Finding crew for ocean passages

Crossing an ocean is a big undertaking, and doing so for the first time with just two people on board makes it even more so. My wife Julie and I had been planning to take our catamaran Cushla Na Mara, a Lagoon 410, across the Atlantic for the first time. After some arduous overnight passages through the Med, we concluded that the Atlantic experience would be less stressful and tiring with people to share the watch cycle. This is a very different proposition to finding crew for coastal cruising in the UK, however, as it is harder to find friends or family who are ready to drop their plans for long enough to make the crossing, and once you’ve set off, you’re stuck with your crew for the next few weeks.

We heard plenty of horror stories. ‘We picked up a couple of novice hitchhikers to help