Day 2
July 7, 2024 | Day 2 At Sea | At sea getting into the rhythm
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
JoJoPickering
View more passage logs
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.