Hours before departure
Thursday, July 10, 2025 | Hours before departure…
The FALKEN Crew are all sitting around a table having our last lunch onshore at the Waikiki Yacht Club after two days of safety checks, training, and weather review. The watch teams are formed and we’re looking forward to what’s to come! Here is a short summary of the feelings before departure:
Tasha: Super excited to sail with this amazing team!
Jay: Looking forward to experiencing the North Pacific.
Douglas: The adventure begins!
Stephanie: Looking forward to learning SO much!
Lovis: Feeling hot, excited, and ready to go!
Bruce: Extremely excited to be heading offshore!
Rob: I’m more excited than Bruce!
Mary: Hot
Ken: Excited to get underway under the sunshine!
Fred: Excited to get sailing!
Alex: Next stop, British Columbia!
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- Mia (shore support)
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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.