lines slipped
January 6, 2025, 08:35 UTC | Lines Slipped
Departure Day! It's 8:30 in the morning and the crew on FALKEN is doing the final prep before departure. Crew arrived on the 4th to sunny Lagos. We knew some weather was coming in on Sunday, so we put all crew to work straight away (after a cup of tea—when you have Brits onboard, tea breaks are taken very seriously) and hoisted the Yankee. Great teamwork to learn how to work together and operate the winches! After a nice dinner ashore, we were all pretty tired, but as usual, not everyone slept that great the first night—lots of new noises, new people, and some dock lines moving around.
Yesterday we started our briefings on deck and were very thankful to have the Yankee up. The wind increased during the day and the rain started late morning. After the front had gone through, the wind eased off and I went up the rig to do a final rig check before departure. Even a little bit of sunshine came through while I was up there.
After some more chat about the passage and dinner onboard, we all went to bed after what felt like a very long day, even though it was only 8:45 pm when the lights went out. More rain overnight, but we are hoping for a sunny day as we depart Lagos!
/ Mia
mia@59-north.com
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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.