Safe harbour
Summerside’s Alan Mulholland completes first Atlantic Ocean leg of around the world sail
“I’m just so pleased. You take this sort of thing on for the adventure and man, I really feel like I got some.” Alan Mulholland
The Wave Rover was Alan Mulholland’s ticket to adventure, and if the first stage of his around the world sailing journey is any indication — he’s going to get his money’s worth.
Mulholland, alone on his 25.5-foot sailboat, successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean as of early Monday morning. The Summerside man sailed out of this city’s harbour on July 28 and pulled into a small port in The Azores just after midnight, Monday.
The Journal Pioneer spoke with Mulholland briefly Monday morning. He was looking forward to a long nap before getting right back to work repairing his vessel.
“I’m just so pleased,” said Mulholland. “You take this sort of thing on for the adventure and man, I really feel like I got some.”
He said that a low-pressure system hanging over The Azores meant little or no wind to help him make the last leg of his journey so he had to fire up his outboard engine and motor into port. He only had three litres of fuel left in his tank by the time he tied up at the wharf.
“I had a lot of contrary winds to deal with, I should have been able to get here a lot faster.”
Mulholland’s said he intended to get some rest Monday as he was only able to take short naps during the crossing.
He faced adverse weather throughout the trip, including narrowly missing a dangerous storm, and dealing with little or no wind at a few points.
He also spoke of seeing whales and large pods of dolphins swimming along with his vessel.
"These were big whales breaching right beside me," he said via Facebook video chat with the Journal Pioneer.
For the rest of the week he has some maintenance and repair work to do on Wave Rover. His wife, Glenda, is flying to meet him in about a week and they’ll have a vacation.
As news started to get out Monday morning that Mulholland had arrived at his destination, congratulations started to come into his Facebook page.
Bernadette Kernaghan posted, “What an amazing accomplishment! Now you can rest up.”
“So good to see you made it that far. Great journey, I’m sure. Be safe and keep posting, I love it!,” encouraged Neil Abbott.
But crossing the Atlantic was only the first step in Mulholland’s journey. He intends to sail around the world.
The next leg of his journey will start in three weeks when he sets out for the Canary Islands, which is located south of The Azores.
He will have to hold up there until December when the hurricane season will have passed. Once the weather calms he’ll cross the Atlantic again and head for the Caribbean, then the Panama Canal to cross into the Pacific Ocean.
From there he’ll go back to Europe either by passing through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean or by going around Africa and the Cape of Good Hope.
Mulholland is an experienced sailor. When he was 30 years old he sailed across the North Pacific in a vessel about the same size as Wave Rover, but this latest journey is his most ambitious by far.
Mullholland said he has a lot of photos and video he intends to post to the page he created to document his journey, https://www.facebook.com/ WaveRover/.