Downwind
6º 28’ S, 102º 54’ W
April 12 | 2307 Ship’s Time | 6º 28’ S, 102º 54’ W | Sailing
This wasn’t the worst spill I’ve ever seen on a boat, but it was close. We’d just taken two reefs in the main and rolled a big chunk out of the genoa in building winds and seas tonight, FALKEN running downwind, yankee poled out to port and the main prevented to starboard. Regularly averaging 12 knots over a 3-hour watch, and hitting wild surfing speeds.
There was a lot of commotion on deck at the watch change while we got everything snugged down. Once Scott & Kim took over and I felt comfortable that they were confident on the helm, I took the chance to sneak below and make a bowl of muesli. Then proceeded to dump the entire thing—milk, maple syrup and all—all over the salon floor at the bottom of the companionway steps. The milky, mushy, sticky disaster was all over the floor, the walls, and my feet, sticking especially well between my toes.
My plan was to eat it up in the companionway so I could get a little breeze. It’s hot as sh*t down below with all the hatches and ports closed thanks to the rain and heavy seas washing on deck now and again, so my favorite spot on watch is to stand in the companionway and observe. I was hoping to do this observation while eating my 10pm snack. Instead, a big wave out of sync with the others heeled FALKEN hard to starboard. My PFD and tether were perched up under the dodger on port. In the instant I stepped onto the first step, my PFD came crashing down, heavy tether-hooks first, right into my muesli bowl. Great timing!
Well, the next hour was spent on my hands and knees cleaning oatmeal bits out of the cracks in the floorboards. Thankfully muesli is pretty absorbent, so not a lot of milk leaked into the bilge.
I’ve done stupid things like this before, and witnessed crew do stupid things too. On our very first ever 59º North passage on ISBJORN back in 2015, motoring up the Chesapeake on July 4, bound for Lunenburg, I dumped a freshly poured cup of creamy, buttery pumpkin soup upside down in the brand-new fridge. I’d opened the same fridge to get some sour cream to dollop in the same soup, a powerboat wake went by, the boat lurched, and my soup went head-over-heels into the fridge and creamed down all the provisions for that week-long passage. It even made its way behind the cold plate, where it’s likely still staining the fridge wall.
Another time on ISBJORN I witnessed a crewmember, standing in the galley on the high-side on port tack, take a nose dive downhill into the nav station, opened container of trail mix in hand, which proceeded to smash and scatter all over the place. I’m sure August is still finding peanuts and M&M’s when they do a deep clean on the boat.
Perhaps worst of all was a story I heard secondhand from Mia. She was on ICEBEAR and one of the crew was making a nice big batch of scrambled eggs. They’d cracked a full dozen into a mixing bowl and propped it up on the countertop next to the top-loader fridge (you can see where this is going). Fridge open, boat lurched, eggs upside down and spilled into the fridge. Worse, the fridge had a drain hole into the bilge for condensation… and in this case, uncooked, runny scrambled eggs. Mmmm.
FALKEN’s cabin sole is clean enough, for now, but come daylight tomorrow I’m sure we’re going to be picking bits of soggy oatmeal from the cracks. We’re due a shower, and being that everything is so wet down below from the endless rain squalls, the inside of the boat smells like a locker room at the moment. If we get a respite tomorrow, perhaps it’s time for a boat ‘reset’—showers on deck, hang clothes out to dry, deep clean inside the boat, organize people’s bunks, etc. And to locate those last bits of muesli.
I have a rule in offshore sailing that if you’re going fast and in the right direction, you have no right to complain about anything. I did get my bowl of muesli, finally, and all the while I was cleaning, Scott & Kim drove the boat hard downwind. Kim even hit a record speed burst for this passage, 16.2 knots!
So no complaints here.
// Andy
andy@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.