day 3
Well, it's day 3 of passage, and we are now flying the Yankee and staysail and have a reef in the main. Back on the wind means a slightly more challenging below decks life for the team, but everyone is taking it in their stride. We were blessed with hundreds of dolphins last night that gave us a remarkable acrobatic display ahead of sunset. With 86 nm until our waypoint off Finisterre, it's almost halfway for the FALKEN team of adventurers. This evening, we expect a short lull in conditions, which we will once again time to charge our batteries, and then it looks like life on a heel until we reach our final destination of Lagos. All happy campers here at the bottom of Biscay.
- Emily
EmilyCaruso
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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.