Our morning starts with the wind easing to about 12 knots, with FALKEN making 7 knots on a deep reach north. The sea has flattened, and we can see the vastness of the Pacific all around us. Then, an alarm pierces the silence! A distress signal from a neighboring ship, perhaps? No—a tsunami warning for the Alaskan coast has just been issued. Evidently, an earthquake somewhere in the Pacific has triggered this alarm, while we experience nothing but calm seas and a few sea birds flying in parallel with FALKEN.
A quick look at the chart reveals we have 1,400 miles under our keel and roughly 1,000 miles to Prince Rupert! Surprisingly, we are now only 750 miles south of the Aleutian Islands, yet to begin our right turn on top of the Pacific High. This turn, or gybe, in the middle of the Pacific will point us east-northeast and towards the shores of Canada, and to Prince Rupert.
Life on board FALKEN has taken on its circadian rhythm, with the crew well adjusted to round-the-clock watches and sharing stories of the day that result in endless laughter. Amazing that we have all just met last week! How quickly, offshore and disconnected from the digital world, this environment speeds the formation of friendships with your crewmates—it seems you have known them for months, not just days.
Tomorrow, day 9, brings the gybe on top of the Pacific High to point us east. It will mark the bittersweet turning towards Prince Rupert and the last 1,000 miles of our voyage.
As we were just about to post this, we had a friendly shark encounter! We’re gonna need a bigger boat…
Doug
crew@59-north.com
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”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.