On April 6, 2017 Matt and Undaunted set out from the coast of La Gomera in their attempt at making their Atlantic Ocean crossing. For those of you who have not heard through the updates passed around from our Facebook page within the 24hrs following their launch, a series of unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances led Matt into making the difficult call of turning back and forgoing the attempt at the crossing at this time.
With making it this far in the project and coming so close to the real beginning of this epic journey, deciding to postpone the official crossing was a difficult call for Matt to make. Overall, the decision came with a culmination of various factors. The biggest being time. We had a set timeline we wanted to have Matt and Undaunted launch by because of the project length of their trip. Our biggest concern was having them both back on the coast of Florida safe and sound well before the end of the summer when Hurricane season is known to be at its peak. Unfortunately due to shipping delays of both the boat and needed parts and issues with custom clearances, we were already uncomfortably pushed back to the edge of our launch deadline. When Matt was able to set out the morning of April 6th, yet another wave of setbacks occurred in questions to various parts of Undaunted's current design and even Undaunted being backed into by a spectator's vessel while trying to capture that day's events. While most of the issues discovered in this attempted launch were not of reasonable significance, there were just enough issues to fix that would take too much time to be able to accomplish from the Spanish owned island that was limited in resources making us uncomfortable in getting Matt home in time.
After accepting the devastating feeling of having to put a delay into our project, we are now striving to move forward in fixing and updating Undaunted to be ready for another shot at the crossing this coming Fall when the conditions will once again be in our favor. Matt has since returned home to the United States eager to improve on what he has learned from his first attempt and make himself and Undaunted that much more ready.
We want to sincerely thank ALL of our followers for their continued support and well wishes especially in light of having to postpone the crossing. As many of you have agreed and stated along with us, this was a call made in the best interests of keeping Matt safe, which is of course our number one priority and was done so while we had the easiest chance of getting him back to the islands once we decided that it was for the best.
For those of you who are just catching up with our current status, I apologize for the delay in this update. Below you can read Matt's first hand account of what had happened the day of the launch leading up to his decision to turn back.
We are eager and excited to take what we have learned from this first attempt and push forward in applying new ideas and design adaptions in making Matt and Undaunted that much more ready for their second round. Like others before us, we should only now see this as a chance to learn and grow and not let it deter us from our end goal.
You all have been our biggest source of support and we truly thank you.
- C.Soltis