Day 5
Falken is cruising along, downwind, wing on wing, crunching the miles—225nm in the last 24 hours, averaging 9.4 knots. We are approaching Ireland fast, without even trying. Last night, we put the second reef in the mainsail and three turns on the Yankee sail furler to make helming at night a little bit easier, but Falken just laughed and kept surfing the waves. Slowing down? She doesn’t know how to.
With 550nm to go and 700nm already sailed, we are well past the halfway point. According to the weather forecast, we should have a good downwind run almost all the way in and reach the Aran Islands late on the 24th. Only in the last 50nm might the wind veer and we might get headed. Time will tell.
So far, all is well on Falken. Fair winds and a following sea,
—Chris
ChrisKobusch
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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.