0°46.2' S 028°15.3' W
The crew were all smiles last night with some fantastic sailing. It’s great to have the moonlight to guide us, and to light up the squalls so we could easily avoid them. When I was at the helm, a dolphin jumped out of the water right beside me. What a treat. They will forever remind me of my nephew's laugh when he was an infant. It was also nice to have several stars to steer by.
A cargo ship passed behind us in the wee hours of the morning. She is also heading to Las Palmas. We changed our course this morning and swapped the jib for the genoa. Adrienne picked up a few knots of speed and we are heading north for the equator. Erik confirmed that we have our weather window to pass through the doldrums.
Sailing on a broad reach has been much smoother, a good change for those trying to sleep, or really trying to do anything at all. Although now it seems that the heat is here to stay. We ran the aircon for 20 minutes today while the oven and the stove were on. Adrienne really does have it all; our favorite is the 24-hour sauna down below. The gym and yoga studio were open on deck, and morale couldn’t have been higher.
This evening we hit our first milestone of 1000 nautical miles! It was a beautiful evening celebrated with Chile con carne and carrot cake, and a lesson on squalls. We should be at the equator in a few hours; we shall see what the Northern Hemisphere has in store for us. It is still a long way home.
Hello to everyone at home. This wouldn’t be the same without all your love and support!
Big hug,
Brittany | ADRIENNE II Crew
crew@59-north.com
View more passage logs
”For some things, we will never be ready.” - Moana 2
After 852 miles of open ocean sailing, the crew of Falken dropped anchor in Moorea's Cook's Bay—not with a quiet glide in, but surfing down waves in a squall, breaking speed records and cheering each other on through the rain. What started as a plan to "just dip a toe" into offshore sailing turned into something harder to explain: the worse the conditions got, the more alive everyone felt. Turns out the question was never whether the crew was ready—it was whether they even needed to be.
Kauehi conundrum
Kauehi atoll was always on the itinerary—until the forecast made it a gamble not worth taking. Squalls, bommies, a tidal pass, and no clean escape route: sometimes the hardest call in sailing is the one that keeps you out of a place, not in it. The Tuamotus will have to wait.
Hove-to!
Falken is too fast—a problem most sailors would kill for, yet here we are, tacking back and forth across the Pacific just to kill time. A rogue low pressure system south of Tahiti has stolen the trades and scrambled our timing for the tidal window into Kauehi's pass, leaving us hove-to 45 miles short of our target in the Tuamotus. Salt licorice, dream sandwich debates, and a philosophical question about mermaid reproduction are helping pass the night.