts, then turn right.

Then there were the sea creatures, about which Atkisson apologizes for sounding "a little touchy-feely."

"I saw some really beautiful dorado, really big ones, trailing the boat, and they would have been really tasty. I love dorado. But I said to myself, hey, it's their ocean. They're keeping me company. I'm going to leave them alone."

Sixteen days into the 25-day passage he spent nine hours rolling around in a greasy bilge fixing a maverick oil leak and rewiring his engine. He had to run the diesel periodically to charge his batteries for power to run his navigation lights and the radio with which he received weather forecasts and entertained his friends ashore with e-mails of his adventure.

He stole what sleep he could between regular scans of the horizon ("It takes 24 minutes for a fast ship to come down on you from when it's first visible") and had his radar rigged with a beefed-up alarm to wake him if anything unseen showed up. He saw trawlers in his dreams, but in the whole ocean passage west never once glimpsed a single other vessel.

He had left the dock in Tenerife on Dec. 1, 2006. On Christmas Eve he arrived in Martinique and was met by Sawyer and their cat Beacon for a shoreside breather and a leisurely four-month cruise through the Caribbean, the Intracoastal Waterway, and home.

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After nearly surfing at an almost unbelievable 7.7 knots . . . in clear skies and moderate seas and big moon at night, 20 knots of East Northeast winds at the stern, and temperature about 82 degrees, there is serious question whether I will be content, when this is all over, to go back to . . . Washington. . . . I do begin to understand, though, why Bernard Moitessier after circumnavigating in the first [single-handed] Around-the-World Race, instead of sailing to the finish line port to claim his honors, just kept going, and going, and going. It is beautiful to a spiritual dimension out here . . .

[The] magnificent 625-square-foot tri-radial spinnaker is up . . . pulling Kestrel toward Martinique at just under 6 knots in only 8 knots of wind. Not bad for an old broad. Skies are blue, seas are moderate, and [the weather] promises more of the same for four days. . . .

Was it difficult getting up the chute when I was alone? Yes. Will it be difficult getting it down, being that I am alone? Yes. Is it madness to be flying a chute when in the middle of the North Atlantic alone? Yes. Next question?