11°32.9' N 025°46.2' W
October 10, 2025 | 21:53 UTC | 11°32.9' N 025°46.2' W | Life on the Heel
This day started with another calm morning motoring through the doldrums. We’ve been very lucky to be spared from many squalls during our passage through these latitudes. Life onboard has been quite luxurious some of these days with good food, great company, and time to rest before the next part of our trip.
We got a nice morning shower when a cute rain cloud flew by, continued by oven pancakes made by Lance, and ended our morning shift with seeing some whale spouts in the distance. During the day, headwinds picked up and at one point a squall hit us (for the first time?), which made us put in a second reef in the main. Everyone was just happy to get some action after the calm days. Morale onboard was further boosted when Vilgot the legend made fish tacos for dinner from the Wahoo we caught yesterday. Many cheers all around!
Now we are trying to make as much way north as possible to avoid a weather system building, which Erik is following closely and briefs us about daily. Squalls pop up from nowhere here and some can grow quite big. We want to stay as far away as possible. In the meantime, we have 220M left as the crow flies to Cape Verde, planning to sweep by before starting our last leg of this passage up to the Canary Islands.
We are back to a life on the heel – but like Brittany says, you just got to lean into it!
David | ADRIENNE II Apprentice
crew@59-north.com
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Turning the corner
Yesterday found Falken on a Northward course, still heeled to port, climbing and falling over waves. Sunrise this morning found Falken in an entirely different condition, one familiar to her, but not yet to the current crew. And then a truly magic moment, a pod of dolphins at least fifty members strong came to dance on Falken’s bow wave. We are now joyfully headed northeast, on course toward our eventual destination of Prince Rupert. Falken has turned a corner.
Onwards and upwards
Today is set to be the calmest day of our trip so far, waves subdued, wind veering off more south-east, light clouds. What an exhilarating ride it has been, beating upwind non-stop directly north for 6 straight days! What ahead of us is a mostly downwind sail to Prince Rupert, but a very exciting one. This makes it an interesting few days going fast and closely watching the weather, and I’m very much looking forward to it. The crew is happy, everyone seems to be getting good rest, enjoying watches and time in between.
Quadruple digits!
We are still headed north away from Hawaii, though today we have started to veer ever so slightly east. Speaking of miles, we hit quadruple digits today and are currently 1051 nms into our journey to Alaska. The sea state continues to calm down, and the famous North Pacific high is just out of our reach. The next few days will be a delicate dance of riding the outskirts of the high while avoiding the pesky low pressure systems that are dancing nearby. In his very wise words, we need to get north but not too far north, stay south but not too far south, continue heading east but not too far east, and avoid going west but also stay west.