The Naora route is not designed around a map. It is designed around the wind. Every decision about when we leave, where we go, and how long we stay is shaped first by the wind systems that govern the oceans we sail. Understanding those systems is not optional for a five-year circumnavigation. It is the foundation on which everything else is built.
The most important of those systems, the one that makes the global route possible on a sailing vessel, is the trade winds. These are the winds that carried Columbus to the Americas in 1492, that powered the first circumnavigation by Magellan’s fleet between 1519 and 1522, and that still today define the natural sailing highways of the world’s oceans.
We use them the same way those navigators did, with five centuries more knowledge about where they blow, when they are at their best, and how to position the route to stay inside them for as long as possible.
What the Trade Winds Actually Are
The trade winds are the planet’s most consistent surface winds. They form in a belt between roughly 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south of the equator, driven by a permanent atmospheric circulation pattern that has operated continuously for as long as the earth has rotated.
The mechanism is straightforward. The sun heats the air near the equator more intensely than anywhere else on earth. That warm air rises, moves toward the poles at altitude, cools, and descends around 30 degrees of latitude, creating persistent high-pressure zones on both sides of the equator: the subtropical ridges. Surface air flows from these high-pressure zones back toward the equator to replace the rising air.
As it does, the rotation of the earth deflects it: to the right in the Northern Hemisphere, to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. The result is northeast trades in the Northern Hemisphere and southeast trades in the Southern Hemisphere, both blowing toward the equator and consistently from the east toward the west.
What makes them extraordinary for a sailing vessel is their reliability. In most parts of the world between 30 degrees north and south, the trade winds blow at 15 to 25 knots from roughly the same direction for weeks at a time. Not every day is the same. Squalls come through. The wind drops and builds. But the underlying pattern holds, day after day, ocean after ocean, season after season. For a vessel designed to move with the wind rather than against it, the trades are not a convenience. They are a highway.
How We Use the Trade Winds on the Naora Route
The five-year Naora circumnavigation is built, from its first leg to its last, around the global trade wind pattern. We do not fight the prevailing winds. We do not motor into them. We position ourselves inside them, at the right latitude, at the right time of year, and let them carry us.
The route moves broadly from east to west in the lower latitudes and returns from west to east in the higher latitudes, completing the global loop. This is the same structure that defined every major sailing route in the Age of Sail, and it remains the most efficient and comfortable way to circle the world under sail today.
Here is how each major ocean leg works in relation to the winds.
The Atlantic: Northeast Trades from the Canaries to the Caribbean
The Atlantic crossing is the leg where the trade winds are most celebrated and most reliable. From the Canary Islands, at roughly 28 degrees north, the northeast trade wind blows almost continuously toward the Caribbean, typically at 15 to 20 knots from the northeast. Columbus used this exact wind on his first crossing. So does every sensible sailor today.
We leave from the Canaries in late November or early December, after the main hurricane season in the Caribbean has closed. The passage to the Caribbean is approximately 2,700 nautical miles and typically takes 17 to 22 days. The wind is on the aft quarter for most of it. The boat runs downwind in warm air, the miles accumulate steadily, and the crew falls into the rhythm that only a long trade wind passage produces. By the time we arrive, everyone aboard has been changed by the crossing in a way that the ports before and after it cannot replicate.
The Pacific: The Southeast Trades and the Coconut Milk Run
After transiting the Panama Canal, we enter the Pacific and pick up the southeast trade wind belt south of the equator. This is the wind that drives the most celebrated sailing passage in the world: the Coconut Milk Run from Panama across to French Polynesia, through Tonga and Fiji, and westward toward Southeast Asia.
The southeast trade wind in the South Pacific blows consistently from, as the name indicates, the southeast, at 15 to 25 knots across the latitudes between 5 and 25 degrees south. For a boat heading west, this puts the wind in the aft quarter for most passages. The 2,800 miles from Panama to the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, the longest non-stop leg of the entire Naora voyage, is sailed almost entirely on this wind. Three weeks of downwind sailing in warm air, over blue water, with nothing between you and landfall except the ocean itself.
The key to the Pacific route is staying in the trade wind belt. Too far north and you lose the southeast trades and enter the ITCZ, the doldrums, where the wind disappears and the squalls are unpredictable. Too far south and the wind backs and strengthens into something less comfortable. The optimal latitude varies by season, and our routing keeps us in the sweet spot where the trades are steady, the seas are regular, and the passages are what they should be.
The Indian Ocean: The Monsoon and the Southern Trades
The Indian Ocean introduces a different wind character. The trade wind system is complicated here by the monsoon, a seasonal reversal of wind direction driven by the temperature difference between the Asian landmass and the ocean. In the northern Indian Ocean, the northeast monsoon blows from November to April, and the southwest monsoon from May to October. In the southern Indian Ocean, the southeast trade wind is more consistent, but the timing of the route must account for which monsoon is active.
We time the Indian Ocean crossing to use the northeast monsoon in the northern ocean, moving from Southeast Asia westward toward the Red Sea between November and April. In the southern ocean, we stay in the southeast trade belt for passages between the major island groups. The Indian Ocean is the leg that demands the most careful seasonal planning of any on the route, and it is where our captain’s experience in reading the wind patterns specific to this ocean becomes most visible in how smoothly the passages unfold.
The Doldrums and the Horse Latitudes: What We Avoid
Understanding the trade winds means understanding what lies on either side of them, because these are the zones that the Naora route is specifically designed to minimise time in.
The doldrums, formally the Intertropical Convergence Zone or ITCZ, sit at the equator where the northeast and southeast trades meet. Here, the converging winds rise rather than blow horizontally, creating a belt of calms, heavy squalls, and unpredictable conditions that can stop a sailing vessel for days.
The width of the doldrums varies by season and location: narrowest in the Atlantic near the South American coast, widest in the central Pacific. Our routing crosses the equator at the narrowest point available for each ocean, and our captain monitors long-range weather forecasts to identify the timing that minimises our time in the belt.
The horse latitudes, at around 30 to 35 degrees north and south, are the high-pressure zones where the descending air creates persistent calms and light, variable winds. This is where the trade winds begin to break down and where passage-making becomes less predictable. The Naora route stays below 30 degrees south for most of its westward ocean crossings, remaining in the trade wind belt and avoiding the horse latitudes until the return passage eastward at higher latitudes.
The Trade Winds by Ocean Leg: Our Route in Numbers
| Ocean leg | Wind system used | Direction | Typical strength | Best season |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mediterranean, Bodrum to Spain | Local thermal winds and seasonal westerlies | Variable by region | 10 to 25 knots | April to October, east to west |
| Atlantic crossing, Canaries to Caribbean | Northeast trade wind | From the northeast, boat heading west | 15 to 20 knots | November to January |
| Panama to Marquesas, South Pacific | Southeast trade wind | From the southeast, boat heading west | 15 to 25 knots | February to April |
| Marquesas to Fiji, South Pacific | Southeast trade wind | From the southeast, boat heading west-northwest | 12 to 20 knots | April to September |
| Southeast Asia passages | Northeast monsoon and local trades | Variable, generally favourable westward | 10 to 20 knots | November to April |
| Indian Ocean crossing | Northeast monsoon (north) and southeast trades (south) | From the northeast and east | 15 to 25 knots | December to March |
| Return, Atlantic eastward crossing | Westerlies at higher latitudes | From the west and southwest | 15 to 30 knots, variable | Northern spring |
What Trade Wind Sailing Actually Feels Like
A description of the physics of the trade winds does not fully prepare you for what sailing in them actually feels like. The mechanical explanation, consistent pressure gradient, Coriolis deflection, steady 18 knots from the northeast, is accurate but incomplete. What it does not convey is the quality of the motion, the sound, or the particular quality of attention that days of trade wind sailing produces.
The boat runs downwind. The motion is a rolling, rhythmic pitch from side to side that is initially unfamiliar and quickly becomes the most natural feeling in the world. The wind is warm. The spray is warm. The air smells different to anything on land, and after two or three days it starts to feel like the default.
The watches rotate. People sleep well, eat well, and talk differently to how they talk in a city. Something in the situation, the reliable wind, the steady progress, the complete absence of anything to manage except being present, produces a quality of ease and attention that is one of the defining experiences of the Naora voyage.
There is a reason that sailors for five centuries have described the trade wind crossings as the finest passages in the world. Not because they are the most dramatic, though crossing an ocean under sail is by any measure significant. But because the consistency of the wind creates a particular quality of peace. The uncertainty that governs most passages, what the wind will do, whether conditions will hold, whether to push on or wait, is resolved. The trade wind blows. The boat moves. The miles accumulate. Everything else falls away.
We have designed the Naora route to maximise the time we spend in these conditions. Not because it is technically efficient, though it is, but because these are the passages that people remember. The ones they cannot fully explain when they are back on land. The ones that change something in how they understand what is possible in a day.
- The Naora route follows the global trade wind belt across all four major ocean crossings
- Northeast trades carry us from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean in November and December
- Southeast trades carry us across the Pacific from Panama to French Polynesia and westward to Fiji
- Northeast monsoon and Indian Ocean trades carry us westward from Southeast Asia across the Indian Ocean
- We cross the doldrums at the narrowest available point in each ocean, timed to minimise calms
- The entire route is structured so the wind is behind us for the long ocean passages and against us only for the shorter, coastal legs where conditions are manageable
