coffee
Well, there was a close call today when it seemed we were running short of coffee. Our U.S. contingent were looking a little worried for a while until we were able to establish a strategy to ration the next 60 hours ahead of our arrival. Being a Brit, I have to say I was quite relieved to see a healthy stash of Yorkshire T-bags still, but I'm wary that we may have some converters in the coming day.
We passed Finisterre and a southerly breeze sent us off on a southwesterly heading, which turned out to be the perfect precursor to the southwesterly that we are now experiencing. We can make a direct rhumb line course to our destination. With a reef in the main, a Yankee, and a staysail, we are close-reaching at over 8 knots over the ground. The threat of a coffee shortage is a great motivator, it would seem, as the promise of making port grows ever closer.
- Emily
EmilyCaruso
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.