The numbers start to stack up; 21 days at sea, 3,300 nautical miles (that’s more than 6,000 kilometres) five people in a small space doing watches and catching up on dozens of hours of lost sleep.

After all those numbers, the human story is that we have arrived safely into Falmouth Harbour in Antigua and Barbuda.

Novara is a little worse for wear – we had a broken halyard, a leaking stern gland, sea-water in the engine, an intermittent fault in the navigation equipment and annoyingly, a loo that wouldn’t flush half the time. But due to the superior engineering skills of Maddy and Andy, we still have a floating boat!

We have learned significantly more about each other, know that we can rely on each other when the

going gets tough and personally, I have appreciated the calm and measured approach our brilliant crew displayed when dealing with whatever came our direction. We have laughed, sang and eaten our way across an ocean. It feels unreal to have taken the long way ‘across the pond’, but here we are.

Next step, sleep, repairs and re-provisioning