Day 2 At-sea
The conditions are now lightening, and we have increased to two reefs and full Yankee sail, pushing us along nicely. You can hear the screams of excitement from on deck every time FALKEN surfs down a wave, or big laughter after a wave covers the deck. I really had missed blasting along downwind towards our destination! We’re going to make the most of it, as the weather models indicate that the wind might start decreasing soon.
I am about to start cooking a Mediterranean salad with couscous for dinner, the perfect meal for a very hard-working crew that deserves every praise you can think of!
A very fast and happy team,
Alex
laline96@gmail.com
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”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.