The Naora route is not arbitrary. It follows the logic of the ocean’s own circulation: the great wind-driven current systems that move warm water from the tropics toward the poles and cold water back toward the equator, and that have been used by sailing vessels since the first navigators understood that the ocean has directions that assist rather than resist the passage. To sail the Naora route in reverse would be to fight these systems continuously. To sail it as designed is to use them as the basis of the planning rather than as an obstacle to overcome.
Understanding the currents is understanding why the route has the shape it has, and understanding the route’s shape is understanding why it works as well as it does across five years of continuous sailing.
The Atlantic: Canaries Current and the Trade Wind Belt
The North Atlantic circulation is a clockwise gyre: warm water moves north in the Gulf Stream along the American east coast, crosses to Europe as the North Atlantic Current, and returns southward along the European and African coasts as the Portugal Current and the Canaries Current. The Canaries Current, flowing southward and westward along the African coast, is the current that brings the boat from the Mediterranean to the Canary Islands and that sets up the Atlantic crossing in the trade wind belt.
The trade winds blow from the northeast in the North Atlantic at latitudes between about ten and thirty degrees north, and they drive a surface current westward in the same direction: the North Equatorial Current. This current adds one to two knots to the boat’s speed over ground on the Atlantic crossing, reduces the passage time by one to two days, and is the reason the traditional sailing route from the Canaries to the Caribbean has been used for five centuries.
The Naora route uses this current precisely as every sailing vessel from the sixteenth century onward has used it: departing from the Canaries, staying in the trade wind belt, and arriving in the Eastern Caribbean three weeks later with the wind and the current both having contributed to the crossing.
The Pacific: The Equatorial Currents and the Coconut Milk Run
The Pacific trade wind belt, the southeast trades between about five and twenty-five degrees south of the equator, produces the South Equatorial Current flowing westward at one to two knots. This is the current that makes the Coconut Milk Run, the sailing route from Panama or the Galapagos westward through the Pacific island groups, one of the most pleasant ocean passages available: consistent wind from the southeast or east, following sea, the current adding to the boat’s speed, and the destinations distributed along the route at intervals that allow rest between passages.
The route from the Galapagos to the Marquesas, at approximately 2,800 miles the longest single passage of the Naora circumnavigation, is entirely in the South Equatorial Current and the southeast trade wind belt. The current and the wind are both from roughly the same direction and both contributing to westward progress for the full twenty-one days of the crossing.
This is the reason a twenty-one day offshore passage in the Pacific is routinely described by the people who have made it as among the most comfortable offshore passages available: the conditions are consistent and favourable throughout.
The Indonesian Throughflow
The Indonesian Throughflow is one of the most significant ocean current systems in the world and one that most sailors navigating through Indonesia are unaware of. It is the flow of warm Pacific water through the Indonesian archipelago into the Indian Ocean, driven by the difference in sea level between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The flow is complex, channelled through dozens of straits and passages between the islands, and produces currents that range from negligible to six knots or more depending on the specific channel and the tidal phase.
For the Naora route, the Indonesian Throughflow means that the passage through the archipelago requires specific planning for each major channel transit: the tidal phase, the time of day for the best current conditions, and the weather window for the open-water passages between island groups. This planning adds complexity to the Indonesia chapter that the Mediterranean or the Caribbean does not require, and it is the reason the Indonesia chapter of the leg planner contains more passage-type legs with tighter timing constraints than most other regions of the route.
