DAY 1
Foggy morning in Lagos on Portugal’s Algarve coast. Mia, Alex, and mate-in-training Manot are onboard FALKEN this morning, getting started with the standard safety and pre-departure briefings. I’m writing from the hotel adjacent to J Dock, where I stayed last night in an attempt to sleep off the last lingering effects of a cold I picked up back in the USA.
This afternoon we’ll sail. Well, hope to sail anyway. Lagos is sitting smack in the middle of the end of a long axis of high pressure, so there’s not much air moving around in the marina. The ‘Azores High’ is stretched out and has reached the coast here. Typically, you see the high centered further west, and along the coast of Portugal you tend to get northerlies, the ‘Portuguese Tradewinds’. Unlucky for us, we’re not in a typical pattern right now.
This week is a bit different from our normal A-B passages, so we have options. We’re going to end up back here in Lagos after a week of sail training, with a mix of inshore cruising and offshore, nonstop sailing. The plan this afternoon is to head over to Sagres, a beautiful little surfing town right at the very southwest tip of Portugal, tucked inside the high cliffs of Cabo Sao Vincente. We anchored there with some friends in 2018 aboard ISBJØRN, so I’m familiar with the small harbor. Back then, we got the anchor chain inextricably wrapped around some sunken junk on the bottom, having to get the local dive shop guys to come out and extricate us. So hoping to avoid that this time!
Alex, Mia, and I have a long list of lectures planned for the week, interspersed with the actual sailing, so if there truly is no wind we’ll spend a lot more time talking about weather routing and forecasting, break out the sextant for some celestial practice, and do any number of other fun lessons aboard FALKEN this week.
This is our last trip of 2023, and the first that Mia and I are sailing together since early 2020, before Axel was born! It’s nice to be back on the boat together in a professional capacity.
HOLD FAST! — Andy
andy@59-north.com
View more passage logs
Ketch us if you Kan
Falken is soon to carry on our preferred route of South, back to (hopefully) warmer climates. We’re all excited to set off and see more of this wild landscape as we head down to Victoria. A thermal trough over Vancouver combined with an offshore high pressure creating funneling NW’ly winds means it is due to be pretty fruity on the 9th. This passage is just under 600 miles, relatively short for Falken, but I’m sure we’ll be kept entertained with dramatic scenery, wildlife and weather!
Final Blog
Falken and her crew arrived safely into port last night around 8pm boat time, 10pm Prince Rupert time. Some spicy weather was anticipated, but luckily the 35kt gusts and 2.5 meter waves were no match for this expert crew. We had an exceptionally smooth docking, despite it being Alex's first time parking this year (!). We all agreed that this was a very special group of people—I for one am so impressed with how everyone stayed so positive, helpful, and appreciative of humor despite an arguably challenging passage. We'll all return home significantly saltier than we were when we left, a mark of a passage properly sailed.
Lessons and a Gift
The biggest lesson is the helm. The lesson here is that even if you don't think you can do it over and over again with no sleep, cold and damp, it has to be done and so it can be done. Flying fish are cool, dolphins are really really cool, but the coolest of them all are the whales. And most of all Alex: "Find your center Carla. Always know where your center is so you can come back to it". He means the helm but it applies to life as well.