Trans-Atlantic vrs Trans-Pacific

[Jorge]

Borrowing from another thread, any further SDMB thoughts on the comparative difficulty of oceanic travel in the Atlantic versus the Pacific ? (This came up as a tangential issue in a post re. “cocaine mummies”.) Some excerpts:

All in all mid-Atlantic crossings (open sea) before the 14th or 15th century are right out impossible (I mean with return). The North Atlantic crossings by the Scandinavians and possibly by an odd Celt were in a more favorable coastal, wind and current regime than the rather unforgiving mid-Atlantic.

From just where does this bit about the difficulty of transAtlantic travel arise ? I don’t buy into that - not yet anyway. By way of comparison, Austronesian peoples made it Tahiti-to-Hawaii, covering zones of completely different prevailing winds and quite a stretch of doldrums, not to mention very different star groups and currents.

One response, from Collounsbury:

It comes from scholars analyses of the prevailing currents and winds in the mid-Atlantic region. I’m not in front of my references now so I’m afraid I can’t answer much better than this. As I recall, given there are no mid-Atlantic Islands and given pre-15th century sailing technology, it becomes exceedingly difficult to catch the proper winds/currents in order to make a return journay in the mid-Atlantic (note, mid Atlantic, not North Atlantic).

I apologize for not having a citation handy, its a logistical issue since I’m few hundred miles away from home.

However, they were island hopping, albeit sometimes fairly long distances. Plus, as I read, the storm regime is considerably more forgiving than the Mid-Atlantic. I note that even the Arabs, whose Indian Ocean sailing feats are well-known, did not develop an Atlantic maratime tradition, even though they were dominating the Meditteranean for several long stretches.[bold mine]

While waiting for Collounsbury et al. to find the cites, any one else care to chime in ?? I still don’t get how Tahiti-to-Hawaii is any simpler than say, Gibraltar to Brazil. There are island hops too (Cape Verdes, Azores…); the sailing technology was not terribly different, re. sailing into winds or durable construction - arguably better in Mediterranean boats - and while I can’t vouch for storm patterns, the wind/current regime is no harder, really.