Day 6
Leg 1 Vindön-Bergen | Day 3
Inshore sailing is all about enjoying the moment. The plans you lay out in the morning will almost always change once the sails are up. We left Tananger after a slow morning talking to the locals, fixing things, and exploring. The downwind sail north took us through beautiful Kvitsøy. We were supposed to sail in the outskirts, but we ended up sailing through the very narrow channels in downtown Kvitsøy. Google Kvitsøy and you will want to make the same trip as us. We should have stopped, but we continued up Karmsundet. The next plan broken was an anchorage just south of Haugesund. A forecast promising gusts of 46 knots didn't sound like a good night's sleep. So here we are in Haugesund, getting ready for a restaurant dinner. All is well on board the good ship Isbjorn—Jon, JoJo, and fantastic crew. PS: We had sun almost all the way.
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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.