FALKEN is cruising right along at 8-9 knots and has completed 484 nautical miles within the first three days of our voyage. The last twenty-four hours have been tough with moderate sea state and wind speeds, but the crew has been in high spirits since the change in weather. The moderate winds have given us the opportunity to put up the staysail and Yankee along with a reefed main. It is wonderful to see how excited and attentive the crew has been to FALKEN. I have only been on FALKEN for nearly two weeks, and to experience her alive with a full crew is something else.
- Athena
59ºNorthApprentice
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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.