Crew Arrives
July 19, 2024 | Arrival to Bergen
Hjelmås, Bergen
It is 7:50 on FALKEN in Bergen and most of the crew is already up. Coffee has been hot for almost an hour and breakfast is served. I asked how they slept and one said, “Not really, lots of new noises,” and some others, “I had a full night’s sleep, without the teenagers in the house. This has been so quiet.” We have quiet time until 8 am; crew can be up but should be respectful of those who are still sleeping. At 8, I am tempted to jump in for a swim and take a last shower before taking off, and at 9 we will start the day. The plan is to move the boat (sail if there is wind) south to an anchorage and fuel up. The weather will dictate the departure.
A full crew of women arrived at 1 pm yesterday. This is one of our annual ‘All Women’s Passage’ trips with Nikki Henderson as skipper and me, Mia Karlsson, as mate. After a short introduction and familiarization with the boat, we dove straight into safety briefings both below and on deck, getting everyone familiar with the boat, running around finding all thru-hulls, and fitting lifejackets. It’s a long list to go over.
After a long day of prep, we all gathered in the cockpit for dinner: quinoa salad with salmon and tzatziki! It was the first time I cooked salmon in this boat’s oven and I think I was pretty lucky—it turned out great. Before we knew it, it was 9:30 pm with the sun still high in the sky!
- Mia
mia@59-north.com
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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.
Golden Day
The Pacific is giving us “the shimmer” - with a still flat sea seven hours out of San Francisco Bay, we’re motoring south along the shipping channel, with an hour to go to what teases now as a stunning sunset against wispy clouds. Throughout this first day of Falken 11 the sails have unfurled and been furled again as skipper Alex tries to fill them a meager breeze indeed. We’ve seen a few whales traveling along the route, and an otter that was sadly just a buoy. It’s the first open ocean sail for many of us and it’s a thrill to anticipate all the new experiences we’ll have.
Seasickness
But maybe, I thought, with some drugs I could stay ahead of it. The first 48 hours I felt horrible. But luckily with 3 health care professionals on board and in a very encouraging environment, my body found its way. Anyway, someone offered me a patch (unavailable in Canada) and someone else gave me some pills for nausea and now I feel much, much better.