LANDFALL (Postscript)
13º 15’ N, 059º 38’ W
1602 Ship’s Time
13º 15’ N, 059º 38’ W
Anchored off Speightstown
Welp, we did it. We made it across the Atlantic. FALKEN’s third trans-Atlantic in less than 12 months, and my 8th since I started my offshore sailing career. It’s a nice feeling.
This was by far my fastest passage. For fun, here are some stats:
2,175nm sailed.
10d, 19hrs at sea.
201nm average daily run.
225nm best day’s run.
8.3kts average speed.
16.1kts fastest surf.
After gybing before dinner, we covered the final 88 miles at night, under spinnaker, in 8 hours… that’s an 11-knot average! We log every hour, and the best hourly run that night was 14 miles!
I’ve had 5 days to decompress since we first dropped the hook here, and wow, Barbados is a nice landfall! There’s everything we need here in Speightstown and nothing we don’t. Just enough civilization to make re-entry comfortable, but not overwhelming. Beautiful beaches, nice little cafes and bars, laundry, groceries, and a reasonable anchorage (though there really aren’t any harbors on Barbados, so we’re just tucked behind the island, and it can be swelly at times).
Yesterday we got a special invite to tour the legendary Mt. Gay Rum distillery, which is only 3 miles as the crow flies from FALKEN’s anchorage. Mt. Gay is the oldest continually operating rum distillery in the world, and the second oldest distillery, period. It started in 1703 and has been making rum ever since. If you’ve ever seen those red hats around sailing regattas, you know the rum. I can recommend mixing it with pineapple juice over some ice and with a lime. We had some on arrival, of course.
We’ve got a few days now until the next crew arrive and we’ll continue to head downwind to visit some of the rest of the Eastern Caribbean. But for now, I’m enjoying the downtime, reflecting on the passage, going through photos and videos, and having some time off! Thanks to everyone who’s followed along. We’ll be back here when the next trip starts next week! Until then… 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.