Find a Crew:

This part was much easier than I thought, there are 2 ways to find a crew, you can just set off and stop in bars at ports along the way and get chatting. It's often quite easy to find crew this way as lots of people hitch hike around the world on yachts! The alternative was to actively advertise for crew, I chose www.crewseekers.co.uk as they have been around for a while and are well known. It was free for me to advertise as I was offering the yacht, the crew paid about £10 to be emailed details of boats for which they could apply.

I had immediate success! Within 2 weeks of advertising, I had an email from a Graham and Patty from Canada, they are taking a year off and touring Europe, then hoped to get a yacht across to the Caribbean before touring South America, then returning home to Canada. They a few years sailing experience and most importantly looked like a fun couple. We swapped a few emails, then had a chat on the phone and I immediately agreed that they were on the crew! Now I couldn't change my mind, I had people depending on me!! I receieved a few emails from people who I didn't think would fit in with us, either by age, or wording of their emails, but I was getting lots of interest.

After a couple more weeks, I had an email from Floris and Natalie from Holland, Floris is 35 and had 20 years experience, whilst Natalie had 10 years, again they looked promising, so after a phone call and several emails, I was keen to take them also. Unfortunately They were also in contention for a place on another yacht, an Oyster 55, which is a much larger and more luxurious boat than the Blue Dolphin. I now had to wait and see which they chose, but I was confident as we had got on well over the phone. If Floris and Natalie came with us, we had enough crew for the crossing, I was planning on between 4 and 6, ideally 6 would give us more time off watch on the night shifts!

I then received an email from Maggie, She's 24 and from London and was planning on taking a sabbatical from work to take part in an Atlantic crossing. Maggie Has previously sailed from Ireland to Morocco, via Portugal and Gibraltar, so she would have experienced the most days at sea in a single trip out of all of us. I was in England for a few weeks so I arranged to meet up with Maggie in London, so we could talk about the tripand see how we got on. It would be important that we got on ok, as we would probably end up on watch together as the others were couples! We had lunch and a couple of beers in Covent Garden, all looked good and we agreed to go for it, so Maggie was aboard!

The only question now was Floris and Natalie! They were going to Cowes to help sail a yacht back to Holland, So I rearranged my flight home and drove to Gatwick to meet with them and take them to Southampton. They had already said over the phone that we were their preferred choice of yacht as we were all the same age and of similar experience and attitude. The other yacht had an older crew and they felt they would just be hired hands on that boat! We had a great day, chatting non stop in the car, then stopped off in Port Solent Marina (Portsmouth) for some sailing scenery and lunch. Floris gave me a gift of some Dutch playing cards and a bottle of Malt Scotch and we now had a full crew!

The only thing left to do was schedule the crew's arrival on the boat, I needed help sailing the boat from Gibraltar South to the Canaries, as I'm not insured for single handed journeys over 18 hours and this one would take 5 days. Graham and Patty volunteered for this part of the Journey as it suited everyone, then Floris, Natalie and Maggie arranged flights to Tenerife for 9th November! We even had a schedule to work to now! I had a phone call with Graham and they asked if they could join me earlier along the Spanish coast, as they were no longer going to Seville as per their original plans. No problem of course, I was looking forward to meeting them and it would give me some company for the journey. Would it be possible for them to bring a friend along for a week, to sail with us as far as Malaga? Of course she would be welcome, so we now have Michelle joining Graham and Patty and meeting me 11th October in Murcia. This fits perfectly with my schedule as I can visit my mum in the Mar Menor (by Murcia) during the first week of October and be ready to set out to sea on the 12th. Working backwards this meant that I had to leave Mallorca by the end of September, to allow a 3-4 day sail to Mar Menor, then a week with mum, before picking up crew and leaving. We would also have plenty of time to get to Tenerife by 11th November, as we would have a full month to do about 15 days sailing. We could cut this down if we did a couple of overnighters too.