Day 10 At-Sea
2256 Ship’s Time
13º 08’ N, 059º 06’ W
Steering 305º at 11-13 knots
I really wanted to name our Farr 65 ‘MILLENNIUM FALKEN’, for obvious reasons, and despite her officially registered name as NORDIC FALKEN, to me, she’s still the former. Never before has she lived up to that name like she is tonight.
We’re on the home stretch towards Barbados, 30 miles from the northern tip of the island, the loom of the lights ashore now visible off the port beam. FALKEN is still under spinnaker, our second straight night flying the big pink kite by the light of the moon, and we’re getting our money’s worth tonight. We are flat out FLYING, easily averaging 11 knots in the lulls and hitting surfs over 16. It’s the ride of our lives tonight with the moon bright overhead, stars all around, and a perfect tradewind breeze at the perfect angle propelling us through our own outer space.
This will very likely be the last blog from this passage. In a few hours we’ll drop the kite and round the top of the island, heading to our planned anchorage off Speightstown in the north of the island to stop and swim and exhale, reflecting on the trip before hauling up and heading into the dock when the magic spell will dissipate and our real lives will set in again. We’ve sailed 2,134 miles and counting, with just another 40 or so to go, in just under 11 days. It’s way too early to reflect on this crossing, my 8th of the Atlantic, and it’s too soon still to think about what I’m going to eat for my first meal ashore.
So I’ll go back out into the cockpit now and coach the next few crewmembers on the helm in what will very likely be the best night of sailing of their lives.
// Andy
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A last hurrah
Under the dome of stars in a moon-less sky, each of us during our time at the helm used the most rudimentary celestial navigation, keeping a star or two lined up with the mast as a helper to following the heading range. It was a whole crew event to set the spinnaker, reef the mainsail and practice the heave-to in case of man overboard. Alex stressed that the key to success in all of these crucial activities is preparation. It was hugely satisfying to accomplish these tasks through teamwork. We share a constant good hearted back and forth full of stories, one-liners and comebacks that also means constant laughter.
One little bird!
Falken has almost rounded the Channel Islands and is cruising along splendidly about 100 miles offshore. Though several models predicted some slightly fresher winds today, we were met with a consistent 18-20 kts of pure bliss. It seems that from the moment we left the dock in San Francisco, there has been much laughter and conversation amongst everyone. The plan is to gybe in a few hours and begin our approach to Ensenada. As much as I do appreciate the jokes and intellectual musings, I equally appreciate the natural, silent moments we share at night, all of us on watch gazing up above to the shooting stars, constellations, and planets putting on their quiet show.
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.