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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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.
The basics
Nordic Falken and her crew have been in a steady course of NNW since the departure of Hawaii. But! The good thing of all of this is that the promised land on which the high pressure lies has been getting closer and closer, meaning in a couple of days we're gonna see the wind slowly veer all the way to the South, which finally should see us easing the sails and remembering the basics of human nature all over again. The crew have been amazing and we've had everyone come around to push through fatigue, seasickness and soaking wet clothes. On another note we left the tropics a while ago and we can really feel the shift of temperature, long gone are the shorts and foulies have been the norm. Not much more apart from this, my intolerance to upwind sailing still pretty much alive but doing it with a bunch of such amazing human beings makes it worth it worthwhile.
Pacific pace
After some initial adversity, we untied our lines and left the beautiful island of O'ahu behind as we set sail north on an adventure of a lifetime. And that is exactly what we are - a family of strangers brought together by a passion for sailing and a love for the sea. The passage, while at its infancy, has delivered. The wind and seas, stars and sails all set the stage for a fantastic journey. We will see you on the other side with many stories to tell.