FLYING THE KITE + DOMESTIC CHORES
27º 44’ N, 115º 52’ W
1810 Ship’s Time
Sailing
Lee & Liz are in the galley cleaning up from chili dinner tonight. We have routines at sea, where each day each watch rotates through the various domestic chores to keep the boat fresh, clean & tidy. The morning 09-12 watch is responsible for sweeping/vacuuming the interior living accommodation; the 12-15 watch washes out the cockpit; and the 18-21 watch does the dishes and ‘resets’ the galley, the biggest job of the day after 11 people have eaten dinner together in the cockpit. That’s done, of course, following our Glums & Glows ritual, the best part of every day in my book.
We staff share in the routines as well. Each day we rotate through who cooks the meal (I was on chili duty tonight, my specialty), who cleans the heads (that’s done on whoever has the 1930-2230 watch…we stagger the staff watches with the crew watches so that we get a chance to overlap and sail with everyone in the crew). In most cases, we’ve got three staff in the crew - a Skipper, Mate & ‘Extra Bunk,’ which often goes to an Apprentice and occasionally to friends, family or media. Later this season, for example, James Evenson of Sailing Zingaro on YouTube, will be joining in that extra staff bunk to film the passage from Tahiti to Hawaii. James famously sailed his wooden catamaran on that same route, the boat breaking up just before he made landfall in dramatic fashion, so he’s hoping to close the loop with us on FALKEN and document the experience.
We’ve been sailing since I shut the engine down just before midnight last night, enjoying a light but steady breeze all day, a nice change of pace from the motor-on, motor-off inconsistency of the first 24 hours. After “snack hour” today around lunchtime, we rigged and hoisted the big pink symmetric spinnaker, and the 3,000-sq-ft sail gave us two extra knots of boatspeed and steadied the helm. I think we touched 9 knots a few times in only 10-12 knots of breeze. The foredeck work was a fun respite from the mellow lounging around the cockpit. We struck the kite just before dinner, but left it in its bag on the foredeck in anticipation of maybe another round with it tomorrow. Dinner is served early at this latitude this time of year, as it gets way too dark by our normal mealtime of 1800.
Thus far this has been a slooooow passage, but extremely pleasant. What wind there is tends to be right on our stern, and there’s not enough apparent wind to set the pole and sail dead-downwind, wing-on-wing, so we’re forced to sail gybing angles. While the boat’s making 4-6 knots through the water, our VMG is less, so Cabo San Lucas and our rounding mark into the Sea of Cortez feels an awfully long way away.
But then again, who’s in a hurry?
// Andy
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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.