Almost half a year ago I got the idea of traveling back home to Europe on a boat, within the last few months I designed my travel plans to get to places where a possible departure of boats crossing the Atlantic might come true. After several weeks of searching in online platforms as well as marina offices and contacting a lot of people I finally took a decision: I booked a flight back to Europe today as this time of the year it is almost impossible to find someone crossing the Atlantic eastwards on a boat.
In the following I want to give you some insights I got during my search for boats crossing the Atlantic. But first of all: Why did I want to do this: 3 main reasons: experience / environmental impact / meeting amazing people and making friendships for life. Therefore I considered all kinds of boats as possible opportunities, from small sailboats over motor-driven yachts to large cargo ships.
I registered on findacrew.net and on crewbay.com, two platforms which offer you to create free profiles and look out for either boats or crew. Findacrew is probably the best-known platform for crewing on boats. The webpage offers extremly variable search options. You can for example just search for power boats owners that might consider a romantic relationship and that do not want you to pay any contribution whilst boating around. Unfortunately the search function is not that well though if you look for a crossing from any place along one coast to anywhere along another coast, which was essentially what I was looking for. On the two mentioned platforms you insert all kind of personal information to let boat owners / captains know important details about you and to create most suitable matches. Furthermore I used crewseekers.net/ to look for possible transatlantic crossings. The advantage of this website is that you can explicitely search for Atlantic crossings. Besides I also checked out the webpages worldcruising.com, oceancrewlink.com, sailinganarchy.com, cruiserlog.com/forums and floatplan.com, which I found less helpful however.
I contacted numerous people with boats mainly via Facebook groups and Couchsurfing. Especially on Facebook there are various groups amongst which I found most helpful Sailing and Cruising, Atlantic Ocean Crew, Sailboat Hitchhikers and Crew Connection and Sailing and Cruising Florida. There are also many more local sailing club groups like e.g. Lake Worth Sailing Club of Florida or other groups like Sailing Crew Finders Whole World • Long Sailing Trip • Regatta, Catamaran Sailing Group or Sailboat Crewfinder Worldwide. There are even annual groups that are explicitly created for people doing a transatlantic crossing (e.g. Atlantic Crossing 2019-2020 East to West), unfortunately a group for people who are going the other way than I wanted to go.
With the east coast of Florida and Fort Lauderdale I definitely had found the right starting position for an Atlantic crossing. Only the timing was wrong. My absolute favourite for the ocean crossing would definitely have been a sailboat. Unfortunately October and November are still part of the hurricane season in the Atlantic. As a result nobody wants to risk a crossing in these months unnecessarily. Furthermore nobody who owns a boat wants to spend the cold winter months in Europe but rather in the warm waters of Florida or the Carribean. I therefore found numerous captains looking for crew for a transatlantic crossing from the Canary Islands to America. Unfortunately the wrong direction, but maybe another time!
For people who are looking for an ocean crossing to save money: It may be possible that you find a "free" voyage but I don't want to disappoint you. Even if it is a sailing boat and the wind is for free, there are tons of other expenses which must be covered. Maintenance and fuel costs as well as expenditures for groceries are high for an expedition like that. Therefore I wouldn't expect any boat owner to take you with him/her for not at least a modest contribution. This contribution will probably be higher as a ticket price of a cheap flight as budget airlines offer such bargain offers that already the food you'll be eating on the journey of several weeks will be more expensive. The large cargo ship companies who do regular Atlantic crossings offer a limited number of crossings for private individuals. However, the costs for this are in the range of several thousand euros. In return you get your own cabin and are more or less like on a big cruise ship, only without all the extravagant facilities like swimming pools, golf course, restaurant and bars. But it wasn't worth it to me, especially since a trip like this probably doesn't offer any ecological added value.
However, the whole research was not in vain: Instead of crossing the Atlantic I will do some local sailing along the Atlantic coast of Florida and also in the Gulf of Mexico, with two different sailboats, within the next weeks before flying back to Europe. Even though I couldn't avoid a flight I get some more nautical miles and sailing experience and I can make my deadline being back in Germany latest end of November. My greatest learning effect is that for undertakings such as sailing trips, the climate and the season must be the right ones. So if one day in the future I want to start an ocean crossing, I will do more than a few months of research in advance to find out which season is the best.
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