Wednesday, July 16, 2025 | Safely at Sea
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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A last hurrah
Under the dome of stars in a moon-less sky, each of us during our time at the helm used the most rudimentary celestial navigation, keeping a star or two lined up with the mast as a helper to following the heading range. It was a whole crew event to set the spinnaker, reef the mainsail and practice the heave-to in case of man overboard. Alex stressed that the key to success in all of these crucial activities is preparation. It was hugely satisfying to accomplish these tasks through teamwork. We share a constant good hearted back and forth full of stories, one-liners and comebacks that also means constant laughter.
One little bird!
Falken has almost rounded the Channel Islands and is cruising along splendidly about 100 miles offshore. Though several models predicted some slightly fresher winds today, we were met with a consistent 18-20 kts of pure bliss. It seems that from the moment we left the dock in San Francisco, there has been much laughter and conversation amongst everyone. The plan is to gybe in a few hours and begin our approach to Ensenada. As much as I do appreciate the jokes and intellectual musings, I equally appreciate the natural, silent moments we share at night, all of us on watch gazing up above to the shooting stars, constellations, and planets putting on their quiet show.
Birds and glows
The sun brought new wind and we were soon putting up the Yankee (jib) and turning off the motor. During the evening tradition of sharing “glums and glows” that follows the crew dinner, our Mate Ryan proclaimed it a “champagne sailing” kind of day. As Alex noted this evening, life goes by so fast that one of the very best things about his line of work is enjoying the passage of time in the slow lane of an ocean passage. But by tomorrow, the green blobs in the weather sailing app indicate we’re going to pick up some significant northwesterly winds and we’ll take them ever further south to the Channel Islands latitude. We’re all super excited for the knots to climb and to see Falken really run.