Champagne Sailing
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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
”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.