First Fully Documented Zero-Diesel Atlantic Crossing Completed — 14 m Sailboat Logs 2,640 nm on Solar, Hydro Regen, and a 60 kWh Pack

The crew of Aurelia, a 14 m custom-built aluminium cruising sailboat, arrived in English Harbour, Antigua on 6 May after a 19-day, 2,640 nm passage from Mindelo (Cape Verde Islands) — completing what the project's organisers and an independent observer from the Ocean Cruising Club believe to be the first fully documented zero-diesel Atlantic crossing on a leisure sailboat. The boat carries no internal-combustion engine of any kind: propulsion comes from a 25 kW OceanVolt ServoProp 3 saildrive, hotel loads from a 60 kWh LiFePO₄ pack, and energy input from 2.4 kWp of articulated solar panels and the saildrive itself in regeneration mode.

The energy budget has been published in detail. Across the 19-day passage, total energy consumed (propulsion + hotel) was 380 kWh; total energy harvested was 412 kWh — a net positive of 32 kWh, meaning the pack arrived in Antigua at higher state-of-charge than it left Mindelo. Solar contributed 285 kWh (75% of input), hydro regen 127 kWh (25%). The crew motored under electric power for 41 hours total — primarily for the final approach to Antigua, two harbour entries en route, and one extended calm on day 11 — consuming 78 kWh from the pack. The average passage speed was 5.8 knots; the boat's polar performance was effectively unchanged from a comparable diesel-equipped sister ship, with the saildrive locked in a low-drag feathered position when not regenerating.

Technically, the installation is not exotic — every component is commercially available and within the spec band that this site's configurator routinely produces. What was novel was the energy management discipline: the crew published their daily SoC tracking, weather routing decisions, and the deliberate choice to motor only when the projected solar-plus-regen recovery would refill the pack within 48 hours. This is the operational dimension that the regen yield study published last week (cruising-fleet-regen-yield-study-2026) suggested matters more than peak hardware specs — average sailing speed, watch-keeping discipline, and willingness to slow down in calms together explain more variance in passage energy budgets than the choice between any two reasonable hardware specs.

For cruisers planning longer passages, the practical takeaway is that the engineering case for zero-diesel bluewater work is now closed for boats above approximately 12 m with adequate solar real-estate (catamarans, large monohulls with Bimini and arch). What remains is the operational and seamanship dimension — and that, in the end, is the same answer cruising sailors have always arrived at when assessing any new technology. Aurelia's owners have committed to publishing the full passage dataset under CC-BY-4.0 within the next two weeks; the project was supported by a small grant from the OCC and equipment loans from OceanVolt and Mastervolt.