COASTING DOWN BAJA
Off the coast of Ensenada, Mexico
Motoring
Departure day, the first of 2026. Mary and I joked that this was probably the longest lead-up to a passage we’ve ever had - we arrived into San Diego on Saturday, January 10, deliberately a bit early as it’s the first trip of the year and we needed to recommission FALKEN after a 5-week layover. Plus move the boat down from her berth in Dana Point (dockage in San Diego was hard to come by, either too shallow, too expensive or both). As it turned out, Adam & Alex did such a nice job of decommissioning at the end of last season that there wasn’t too much for Mary & I to do. So we sailed her down from Dana Point with a group of volunteer crew and spent the rest of the week doing odd jobs and biding our time until the crew arrival yesterday.
The forecast looked (looks) bleak in terms of wind for sailing. We’ve had sunny skies and warm temps in SoCal, but no wind to speak of, so it was a bonus getting to sail out of the harbor in San Diego today on a light northwesterly. We spotted schooner AMERICA on the horizon, the 141-foot replica of the first boat to win the namesake Cup in 1851. Ryan & I had been aboard on Friday to interview the captain/owner for an upcoming podcast episode and got a tour of the boat. What a ship! Built in 1995 at the same yard as the WOODWIND schooners, Scarano in Albany, New York, she is stunning. It’s impossible to keep a black hull looking clean, but she glowed. They were out on one of their daily whale-watching tours near the Coronado Islands and we maneuvered over for a close fly-by.
I had a close call at customs this morning. Being that FALKEN is a foreign-flagged boat, we’re required to clear out of the USA. I took an Uber to the airport this morning, where the local customs office is, only to find out they were closed on MLK Jr. Day. Thankfully a friendly CBP officer saw me pacing in the hallway and stamped the form I needed, and we were good to go.
Eric, on his 4th passage with 59º North, drove FALKEN off the dock and we hoisted sail in the main channel of San Diego Harbor. A cool breeze was funnelling down the hillsides, so we cut the engine and ghosted along on a flat sea and into the ocean.
It didn’t last though, and while we managed to have a dinner under sail just as the sun was setting off the starboard beam, we furled the Yankee while the dishes were being cleaned up and have been motoring ever since on a glassy sea. The GRIBs are showing more of this for the next few days as we meander down the Baja coast. We should see a seabreeze effect in the afternoons as the land over the desert heats up and sucks in cooler air from the ocean, so we’re optimistic we’ll be able to sail more than the GRIBs are predicting. It’s whale season, so if nothing else we’ll be on the lookout for spouts.
// Andy
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First squall of the trip!
"We're gonna get our ass whooped" — not the sunrise greeting anyone had in mind, but Jim called it. The oldest and sharpest hand on board steered them straight through the squall, soaked to the bone and loving every minute of it. He's got a message for his wife, and it turns out she was right about the water.
Sextants, Polynesian Wayfinding, Captain Cook, and Tupaia, Oh My!
Somewhere north of Tahiti and south of Hawaii, aboard a 65-foot rocket of a sailboat loaded with GPS and Starlink, we pulled out a sextant. Not as a novelty—as a navigation tool. Because it turns out the 2,500-mile passage from Tahiti to Hawaii is less a ocean crossing and more a living museum of how humans have always answered the same stubborn question: where am I, and how do I get home? Captain Cook had his chronometers and math; his Polynesian crewmate Tupaia had the stars, the swells, and a map of the Central Pacific stored entirely in his head—and somehow, they were asking the exact same thing.
Star gazing and celebrating
Birthdays at sea hit differently—no cake, no candles, just brownies from a rolling galley and the Milky Way as a backdrop. It's day three aboard, and the skipper's birthday is just one of three to celebrate before landfall. Meanwhile, six crew members sat in silence last night, not from exhaustion or tension, but because the Southern Cross was doing something worth watching.