IN THE WAKE OF VIKINGS
Think of crossing the Atlantic from west to east, and most people will picture a pleasant high-pressure route via Bermuda or the Azores. But there is another way of doing it. One that cocks a snook at the rhumbline and flies in the face of the usual assumptions about what constitutes ideal weather. Promisingly, it is known as the Viking Route, so named after the Norse explorers who voyaged as far as Nova Scotia a thousand years ago.
Put simply, to follow the Viking route takes you from the east coast of the US, across the top of the planet via Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland, back down to Europe via the Faroe Islands.
Besides the wild and little-visited isles along the route, its chief attraction is how this option breaks the transatlantic ocean passage down into smaller, bite-sized chunks. When Alberto Duhau looked into the route to take his Hylas 63 Shaima from Florida to the Mediterranean, he quickly realised that there’d be no more than six days at sea between landfalls.
HIGH LATITUD EPREPARATIONS
After consulting weather experts, ice
