The actual Atlantic crossing was 14 days

It’s possible to crew for others. When we sailed across the Atlantic ten years ago (on a sail training ship), one of the people on board was for the first time on a sailboat.

There’s plenty of ways to visit countries that won’t involve flying. Some of those quite CO2 neutral.

We were there a couple of weeks ago. Seems different neighbourhoods had different flags. We elected not to fly a courtesy flag on our boat as all the alternatives were partisan one way or another.