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
Hat overboard!
On June 4, we reviewed our passage plan before our departure from the marina in Hjellested.
Departure from Bergen!
The crew on the women’s sail training on Isbjorn is settling into a great routine for managing the boat and life onboard.
The sun sets on another journey
The hardest part of sailing across French Polynesia wasn't the night watches, the heat, or the open ocean — it was the prospect of being trapped on a small boat with a group of strangers. First-timer Natalie boards as a self-described land crab and discovers that the sea has a way of reshaping both your sea legs and your assumptions. What follows is dolphins, sharks, the Milky Way in full technicolour, and a crew that somehow made the whole thing better than she ever imagined.