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
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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.