Day 2
Today has been warm and sunny and we have had some great sailing conditions. Some call it champagne sailing! Falken slips through the water with ease under full sail, close reaching over a beautiful sea that I call the ocean plains. Sea birds are flying in company with us and the day ended with a beautiful sunset. This is why we go sailing, for these special days.
The crew are all getting over their seasickness and everyone was able to enjoy the day. Before the sun was too low we got the sextant out and had a go at taking sun sights. Then we talked about what that means and how we use the measurement of the sun’s altitude. We hope to do more tomorrow.
We ended the day with a round up of the trip so far. It was a great opportunity to share what was happening on our off watches. Has it really only been two days? Glums and glows with lots of laughter.
When you are sailing, time seems to have a different dimension. The days roll into one and time is marked by the changing of the watch and the hourly log.
- Jojo Pickering, Skipper S/Y FALKEN
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”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.