Annals Of Adventure–Beach Cat Transatlantic: It takes a special sort of sailor to look at a little beach cat–the kind you bash around on at Club Med–and think: “Hmm. I bet I could sail one of those across the Atlantic.” But of course there are plenty of crazy, I mean special, sailors out there, and Brit Greg Homann is one of them. On November 18, Homann will set sail from the Canaries in a slightly modified F18 beach cat, and head for Guadalupe. Only one other solo sailor, an Italian named Alessandro di Benedetto, has made the crossing successfully on a small cat, and he did it in a time of 28 days 11 hours and 36 minutes on a 20-footer. Homann is aiming to break that record with a time of about 20 days, and also claim the record for making the crossing in the smallest cat. To help survive the brutal passage, Homann has put a small enclosed pod on his cat. He’s got a portable watermaker and self-heating freeze-dried food, and will sail at roughly the same time as the Atlantic Rally For Cruisers, which means that roughly 150 yachts will be following the same track and able to come to his rescue if necessary. In case you think crossing the Atlantic on a beach cat is no big deal, check out these two accounts of previous attempts by double-handed teams. TWC will stay with this one if Homann does decent updates to his website. If he succeeds, he wants to organize a race over the same route. Excellent idea….



“Holy Sh*t! If I can keep flying like this, I’ll be there in two weeks…”