Day 4
Hello everyone! What a great day today has been. Everyone onboard is smelling extremely well and looking very fresh, and the reason for that is that today we hove-to to have a mid-ocean dip! That's right, we went in the water and had a beautiful swim and clean before jumping back onboard to carry on sailing.
Everyone's morale is high and the wind has shown slight signs of wanting to change direction, but as for now... still upwind! I am pretty sure the wind gods are having a bit of a laugh at Chris and me as we await this wind shift that should have happened about two days ago. But in terms of upwind sailing, I do have to admit that it doesn't get any better than this: flat sea state, 10 knots of true wind speed, and about 8 knots of boat speed. It's like paradise for upwind sailing!
For dinner, I have made my homemade lasagna, which is currently slowly cooking in the oven and is filling the air with a lovely smell. The watches have just shifted and people are going down to nap before dinner.
So not much to say—life is beautiful onboard FALKEN at the moment as we enjoy every second of what this world is giving us, which is full sunshine, perfect breeze, and a whole bunch of extraordinary people.
Love to everyone.
- Alex
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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.