Nature on Board: Crossing the Atlantic on Wind Surf

“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea”
 
Isak Dinesen, The Deluge at Norderney, in Seven Gothic Tales (1934)
 

Beginning Another Year of Movement

 

By the spring of 2025, crossing the Atlantic Ocean was not unfamiliar to us. We had already travelled several times between North America and Europe aboard Cunard’s Queen Mary 2, and the previous summer had sailed north from Vancouver to Alaska aboard Queen Elizabeth. Those voyages had changed the way we thought about travelling by sea, repeatedly reminding us that an ocean was not simply the space between two destinations and that days apparently filled with nothing but water could hold birds, whales, dolphins, weather, currents, swells, changing light and entire landscapes hidden beneath the surface. Yet when we arrived in St. Maarten to board Wind Surf, we were beginning another year whose shape we could only partly anticipate. Ahead lay another Atlantic crossing, several long pilgrimages through Spain and, eventually, our return to northern Canada for what would become the final year of our six-year journey along the Trans Canada Trail. Much later, when autumn arrived, we would be fortunate to be able to board another ship which would carry us north again toward Norway.

 

We did not know exactly how all of those pieces would fit together when we stepped aboard. Plans had already changed repeatedly before we ever reached the Caribbean, and they would continue changing – even en route to Europe. What we did know was that we were entering another year in which much of our lives would be lived in motion, sometimes on foot and sometimes aboard ships, with nature providing a continuity that destinations and itineraries rarely could. Wind Surf therefore occupied an unusual place in that year. She would carry us from one continent to another before we returned to walking, but the voyage was never simply a transfer between hiking routes. For fifteen days the Atlantic itself would become the landscape – or seascape - through which we travelled.

 

In retrospect, it would be easy, knowing what came afterwards, to treat this crossing as a prelude to the Via Augusta, Via de la Plata and Camino Sanabrés, just as it would be possible to view those Caminos only in relation to our eventual return to the Trans Canada Trail. Neither would be fair to the journeys themselves. Every route, voyage and landscape gave us something particular to notice and to learn.  Ultimately our transatlantic voyage on MSY Wind Surf offered an experience unlike anything we had undertaken before. Rather than carrying us high above the sea on the decks of an enormous ocean liner, she placed us close enough to feel the movement of every swell, smell salt drying on the deck and watch flying fish erupt almost beneath our feet.

 

From a Canadian Winter into the Caribbean

 

Our encounter with nature began before we ever reached the ship. We had left late-winter Canada behind and arrived in St. Maarten to a sudden abundance of heat, humidity, palms, flowers and unfamiliar wildlife. Wild goats moved across steep roadside slopes while enormous Green Iguanas draped themselves over shrubs and rocks in the sun. Bananaquits, Carib Grackles, Zenaida Doves and Eurasian Collared-Doves appeared as we walked down streets and admired neighbourhood gardens, all while West Indian Brown Pelicans soared overhead.  

Each of which immediately served to remind us that we had entered a very different natural region. After months spent largely indoors working behind computer screens, everything seemed vivid. Even the warm night air filled with the sounds of crickets or cicadas was like an announcement that we had arrived somewhere entirely different.

The following morning we walked toward Great Salt Pond, part of the Caribbean Birding Trail. At first glance it was not the sort of location most visitors would associate with a memorable nature experience. Garbage littered sections of the track, discarded furniture and plastic had accumulated along the edges of the lake, and the island’s refuse dump occupied part of the far shoreline. Yet Black-faced Grassquits, Black-crowned Night Herons and a Peregrine Falcon moved overhead, while Least Sandpipers worked muddy shores where fiddler crabs scurried between them. Turtles basked on logs in the water, Snowy Egrets and Grey Kingbirds appeared farther along, and (as they had yesterday) Brown Pelicans soared above the wetland. Once again, a landscape that might easily have been dismissed as damaged or unattractive proved to be full of life.

 

That experience belonged naturally within the longer thread that had been developing through our journeys for years. We had learned on the Camino Portugués that wildlife does not disappear simply because people have altered a place, and that treatment ponds, road margins, industrial areas and urban wetlands can still provide important habitat. Great Salt Pond offered the same reminder in a very different setting. The litter and dump were real and troubling, but so too were the herons, shorebirds, turtles and pelicans making use of what remained. Nature was neither absent nor untouched. It persisted inside a landscape shaped simultaneously by tourism, development, waste and wetland.

 

Leaving Land Behind

 

When we finally boarded Wind Surf, our attention remained on the harbour and waters around us. Great and Magnificent Frigatebirds circled overhead, Brown Boobies crossed the water and Laughing Gulls moved between docks and sailboats. 

The five tall masts of Wind Surf rose above a vessel dramatically smaller than the ocean liner to which we had become accustomed, and that difference created both excitement and (admittedly) a little unease. We knew what the North Atlantic could look like from Queen Mary 2, a ship specifically designed to endure difficult crossings with remarkable stability. Standing beside Wind Surf – which is a beautiful but distinctly small vessel - the Atlantic suddenly seemed much larger. The Captain’s warning later in the day that we might encounter swells reaching several metres did little to reduce that impression.

 

After dark, the lines were finally released. The sails rose above us while the lights of St. Maarten blurred behind the ship, and for a short time Saint Barthélemy remained visible as a faint glow across the water. Soon even that disappeared. Salt spray settled onto the railings while waves began striking the hull with a rhythmic boom that we could later hear from our cabin. Beyond the railings, there was almost nothing visible except darkness and stars. The gradual disappearance of land created a sensation very different from leaving a trailhead on foot, but the underlying feeling was familiar: the world we understood had fallen behind us and whatever came next would give way to new experiences as we crossed the ocean.

 

On larger ships we had sometimes needed to seek out places where the ocean felt nearby. On Wind Surf, it was difficult to escape it. The decks were much closer to the surface, waves were audible through the cabin walls, and the ship’s movement continually reminded us that we were travelling across water rather than inhabiting a floating building. Even walking from one side of a deck to the other required adjusting to the roll beneath our feet. That physical closeness would shape almost every nature observation we made during the crossing. The Atlantic was not scenery beyond the ship; it was the medium through which everything aboard was moving.

 

Flying Fish and the First Ocean Days

 

The following morning gave us one of the defining sights of the sailing voyage. Strong winds covered the sea in whitecaps and made standing near the bow a surprisingly physical activity, but from the bright royal-blue water, groups of flying fish suddenly began exploding into the air. They flashed silver in the sunlight, gliding for remarkable distances before disappearing back beneath the waves. Some altered direction while airborne, making their movement look less like a leap and more like genuine flight. Dozens sometimes appeared together, transforming sections of water that moments earlier had seemed empty into a scene filled with sudden excited movement. Their abundance became one of the most persistent memories of the crossing.

 

Birdlife also soon added another layer. Small brown-backed birds with paler undersides skimmed close to the surface, although the wind and movement of both birds and ship made photography tricky and identification uncertain. Our notes tentatively considered Leach’s Storm-Petrels, but that is an uncertain guess. A Northern Gannet later accompanied the ship and repeatedly plunged toward flying fish, while another larger bird, possibly a Brown Booby, appeared to harass it.

 

What made these observations especially enjoyable was how quickly other people became involved. A retired marine biologist named Jenny encouraged us to watch for sea turtles around floating Sargassum and drew our attention toward aspects of the ocean surface we might otherwise have overlooked. The Captain himself stopped to talk about whales, dolphins and birds after noticing our binoculars. Crew members shared stories about wildlife they had seen during previous crossings. Gradually our attention shifted from simply looking for birds around the ship to watching mats of floating vegetation, changes in the water, concentrations of fish and the movements of other passengers who had spotted something first.

 

Learning to Watch the Water

 

As we had learned in previous voyages on other ships, the longer we remained at sea, the more difficult it is to describe the Atlantic as visually repetitive. Water changes constantly with wind, sunlight and weather. Under bright skies it can appear royal blue, while beneath clouds it hardens into greys. The wake behind us often turned turquoise and white, and on clear days shafts of sunlight seemed to penetrate beneath the surface. Strong winds covered the sea with breaking crests, while calmer periods flattened it enough to make small movements easier to see. Sometimes an entire morning passed without a clearly identified bird or marine mammal, yet the absence of dramatic sightings did not make those hours feel empty.

 

For people accustomed to walking and birdwatching at home or on a trail, this kind of watching was very familiar. A long forest section does not necessarily provide an unusual bird every few hundred metres, nor does every ridge reveal a dramatic view.  Much of travelling slowly through nature involves being present during the intervals between obvious highlights. 

On the Atlantic, those intervals simply became larger. We might spend hours watching cloud shadows move across the water or trying to guess which swell would finally break dramatically over the bow before a single bird crossed the horizon. The possibility that something could appear remained enough to keep us outside most of the time.

 

Even after sunset, the ocean often continued revealing itself. With portions of the ship kept dark for navigation, stars became extraordinarily bright, and the Milky Way appeared above us. Without towns, roads or distant buildings, the sky seemed to extend directly into the blackness of the ocean. Flying fish sometimes flashed silver beneath the ship’s lights, and on one evening an unidentified bird appeared briefly beside us before disappearing again into darkness. We could not know how much migration and marine activity continued beyond what we could see. Night simply made the limits of our observation more obvious.

 

Weather as Part of the Voyage

 

Before leaving St. Maarten, the Captain had warned us that a substantial Atlantic weather system lay ahead. Rather than follow the original route directly toward Lisbon, Wind Surf gradually altered course southward to avoid the worst conditions. Our route moved closer toward Cape Verde and ultimately toward the Canary Islands before continuing to Europe. What could easily have been described as an inconvenience instead became one of the defining characteristics of the crossing. Weather was not simply something happening around our planned voyage. Weather was actively determining where the voyage went.

 

After years of long-distance walking, there was nothing particularly surprising about that relationship. Rain can flood trails, snow can make mountain passes unsafe, wildfires can close enormous regions, and intense heat can reshape an entire day’s mileage. On foot, we had long understood that itineraries are proposals offered to landscapes rather than agreements those landscapes are required to honour. The Atlantic operated according to the same principle, only on a scale large enough to redirect a ship across hundreds of nautical miles. Daily announcements about wind speed, swells, position and changing forecasts helped us understand why our line across the map continued shifting.

 

The altered route also made the scale of the ocean more tangible. At one point we were told that the water beneath Wind Surf was roughly five and a half kilometres deep. Nothing visible at the surface suggested such immensity. There were no cliffs or mountain faces against which to judge the depth, only waves moving beneath the hull. As walkers, we had spent years thinking about elevation through mountains climbed and valleys descended. Here an enormous vertical landscape existed beneath us, invisible except through numbers on navigational charts and our own attempt to imagine the distance down.

 

Mid-Atlantic Birds and Long Hours

 

As we moved farther into the Atlantic, wildlife encounters became increasingly sporadic. There were periods when almost nothing obvious appeared around the ship, followed by a Cory’s Shearwater banking low across the swells or another pelagic bird briefly entering our view. Their flight seemed perfectly matched to the environment, using wind and the contours of waves rather than battling against them. Watching them from the deck emphasized how poorly adapted we ourselves were to this place. We required a ship, shelter, navigation systems and an experienced crew to cross this ocean comfortably, while these birds spent much of their lives moving across it with ease.

The long gaps between sightings became as much a part of the experience as the sightings themselves. Alaska aboard Queen Elizabeth had been different because wildlife and landscapes continually and dynamically surrounded the ship: mountains, forests, glaciers, islands, whales and seabirds all competed for attention. Mid-ocean there could be almost nothing to identify for hours. Yet waiting also changed the value of a single distant shearwater or whale blow because there had been no guarantee that anything would appear at all.  

Our days developed around that uncertainty – which was entirely fine.  In the middle of the Atlantic, time seemed to belong less to a schedule than to the ocean around us.

 

Sails, Wind and Movement

 

The sails gave the voyage another variation that our previous crossings had lacked. On Queen Mary 2, wind was something we felt while standing outside and something officers accounted for in navigation, but the ship’s propulsion remained largely hidden from our experience. On Wind Surf, seeing sails raised when conditions permitted made the relationship between vessel and atmosphere more tangible. In their usage, wind ceased to be merely weather. It became part of the way we moved.

 

That did not mean we crossed the Atlantic entirely under sail, nor would it be accurate to romanticize the voyage in that way. Wind Surf is a motorized sailing yacht, and engines remained part of the crossing. Yet the presence of the sails changed our sense of the journey. Looking upward at them meant looking at wind direction, clouds, weather and the conditions that made their use possible. The vessel seemed less insulated from the surrounding environment than the larger ships we have known, and our own bodies felt that difference every time we leaned into a gust or adjusted our footing to another roll.

 

That physical intimacy with the natural world became perhaps the defining characteristic of the voyage.  Squalls darkened the skies and soaked the decks, waves could be heard moving along the hull, and strong swells turned an ordinary walk across the deck into a small exercise in balance. Nature was not necessarily more dramatic here than on our previous voyages, but it was harder to ignore and distance yourself from. We were continually reminded that we were moving through an environment powerful enough to determine both our route and our daily lives.

 

Land Returns at the Canary Islands

After so many days of open ocean, the approach toward Gran Canaria changed everything. Land returned not merely as a destination in the middle of our voyage but also as habitat.  Indeed,  almost immediately the waters around us seemed more populated. Cory’s Shearwaters became more numerous, and White-faced Storm-Petrels and Bulwer’s Petrels appeared among the birds moving around the ship. Some gathered on the surface in rafts while others joined feeding activity above the water. After the relative sparseness of the central Atlantic, the concentration was striking.

 

Beyond their numbers, a feeding group often suggested activity below the surface, so instead of watching only the birds themselves, we scanned the surrounding water for whatever else might appear. Soon a whale spout rose among them, followed by another, and we caught brief views of grey backs before the animals disappeared. Unfortunately, despite their displays, they never offered the kind of prolonged views of themselves that allow complete certainty or perfect identification.

 

Then, not long afterward, Atlantic Spotted Dolphins appeared beside the ship. What began with a few animals rapidly developed into a much larger group racing through clear blue water, leaping, chasing one another and turning toward Wind Surf. From above, we could watch their bodies accelerating beneath the surface before emerging again beside the hull. 

After many days of watching and waiting, their energy felt almost overwhelming.  Certainly the rafts of birds, whales and dolphins around Gran Canaria were the highlight of the sailing.

 

A Crossing in Its Own Right

 

Looking back now, it would be tempting to interpret the voyage primarily through what came next. We would soon step onto the Via Augusta from Cádiz toward Seville, continue north along the Via de la Plata and eventually follow the Camino Sanabrés toward Santiago. Later in the year we would return to Canada and complete the final northern stages of our long Trans Canada Trail journey, before another voyage eventually carried us toward Norway aboard Ambience. From that perspective, Wind Surf appears almost like the opening chapter of an extraordinarily full year. In chronological terms, that is exactly what it was.

 

But chronology is not the same as meaning. Crossing the Atlantic did not exist merely as another voyage or merely to deliver us to another trail, and the trails that followed did not exist simply to prepare us for hiking in Canada's Arctic. For fifteen days our time on Wind Surf possessed its own scale, routines and natural wonders – Brown Boobies, flying fish, storm-petrels, Cory’s shearwaters, whales and dolphins.

 

From Sea to Trail

 

Eventually, of course, all good things come to an end – or in this case, a harbour.  Invariably Europe appeared on the horizon, and with it came roads, buildings, decisions and another kind of movement. Because weather had altered our crossing, we reached Cádiz rather than following the original plan toward Lisbon, and that change in itself helped reshape what came next. Soon distances would again be measured in kilometres and stages rather than nautical miles, our days would return to carrying packs and following routes across Spain, and our attention would move from flying fish and shearwaters toward the birds, flowers, agricultural landscapes and wildlife of the Via Augusta, Via de la Plata and Camino Sanabrés.

 

Perhaps that is why this first voyage on Wind Surf crossing the Atlantic Ocean holds such a distinctive place in our memories at the time. It began a year that would become extraordinarily full, yet for two weeks it removed many of the usual demands of forward progress. The ship simply moved while we were given the opportunity to watch.  Some days the reward was a dolphin racing beneath us or a shearwater crossing the wake - on others it was the dynamic, changing colours of a sunset or a night sky free from land.

 

Each of which was more than enough for us. The ocean did not need to provide constant spectacle, just as a trail does not need to reveal something extraordinary around every bend. There was always the possibility of another flying fish bursting through the surface, another bird appearing against the horizon, another whale blow rising in the distance or another squall transforming the sea ahead. We had spent years learning that curiosity does not guarantee discovery, but it makes discovery possible when something finally appears. Somewhere between St. Maarten and Cádiz, with sails overhead and thousands of metres of Atlantic beneath us, that possibility kept us looking.

 

See you on board!