Day 10
June 4, 2024 | 16:30 UTC
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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Final Blog
Falken and her crew arrived safely into port last night around 8pm boat time, 10pm Prince Rupert time. Some spicy weather was anticipated, but luckily the 35kt gusts and 2.5 meter waves were no match for this expert crew. We had an exceptionally smooth docking, despite it being Alex's first time parking this year (!). We all agreed that this was a very special group of people—I for one am so impressed with how everyone stayed so positive, helpful, and appreciative of humor despite an arguably challenging passage. We'll all return home significantly saltier than we were when we left, a mark of a passage properly sailed.
Lessons and a Gift
The biggest lesson is the helm. The lesson here is that even if you don't think you can do it over and over again with no sleep, cold and damp, it has to be done and so it can be done. Flying fish are cool, dolphins are really really cool, but the coolest of them all are the whales. And most of all Alex: "Find your center Carla. Always know where your center is so you can come back to it". He means the helm but it applies to life as well.
Making the most of it
This passage has thrown pretty much every atmospheric condition imaginable at us. It reminds us not only of how much we’ve learned, but of how far we’ve literally come since that acceleration zone off the northwest corner of Oahu. The resilience this group has shown has been nothing short of incredible, and I couldn’t be prouder to be part of it. Maybe that’s why it’s the hardest passages we remember the most. Not because they were easy, but because they reminded us what we’re capable of.
