Good day from the beautiful clear blue Caribbean Sea! We had a lot of fun surfing Falken down long ocean swells today. It feels similar to snowboarding but on water instead of snow—an adrenaline rush for sure! Our top speed was about 14 knots while surfing down a swell. As crew, we are learning how to keep the boat on a mostly straight course instead of only back and forth. The boat takes longer to respond than a car when turning, so it’s a new skill for us. One of the crew likens it to off-roading in sand.
Yesterday we had freshwater showers sitting on the back of Falken, watching the blue waters of the Caribbean flow by behind us with Falken traveling at 10 knots (about 18.5 km/hr).
Last night we enjoyed patches of bright glowing water. The glowing is caused by bioluminescence—a type of plankton, I believe. The food has been delicious, the highlight being an olive and sea salt focaccia bread made by Manot today. It was devoured rapidly.
- Janelle, crew on the Falken
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Ladies who reef
The trade winds have been kind, rolling the boat toward Hawaii in a steady, hypnotic rhythm—until last night, when a squall hit without warning and the wind jumped to 28 knots, slamming everything sideways. With rain driving down and the boat lurching underfoot, the crew had minutes to wrestle two reefs into the mainsail and get things back under control. What followed was a masterclass in wet, unglamorous, deeply satisfying teamwork—with less than 250 miles left to go.
Yankee Doodle Died at Sea, Riding on a FALKEN
A thin, foot-long tear in the yankee sail—50,000 miles of ocean behind it—and suddenly the final stretch to Hawaii just got a lot more interesting. The crew of FALKEN had been running a tight ship through the trades, reefing in squalls like clockwork, when the last dance finally caught up with them. How a skipper handles the moment everything goes sideways says everything about the voyage itself.
A Gen Z Perspective
At 31, the crew thought they were reasonably fluent in the English language—then they met Kip. Today, the crew's self-appointed Gen Z correspondent takes over the log from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, delivering dispatches on Milky Way night sails, focaccia-induced visions, and the singular mission of getting eleven people's "badonkadonks" to Hawaii. Consider this your glossary.