Big first day!
48º 33.2’ N, 124º 28.1’ W
48º 33.2’ N / 124º 28.1’ W | Trasher Bay | 07:52 Local time, 14:52 UTC
It’s been a busy last 48 hours! Crew arrived to FALKEN in Victoria on Sunday mid-day in beautiful sunshine. FALKEN had sailed down from Ketchikan, Alaska the week before and had a few days to rest. Nikki is continuing as skipper on this leg, and Lovis, our apprentice, has been onboard since Hawaii. I flew in from Sweden on Thursday and have been battling a 9 time zone jet lag since getting here. Luckily, this morning I managed to sleep until 6am!
This passage is one of our ‘All-Women passages’, something we started a few years ago. I remember so well when Nikki, Emma, and I planned the first one in 2022 on ICEBEAR, and here we are, on the other side of the world with a group of 11 amazing women ready to set sail in the big ocean!
The day started off by getting familiar onboard, unpacking some bags, going over some safety briefings—how to stay floaty, fire free, and fancy—followed by a deck walk. After a nice meal ashore at a nearby restaurant with our very entertaining waitress, James, we all crashed hard on our pillows.
I thought we had an early start the next day with a 7:30 breakfast, but most of the crew had already been up for a while, taken showers, and were sipping coffee in the cockpit! I love when you can start a passage in the sunshine, or at least not in the rain. And to be up here in Victoria, where it rarely gets hot, it is to me the perfect temperature when the sun is out!
After a quick breakfast, we left the dock at nine to head over to the fuel dock before slipping lines and leaving Victoria behind us. The wind is not due to fill in for a day or two, so we spent the first day motoring to an anchorage 50 nm up the coast. A day of motoring can sound boring and stale, but it was a day full of briefings. The crew learned how to safely operate the winches in the cockpit, and the final test was to get Angela up the mast (a few meters) to attach the main halyard. Yes, they passed the test and Angela came down safely.
Every once in a while, someone shouted “whales,” and we must have seen whales close to ten times during the day—a big treat, especially for me being from Sweden!
At 7 pm, we dropped the hook in Trasher Bay and to my delight, Lovis had dinner ready for us! I would say that’s a big first day!
- Mia
mia@59-north.com
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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.