Day 4
With 223 nm sailed in the last 24 hours, sailing has been fun and exciting. FALKEN is powered up nicely, and the crew are doing an amazing job helming, keeping her as if she were sailing on rails. Sailors often have their ways to mimic that sensation of the boat flying through the waves, underlined by their eyes brightening up in excitement. I am sure that these days spent together on FALKEN will be referred to under those terms more than once.
But sailing is not just all fun and games, and crossing an ocean can be a serious challenge—be it technical or personal. Changing your sleep patterns to accommodate a watch system, being in a new environment with new people, sleeping on a constantly moving bed in a noisy environment, sometimes dealing with seasickness, and continuing to be ready on the hour for a new watch, watch after watch. It’s no easy feat. And it is always beautiful to witness how people deal with these challenges, most often building strong bonds, looking out for and caring for each other.
By now, everyone seems to have taken their bearings in this strange environment, redefining a new comfort zone. This change of perspective can bring great insight into one’s life. And this, on its own, can give meaning to the whole experience and to the challenge.
- Manot
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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.