During the era of the great China clipper races one captain came to prominence. This was Captain Richard Robinson who, while in command of the clipper ships Fiery Cross and Sir Lancelot, came to dominate the field between 1861 and 1869, winning the 16,000 mile race five times in eight years. His secret, aside from relentless hard driving and unparalleled seamanship, was a congenital hatred of jamming his ship hard into the wind. He was willing to go many miles out of his way on the proviso that he could keep the ship going full and by. To a man like this, the tradewind belts, with their reliable breezes booming across great empty swathes of the ocean were Manna from heaven. It was just a question of picking your season, lining up your boat and then piling on the canvas. He wasn’t alone; the trades have been the friend of sailors since time immemorial. Indeed, the trade winds shaped trade routes and even the geopolitical map of the world.
Spool forward a couple of hundred years and the trade winds continue to dominate for cruising sailors. In the Atlantic, the North East trades are a conveyor belt from the western ports of Europe or the Canary Islands across to the balmy climes of the Caribbean. It’s generally in November that sailors first start to think about making the leap across
