Sailing Beyond the Solent: Atlantic Crossings, Orcas and Photography aboard the Regina 43 ARKYLA

One yacht, thousands of miles, and the lessons learned when the adventure gets very real.

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There is a considerable difference between owning a yacht capable of crossing an ocean and actually pointing her towards one.

For James Kenning, that journey began with ARKYLA, a Swedish-built Regina 43 purchased through Berthon in 2018. What followed was several years of steadily expanding horizons, taking James from familiar sailing around the Solent to Biscay, Portugal, the Mediterranean, the Canaries and Cape Verde, before eventually setting out across the Atlantic for the Caribbean.

In Episode 25 of the Berthon Podcast, James joins Alan McIlroy aboard ARKYLA to reflect on the miles travelled, the places discovered and what happens when even the best-prepared yacht encounters the unexpected.

From Home Waters to Bluewater Cruising

ARKYLA was not bought and immediately pointed towards the horizon. James spent years sailing, maintaining and gradually developing the Regina 43, learning her systems and adapting the yacht for increasingly ambitious passages.

It was an approach that would prove invaluable.

Long-distance cruising took ARKYLA across Biscay and down the Iberian coast, into the Mediterranean and Balearics, and through waters where interactions between yachts and Iberian orcas have become an increasingly serious consideration for cruising sailors.

Each passage brought more experience and, importantly, greater understanding of the boat beneath him.

Eventually, the Atlantic beckoned.

When Preparation Meets Reality

In 2024, James and ARKYLA joined the ARC+, sailing from the Canaries to Cape Verde before beginning the long trade-wind passage to Grenada.

James had prepared carefully. ARKYLA had been extensively equipped for bluewater sailing, and her skipper knew the boat intimately.

The Atlantic still had a few ideas of its own. A nearly new hydrogenerator failed, dramatically changing the yacht’s energy calculations. The Parasailor was destroyed. Sargassum brought further complications and, more seriously, a suspected whale impact resulted in damage to ARKYLA’s rudder and hull.

Suddenly, theoretical contingency plans became very real.

As James says: “The Mid-Atlantic is no place to be unprepared.”

It is perhaps one of the most important lessons from his story. Offshore preparation is not about ensuring that nothing will go wrong. It is about knowing the yacht, understanding its systems and being sufficiently prepared to deal with problems when they inevitably appear.

Reaching the Caribbean

ARKYLA completed the crossing and arrived in Grenada, but reaching land didn’t quite mean the end of the challenges.

Further problems resulted in emergency haul-outs and ultimately significant repairs to the yacht. Yet the difficulties did little to diminish what James had achieved or his enthusiasm for exploring once ARKYLA was ready to sail again.

The Caribbean offered the other side of ocean cruising: Grenada, Carriacou, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Lucia and Martinique, with the freedom to explore aboard the same yacht that had carried him thousands of miles from home.

It is that contrast that makes James’s story particularly interesting. Bluewater cruising isn’t solely about dramatic ocean passages. The crossing is what connects the extraordinary places on either side.

An Ocean Through a Camera

There has also been another constant throughout James’s adventures: photography.

Rather than simply keeping a record of where ARKYLA has been, James has used photography and writing to document the experience of cruising itself, from yachts and landscapes to weather, wildlife and life aboard.

His work has received recognition from the Cruising Association and World Cruising Club, while ARKYLA herself appeared on the cover of the 2025 Cruising Association Handbook.

Photography provides a different perspective on the voyage. Amid the equipment failures, maintenance schedules and passage planning are the reasons sailors leave in the first place: remarkable light, empty horizons, remote anchorages and moments that can only really happen after you have sailed far enough to find them.

The End of One Adventure

Now, after years of sailing together, James’s ownership of ARKYLA is drawing to a close.

The Regina 43 has returned to Berthon and is offered for sale, bringing James back to where this particular adventure began.

But she returns as a rather different yacht.

ARKYLA is no longer simply the boat James bought in 2018. She is a yacht that has crossed Biscay, cruised the Mediterranean, sailed south to the Canaries and Cape Verde, crossed the Atlantic and explored the Caribbean. Along the way, she has been modified, repaired, tested and, above all, thoroughly sailed.

Episode 25 of the Berthon Podcast is therefore about more than one Atlantic crossing. It’s about what happens when a sailor gradually pushes beyond familiar waters, how experience changes the relationship between skipper and yacht, and why the inevitable problems are often as much a part of the adventure as the destinations themselves.

Listen to Episode 25 of the Berthon Podcast, Sailing Beyond the Solent: Atlantic Crossings, Orcas and Photography aboard the Regina 43 ARKYLA, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.

Read ARKYLA’s full sales particulars here – https://www.berthoninternational.com/yacht-sales-brokerage/yachts-for-sale/regina-43-arkyla/.

For further information contact alan.mcilroy@berthon.co.uk.

About Alan McIlroy | Meet the Berthon Sales Group