Skyelark 2 - The Arc of Christopher Columbus and the ARC of Atlantic Rally Cruisers Today

The ARC of Christopher Columbus and the ARC of Atlantic Rally Cruisers Today

Each year, sailors from around the world meet up in the Canary Islands to sail in a rally together to the Caribbean. Unbeknownst to many, they are following directly in the wake of Christopher Columbus’s journeys in which he formally discovered the Caribbean and the Americas. His first trip across took 33 days, his fourth, only 16, similar to many sailboats in the ARC rally.
Columbus left from the same islands, at the same time of year and followed the same general route in 1492. that sailors follow today. We on Skyelark 2 are sailing the same route and are now approaching St Lucia today!
Even more astonishing is that the ARC Europe return journey from St. Martin to Bermuda to the Azores in the spring return to Europe, also follows Columbus’s wake. For he departed the Caribbean in the spring, headed north, crossed northwest to the Azores, where he re-provisioned and repaired his vessels before returning to Europe. In so doing Admiral Columbus not only discovered the Americas but he also discovered the Gulf Stream and the primary tradewind route of the North Atlantic. This is near miraculous given the knowlege and technologies of his day.
Every journey across an ocean is unique to each participant, so I thought I would share some of my own observations while nearing the end of our crossing on the beautiful luxury Oyster 62’ yacht “Skyelark 2” and to explore some parallels between our journey and those of the Admiral.
On Nov 19th 16 days ago we set sail from Las Palmas, Canary Islands to follow the trade winds to the Caribbean Islands, also know as the “West Indies.” The islands were so named because when Christopher Columbus first sailed there in 1492, he thought he had sailed directly to Asia, China and India.
Every year since the 1980s, some 240 boats sail from the Canaries to St Lucia in the late fall. Our vessel is #41, signifying that it is the 41st in length among the fleet.
Before delving into more of our journey, let’s review the highpoints of how and why this route was developed. How did Columbus pioneer it with such detail and accuracy in his very first journey?
First, Columbus was an exceedingly skilled and experienced captain, navigator, and observor of oceans, wildlife and nature. In his prior journeys he had travelled as far north and west as Iceland, which had been founded by the Vikings, who had also previously sailed on to discover Greenland, Nova Scotia and North America. It is commonly believed the Vikings travelled as far south as New England in the United States.
In Iceland Columbus would have spoken with local sailing experts and would likely have learned about these important Viking explorations and probably heard about the new landmass or continent they would have encoutered. Yet Columbus expressed no interest in discovering more in the cold, frigid north. Yet he may have made note that the Vikings travelled southwestward from Greenland and discovered new lands.
Besides sailing extensively throughout the Mediterranean and many European locations, Columbus also travelled as far south as Cape Verde, an island group off the coast of Africa at the latitude of approximately 15 degrees- similar to the Caribbean. He would have stopped there on his first journey, but chose not to because he understood the Portugese King had asked that he be caught and executed if he went there. The Portugese king had refused to back Columbus and probably thought the best way to guarantee his not succeeding and gaining new territories for Spain was to kill him.
These and many other colorful and often brutal facts come out in the excellent Penguin Classic “Christopher Columbus – The Four Voyages” with original journey articles translated from Spanish by J. M. Cohen. The ship’s logs written in Columbus’s own hands, histories written by his son Hernando and by the Spanish court Royal Historian Oviedo bring to life his journeys, making them human and real. At the same time, many of these pieces were written like marketing pieces to convince Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to fund future explorationss. They share the many real travails of the journeys and include much fluff and overly optimistic projections of future gold and glory right around the corner. In fact the wild projects were eventually realized, but only some thirty years later. In 1520 Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez toppled the Aztec empire and melted down their massive gold holdings and brought them back to the new Spanish sovereigns, for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel were no more. In the short term, Columbus’s voyages promised much gold but delivered little gold bullion or spices onto the royal table.
Beside having sailed a huge slice of the Atlantic from Iceland across Europe and down to Cape Verde, how did Columbus decide how, where and when to set sail to what he thought was Japan, Asia and the Indies?
Royal Historian Oviedo for example, mentions that there was a story that Columbus had a pilot friend who was taking a ship full of wine and food from Spain to England, but that the ship was blown off course in a horrible storm that pushed them westward all the way to some far away islands with naked people that looked like those Columbus later encountered. On those distant islands they loaded up on wood and water and sailed back to Europe, landing in Portugal. Only four of the eleven survived and each of the survivors was extremely sick and died soon after arriving. It is said that Columbus took the pilot into his own home. The very ill Spanish pilot drew him a map and explained where the islands were. The pilot then died, leaving Columbus as the only person living to know the location of the islands.
It is somewhat remarkable that in his presentation to the Kings and Queens In England, who laughed him out of the court, and in Portugal, who denied his request for support, and in Spain, where Ferdinand and Isabella did support him, that Columbus told them that the West Indies were 2,700 miles away, which is roughly accurate. How could he have know this unless someone else had been there and documented it? The other theory is that Columbus knew some scientists who estimated the size of the earth and posited that Japan was only 2,700 miles away, given the size of the earth’s sphere. Perhaps the pilot had given Columbus this estimate.
In any event, Columbus targetted the right latitude and distance on his first journey, and his three ships were properly provisioned for the trip.
Nonetheless, to embark out into an open ocean that was not known except perhaps by one drifted crew took heroic courage. Clearly every many on board must have know that they were risking their lives in hopes of riches. The Spanish King and Queen did promise Columbus that he would be governor for life in all territories he discovered and claimed in their name, and that he would own all he found, but pay tribute to the sovereigns.
From a navigation perspective, Columbus on his first voyage decided to travel from Spain to the Canary Islands and to then follow the westerly winds blowing out of the east over Africa, to push him across the ocean. By the third voyage, he started going farther south first to pick up even stronger trade winds to push him across. His third voyage route is erily similar to that of the ARC rally today.
On his first voyage, the smaller vessel Pinta had a damaged rudder which had to be repaired in the Canaries and it is thought to have been fixed either in Tenerife, or in Las Palmas, the port we too departed from. Columbus left the first week in September, we left in mid November, a time chosen in part to avoid the hurricane season that Columbus was fortunte to have survived on each of his journeys. This is the best time of the year to catch the westerlies to sail to the Caribbean. Once again, Columbus had this somehow figured out, his first time out of the chute.
As on his third voyage, we and apparently most or all of the ARC fleet, pointed south. Leaving the harbor we encountered a headwind out of the south, so we had to tack several times to make way and when the wind dropped below 8 knots per hour, we motored for a half a day.
How does our vessel compare to Columbus’s three? We are in a modern, 62 foot luxury sloop (one masted sailboat). Columbus had the Santa Maria, which was a heavy wooden boat up to 85 feet long with 40 people on board! We feel relatively tight with 9. We have 3 flushing toilets, a modern galley (kitchen) with numerous refrigerators and freezers, electricity and can even make water! Columbus had firewood for cooking, no refrigeration and only cured meats and other products, like flour that could quickly be ruined by mildew. His water was in barrels that had to be conserved carefully to survive such a long and uncertain journey.
Columbus’s other two ships- the Nina and the Pinta, were probably closer to 65 feet long each, and carried some 30 people. All vessels thus had very tight quarters and limited rations and water for their crews.
Thanks to GPS and chart plotters, we know exactly where we are at all times. Columbus and his crews only knew their latitude (level above the equator) at any time, by using the angle of the sun at its highest point or the angle of the north star at night. This innovation was fairly recent in Columbus's time. Still, they could not accurately measure their longitude or how far east or west they were from home. They could only estimate this by dead reckoning. Dead reckoning is accomplished by recording how long a ship travels on a compass bearing and at what speed and for how long, to plot a ship’s course on a paper chart over time. The further you travel, the less accurate it becomes, and thirty three days is a long time to track by dead reckoning.
So it is said that Columbus sought to find islands at 23 degrees of latitude that were far, far to the west. So one way to do this is to get to latitude 23 and to simply sail west until you encounter land. On his first journey, his route reflects such a strategy. He swung southwest from the Canaries and at one point simply heads west, with the course adjusted for prevailing winds. This is similar to the course taken by many ARC sailors.
On Skyelark 2 we have sailed down southwest to the 12 degree latitude in order to catch stronger trade winds. We mostly took a downwind run, with the wind at our backs and with our sails set onto a starboard tack, with the genoa sail put out by spinnaker pole to the starboard side in a “wing on wing” configuration. A few times that did not take us far enough to the south and so we gybed to a port tack, with the main sail out to the starboard side and the genoa run out with a spinnaker pole to the port side. This allowed a more southern passage with stronger winds.
During the trip we often had to trim or reduce the sail sizes by reefing the sails. This allows stable sailing in higher winds. The winds have generally ranged from 13-22 knots at the current 12 to 13 degree latitude although we did find ourselves in the middle of several squalls, or short storms, with winds up to 35 and even 37 knots. The boat speed has typically ranged from 7 to 9.5 knots.
When winds were weak we sometimes added the use of the staysail- a smaller front bow sail just behind the genoa. It both adds speed, stability and is also a good indicator for the helmsman to make sure the vessel is truly on the right course to the wind.
Our route to St. Lucia is thus west-north-west as we need to get back up to 14 degrees to arrive at our target.
On Columbus’s third voyage, he actually dropped south of the equator to explore further and to discover new islands, which he did starting with Trinidad, which he named after his beloved Christian “Trinity” and honoring the three mountain peaks of that island.
Columbus continued his efforts to establish settlements and mining activities on the western end of the island of Hispaniola, now known the Domincan Republic. The first 36 settlers left in 1493 were all executed and their fort burned to the ground by the next spring when Columbus arrived to support them. It is said the men took 3-4 Arawak Indian women captives each from the local tribe for their own purposes. Whether because of their possibly reprehensible treatment of the women or other causes, the settlers were all dead a year later. Going forward Columbus urged his men to treat the locals better but the simple upshot of the Spanish and other colonization of the Americas undoubtably led to tragic outcomes for most local populations, many of which were already suffering from considerable tribal and cultural violence before the Europeans arrived. In the Caribbean, the violent, rapacious canibals from the Carib tribe were slaughtering and eating the Arawak tribe members across the entire region. Many Arawaks asked Columbus and his men to protect them from the Caribs. Columbus agreed to.
Columbus founded other settlements with limited but greater success but there was much unhappiness and complaints about his abuse of his own men and the natives. Columbus was often despotic and tempermental. He trusted no one outside of his family. Many complaints were filed with the sovereigns who then sent a judge to Santo Domingo, Hispaniola to interogate Columbus. The judge took Columbus’s home, possessions and all writings and put Columbus in chains as a prisoner on a ship back to Spain. Columbus hired top attorneys to protect his interests and eventually the sovereigns “forgave” Columbus. Then on May 20, 1509 the sovereigns set up a meeting in which they planned to completely renege on the orginal deal with Columbus as governor of the Americas, but they could not. Columbus died suddenly that day after uttering his last words in Latin “Into thy Hands, O God, I commend my soul.”
During his short, tumultuous and courageous life as a remarkable seaman and Admiral, Columbus discovered the Americas, discovered the Gulf Stream, discovered the westerly tradewinds that blow all the way across the Atlantic, and created a New Spain that became he largest single territory in the world, greatly enriching the Spanish.