Champagne Sailing
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Sunday, July 13, 2025 | Champagne Sailing
Day 5 of being offshore and the general consensus is that everyone’s settled into boat life now. We’ve been extremely well treated today, with champagne sailing through nearly smooth seas, and the wind direction veering to tease us with nearly downwind sailing—FALKEN hasn’t been downwind since May 24, not that I’m keeping track. Most luxuriously, we’ve also all managed to shower. There were some complaints about the temperature of the shower, especially when accompanied by a rogue rain cloud; however, it was unanimously agreed that the location couldn’t be beat.
The crew have not only settled into boat life, but Alex and I have become increasingly quieter as their sailing confidence has rocketed. With a pretty rough start, weather-wise, on this trip, followed by very high activity of squalls, it’s arguably not been the easiest to learn to helm FALKEN in. Yet they’ve all taken it in their stride and are happily laughing away while helming through yet another dark cloud. Special mention to Tash and Stephanie, who have always been great, but their confidence has grown wonderfully on the helm.
On the wildlife front, still no cetaceans, but we have had a very cool friend—a juvenile Laysan albatross! Having dragged the staff to their nesting site on O’ahu and seen the fledglings there, I was very stoked to see one at sea too. Albatrosses are a good sign at sea, said to be the souls of sailors, and it was Fred’s first! They stayed with us all day and gave a very dramatic show this evening, soaring around in front of the sunset.
Apart from that, the flying fish seem to be getting larger and more suicidal as we head north. We’ve had a couple of near misses on the helm and a couple of stinky surprises every morning.
Finally, Happy Birthday to our bosun, Adam, for tomorrow (the 14th)! We appreciate you a lot and will be sure to create some fun things for you to fix over this next year!
Mary | FALKEN Mate
FALKEN|Skipper&Mate
View more passage logs
Ketch us if you Kan
Falken is soon to carry on our preferred route of South, back to (hopefully) warmer climates. We’re all excited to set off and see more of this wild landscape as we head down to Victoria. A thermal trough over Vancouver combined with an offshore high pressure creating funneling NW’ly winds means it is due to be pretty fruity on the 9th. This passage is just under 600 miles, relatively short for Falken, but I’m sure we’ll be kept entertained with dramatic scenery, wildlife and weather!
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.