Day 3 at-seA
13º 47’ N, 031º 41’ W
2130 Ship’s Time
13º 47’ N, 031º 41’ W
Steering 270º at 8-9 knots
Groundhog day out here, in the best way. The wind remains steady from the ENE and FALKEN is smoothly making way downwind with a happy and rested crew.
Day 3 today, the day it always turns around, even for the worst of the seasick. Sara had been feeling less than 100% since the start, but props to her for continuing to stand her watches and do her stints at the helm. Tonight was her first full meal at dinner and the first time she actually felt like herself, and with a long way still to go she’ll finally get to enjoy the sailing. I’ve long said that it takes three days for everyone to acclimate to life offshore, whether seasick or not. I had my first real solid, deep sleep this morning, visiting another planet during my four-hour off watch, which felt amazing.
The showers today also felt amazing. While the evenings onboard are cool and damp, the morning watch from just after 8am through to about 1430 is brutally hot and sunny. We’ve been hiding from the sun down below when we can, with only a helmsman and one watchkeeper outside together in the hottest part of the day. So when we decided to call for showers earlier this afternoon it was a welcome announcement. We ran the watermaker all afternoon, topped up the battery charge with the engine, scrubbed the cockpit, and took turns at the stern showering in the ‘bathtub’, which offers the best view of the following seas, and hot water too.
Manot made a chicken curry for dinner tonight, with curry paste all the way from Switzerland. As I type, the Milky Way is visible overhead and the on-watch is chit-chatting in the cockpit while FALKEN keeps making the miles downwind. So far we’ve covered 469 miles since Mindelo and counting.
// Andy
andy@59-north.com
View more passage logs
”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.