February 13, 2025 | Fresh Mahi and Swedish Candy
I sleep in the warm belly of Adrienne. Water gurgles as it rushes over the hull inches away from my pillow. A soft, familiar rocking motion. All ingredients for a good sleep, but I am restless. It’s been days since we saw a ship. We are definitely out of helicopter range. The vastness of the ocean is hard to fathom. This is one of the most remote places on and off the planet. It’s just the ten of us here. This is not a trip, it’s an expedition in an alien waterworld. It’s overwhelming. I am breathing quickly and turn the light on to stop thinking and catch my breath. I see myself in the reflection of the meticulously layered varnish gloss that coats most of Adrienne’s interior—at least as many layers of varnish as she is old.
The ship is coming alive briefly, just before 2 a.m. The dogwatch, the most tiring of them all, is starting, and I am in it. We swing from handrail to handrail like orangutans, more gracefully every day. Wishing each other good nights of rest and good mornings in passing. Every new watch is someone’s morning and someone else’s night.
We step into the moonlit cockpit. The light is a harsh white, casting well-defined shadows, as if we are in space. Above the stern, Sirius the dog star twinkles; above the dog, Orion stands tall. Some of us puked at his feet a few days ago. Now it’s a calm and beautiful night with a silver path running from the moon to the freeboard.
Helming is finicky with a light wind that does not make up its mind. Being undercanvassed does not help either. Tim does not like the sluggish sail, so we switch from jib to genoa and the wind picks up. The wind is veering, which is favorable for us. The boat wakes up and needs a firm hand and a sharp mind to keep her in the groove. Meanwhile, we’re telling stories and stuffing our faces full of Swedish candy like we are eight, in summer camp, way past our bedtime.
At sunrise, we hand over to the B watch and hit the sack. We sleep almost till noon and wake up in a completely different world. People are up and there is freshly caught Mahi Mahi in the frying pan, being prepared by the Swedish cooks we are so lucky to have. They are often as incomprehensible as the Swedish cook in the Muppet Show, their choice of ingredients as eclectic, but unlike the puppet, their cooking is phenomenal.
We have entered the Azores High, also called the horse latitudes—a high-pressure area that separates the tradewinds in the south from the large winter depressions in the north. It’s sunny here and there is little wind. The waves are small. We are motoring through it to position ourselves at a place where we can catch some of the winds from the north that will carry us to the Canaries.
The ocean is a beautiful lighter blue today. There are many words to describe the blue hues of the ocean—azure, Bermuda, cobalt—but never enough to describe them all. It’s something you have to see for yourself.
After four days of upwind sailing and pounding in the waves, the Azores Highs are a welcome reprieve. We walk around deck barefooted, leisurely coiling lines, making whippings at bitter ends. We see dolphins. A pod of them crosses in front of our bow. Not much later we see a whale too! We have started a new chapter.
It’s evening as I am writing this. The waves are coming back. These must have traveled a long way from the storms in the north, hinting at what might be in store for us. Time to take a nap before the last watch of today.
- Allard Schipper, Adrienne Crew
crew@59-north.com
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A last hurrah
Under the dome of stars in a moon-less sky, each of us during our time at the helm used the most rudimentary celestial navigation, keeping a star or two lined up with the mast as a helper to following the heading range. It was a whole crew event to set the spinnaker, reef the mainsail and practice the heave-to in case of man overboard. Alex stressed that the key to success in all of these crucial activities is preparation. It was hugely satisfying to accomplish these tasks through teamwork. We share a constant good hearted back and forth full of stories, one-liners and comebacks that also means constant laughter.
One little bird!
Falken has almost rounded the Channel Islands and is cruising along splendidly about 100 miles offshore. Though several models predicted some slightly fresher winds today, we were met with a consistent 18-20 kts of pure bliss. It seems that from the moment we left the dock in San Francisco, there has been much laughter and conversation amongst everyone. The plan is to gybe in a few hours and begin our approach to Ensenada. As much as I do appreciate the jokes and intellectual musings, I equally appreciate the natural, silent moments we share at night, all of us on watch gazing up above to the shooting stars, constellations, and planets putting on their quiet show.
Birds and glows
The sun brought new wind and we were soon putting up the Yankee (jib) and turning off the motor. During the evening tradition of sharing “glums and glows” that follows the crew dinner, our Mate Ryan proclaimed it a “champagne sailing” kind of day. As Alex noted this evening, life goes by so fast that one of the very best things about his line of work is enjoying the passage of time in the slow lane of an ocean passage. But by tomorrow, the green blobs in the weather sailing app indicate we’re going to pick up some significant northwesterly winds and we’ll take them ever further south to the Channel Islands latitude. We’re all super excited for the knots to climb and to see Falken really run.