Between Passages
10:00 LT | San Cristobal Island, Galapagos
Anchored
And what a trip we have coming! Galápagos to the Marquesas, following the trade winds route you read about in books and making landfall in a truly unique corner of the world. It’s the kind of passage I dreamed about as a kid; now I’m here, preparing FALKEN for this odyssey.
Today is for finishing provisioning, running safety checks, and letting the excitement build. What I’m most looking forward to is the routine: finding those trades, setting the boat up, and settling into the life at sea we’re always chasing, the motions, the sounds, and the disconnection of a 16‑day passage.
Tomorrow, we meet the crew and begin final preparations. We depart Monday
Alex Laline
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”For some things, we will never be ready.” - Moana 2
After 852 miles of open ocean sailing, the crew of Falken dropped anchor in Moorea's Cook's Bay—not with a quiet glide in, but surfing down waves in a squall, breaking speed records and cheering each other on through the rain. What started as a plan to "just dip a toe" into offshore sailing turned into something harder to explain: the worse the conditions got, the more alive everyone felt. Turns out the question was never whether the crew was ready—it was whether they even needed to be.
Kauehi conundrum
Kauehi atoll was always on the itinerary—until the forecast made it a gamble not worth taking. Squalls, bommies, a tidal pass, and no clean escape route: sometimes the hardest call in sailing is the one that keeps you out of a place, not in it. The Tuamotus will have to wait.
Hove-to!
Falken is too fast—a problem most sailors would kill for, yet here we are, tacking back and forth across the Pacific just to kill time. A rogue low pressure system south of Tahiti has stolen the trades and scrambled our timing for the tidal window into Kauehi's pass, leaving us hove-to 45 miles short of our target in the Tuamotus. Salt licorice, dream sandwich debates, and a philosophical question about mermaid reproduction are helping pass the night.