2037 UTC | 29°21.447’N 018°57.214’W
Sailing
Dearest mother,
I hope my letter finds you well.
Since my last letter, much has occurred on board our dear Adrienne.
First off, on the diesel algae front there is not much to share, as we have held them off well and kept our engines running when we’ve had the need to.
A discussion has arisen on board, this time regarding what constitutes a sauce. Despite several days of detailed arguments, no definition has been found that can readily be agreed upon by all, even though many have been proposed. I shall not bore you with all the details regarding this matter (even though there is much to be said) but I will divulge that our crew’s psychologist, Simon, needed only to hear a few sentences of one such discussion before declaring that ”ah, fourteen days out here was what it took for us all to go insane.” Shortly thereafter, the topic of whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich was brought up.
I must say, though, that skipper Erik is an expert at managing these discussions, which can sometimes be heated, usually by readily agreeing with all sides.
It has been said Adrienne sails really well on a broad reach, but alas, I may never know as virtually every mile we’ve sailed has been at an apparent wind angle of less than fifty degrees, and skipper Erik predicts we are set to continue to do so for the last stretch of our our journey.
We now have only eighty miles until we encounter land, and fewer than two hundred to our destination.
I look forward to seeing you upon returning home.
Apprentice Anton
View more passage logs
Ladies who reef
The trade winds have been kind, rolling the boat toward Hawaii in a steady, hypnotic rhythm—until last night, when a squall hit without warning and the wind jumped to 28 knots, slamming everything sideways. With rain driving down and the boat lurching underfoot, the crew had minutes to wrestle two reefs into the mainsail and get things back under control. What followed was a masterclass in wet, unglamorous, deeply satisfying teamwork—with less than 250 miles left to go.
Yankee Doodle Died at Sea, Riding on a FALKEN
A thin, foot-long tear in the yankee sail—50,000 miles of ocean behind it—and suddenly the final stretch to Hawaii just got a lot more interesting. The crew of FALKEN had been running a tight ship through the trades, reefing in squalls like clockwork, when the last dance finally caught up with them. How a skipper handles the moment everything goes sideways says everything about the voyage itself.
A Gen Z Perspective
At 31, the crew thought they were reasonably fluent in the English language—then they met Kip. Today, the crew's self-appointed Gen Z correspondent takes over the log from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, delivering dispatches on Milky Way night sails, focaccia-induced visions, and the singular mission of getting eleven people's "badonkadonks" to Hawaii. Consider this your glossary.