Day 10
The last 20 hours have been underlined by the low hum of FALKEN’s engine. In the end, our luck ran out, as we caught up with that no wind zone we had been expecting to reach at any moment for a few days now. This night will be our last night at sea; we are expecting to make landfall in Horta sometime tomorrow afternoon. The excitement is again palpable, as I think everyone is looking forward to a nice little stroll, a warm shower, and a fresh beverage somewhere surrounded by those earthy things—plants, stones, soil. But for now, we have this last day and night to take it all in. The big blue, all around us, water and sky.
We have had some fabulous nights on this crossing: dark skies allowing us to see the Milky Way in great detail, along with many nebulae, star clusters, and galaxies (all visible to the naked eye), and of course, thousands of satellites, which make the sky feel strangely futuristic compared to the skies of my childhood. FALKEN, gliding effortlessly from one continent to another under a hyper-modern, space-age night sky, using millennia-old technology. Seems to me like we are exactly at the right place at the right time.
- Manot
ManotBerger
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The sun sets on another journey
The hardest part of sailing across French Polynesia wasn't the night watches, the heat, or the open ocean — it was the prospect of being trapped on a small boat with a group of strangers. First-timer Natalie boards as a self-described land crab and discovers that the sea has a way of reshaping both your sea legs and your assumptions. What follows is dolphins, sharks, the Milky Way in full technicolour, and a crew that somehow made the whole thing better than she ever imagined.
A Day in Huahine
Hitchhiking with Mormons, hunting for Pareos, and saying goodbye to crew — all before most people finish their morning coffee. A pina colada hangover is no match for a full agenda on a small island where the only taxi has already left with your friends. The question is whether you can pull it all off and still make the tide.
Going Coconuts!
From a muddy anchor bow to a heeling, wind-charged run past Taha'a's reefs, Falken's crew earned every knot of the passage to Huahine-Iti. Scooters, a near-miss dog, a mosquito ambush, and a crocodile lurking at the dock rounded out a day that had no business being as good as it was. The coconut nut is, in fact, a really big nut—and somehow that tracks perfectly.