Doldrums…
0° S, 94° W
Still Motoring
I cannot imagine what the mood must have been like back in the square-rigger days traversing this part of the world. There is NO wind. Hasn’t been for days, but a frustrating swell has us banging around even though we’re motoring at a smooth 6-7 knots. The sea surface is oily, and while there are rain showers all around us, none have yet come overhead to offer any kind of cooling relief from the baking sun.
We’re only 48 hours into this passage and have made 350 miles of progress, so I can hardly complain. Back in the day, those old ships could sit for WEEKS. With livestock and hundreds of crew and itchy wool clothing and no engines. I cannot imagine the stench that must have emanated from belowdecks. It’s frustrating enough on our modern machine here cruising through another moonlit night, here for fun and not work.
We took two reefs in the main earlier today, both for something to do with our time, and also to stop the incessant slatting of the mainsail. “Shaking pennies out of it,” my friend Paul Exner would say. The old ship captains loathed a calm more than a storm for the wear and tear it put on the ship’s natural canvas sails and hemp rope rigging. It’s not any different today—the firm press of wind in the sails keeps the rig taut, but the banging back and forth in a calm shakes everything loose, least of all your brain cells.
We keep downloading the latest GRIB models looking for wind, and even emailed WRI to ask them their thoughts, but the only answer is patience. The trades are south of us still, and we’ve either got to wait until they push back north again, or just keep on trucking and burning diesel. Speaking of which, we thought we had an issue with the fuel transfer pump earlier today, but it was a false alarm—turns out we were just trying to pump from an empty tank. Oops. We’re down to just over half our remaining fuel already, so these trades better fill in sooner than later.
In other news, we celebrated my dad’s 73rd birthday today! He got a leftover pastry and fresh coffee for breakfast, and was gifted an ice-cold afternoon beer to celebrate. At dinner the whole crew sang to him, and I think he enjoyed his birthday at sea.
As I write, the swell is more annoying than ever, the dampening effect of the mainsail reduced thanks to the reefs, but we can only hope the waves portend a wind somewhere that isn’t too far distant. What else to say…waiting for wind, motor-boating south.
HOLD FAST
// Andy
andy@59-north.com
View more passage logs
”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.