TRACKER MAP WILL BE UPDATED FEB. 15, 2025
February 14, 2025
Antigua Yacht Club Marina | Pre-departure blog
The docks are filled with giants, and we are just passing through. In the beautiful marina of Antigua Yacht Club, you can find some of the biggest super-yachts you have seen. When walking along the dock looking left to right, you are surrounded by huge, shiny hulls all around you. But when you get a bit further out on the dock, the wall is interrupted, and if your eyes are staring up at the top decks of the super yachts, you might miss us. FALKEN is now located between two giants, and today we are planning to pass through to leave the harbor and head out to a mooring buoy for some man-overboard (MOB) training and a mellow evening and night to prepare for our passage the day after.
However, this plan got a bit of a twist. As we were heading out to the newly placed mooring buoy shown by the marina owner, we encountered a boat on anchor too close to the place we were supposed to tie up to. After a couple of tries in the blowing and rainy squalls, we were directed to change our plans and head back to the dock of Antigua Yacht Club to tie ourselves up again. We are now placed on the outer end of the long marina.
In the ten days since we arrived in Antigua from Las Palmas, we have done a successful handover to Mary and Manot from Emily & Mia. We’ve prepared the boat for the upcoming passage, done some maintenance work, and a bit of provisioning. The crew arrived to the boat yesterday, and after an introduction to the boat and our safety culture, FALKEN is now a home for the eleven people and ready for departure.
The conditions look promising for the passage. It seems now we will have a fast and fun downwind sail from Antigua to Colombia with wind strengths around 20 to 25 knots in the first couple of days, so HOLD FAST!
- The Apprentice, Vilgot
59ºNorthApprentice
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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.