Moonlight Sailing

13 May 2025 | 2027 Ship’s Time | 190 Miles NE of Kauehi, Tuamotus | Sailing

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I’ll try not to make this sound like complaining, but wow is it HOT! I was just saying at dinner how the air definitely feels cooler than it did on our Pacific crossing, but now, after my nap and with the sun set and the moon high, it feels hotter than ever. It feels like the humidity goes up at night, which might make sense… as the temperature falls, we reach the dew point and everything is just sticky, greasy, hot.

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We talked today about how no matter how many times you’ve sailed in the heat (or the cold for that matter), your brain cannot properly process what that will feel like the next time. Like packing back home for a warm weather trip, you never remember just how hot it actually feels when you’re in it. And probably no matter how I describe this now, it won’t properly register. Anyway, it’s HOT!

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But I have a philosophy that you’re never allowed to complain about anything so long as you’re sailing fast and in the right direction, and that we are certainly doing. FALKEN has covered 317 miles now in 36 hours, and the breeze couldn’t be any better. 15-20 knots apparent on the beam, two reefs in the main and some of the jib furled up and we are flying. The moon is up and it’s bright enough outside to read a book. The tradeoff, of course, being that we don’t get the brilliant stars you’d see out here on a dark night. But I think I’d almost always choose the moon. It makes for such friendly nights at sea, all the dark and scary things illuminated.

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A few of the crew have been seasick. Grant takes the prize for the first barter, but he rallied and hasn’t missed a watch. Mike was next, but as I write this he’s on the helm steering us at 10 knots boat speed, so it’s safe to say he’s back in action. Pim had a stint where he didn’t feel 100%, but I don’t think he ever lost his lunch. And now Ryan, a friend of mine and the apprentice on this passage, got knocked out just before dinner and fed the black bucket. He’s been in his bunk ever since, so we’ll see how he’s feeling when I wake him up in another 3 hours for his midnight-0400 watch.

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It’s tough getting right into it. Everyone needs a couple days to acclimate, whether seasick or not, so we’re still in that initial break-in phase. And while it’s perfect sailing conditions, the motion is more intense than it was on our crossing where we were mostly downwind. Right now we’ve got beam seas running at 6 feet, so they tend to knock the boat around at times.

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We’re making such good progress that we’re going to have to heave-to for almost twelve hours as we get closer. Ideally we’d have left Nuku Hiva on Sunday afternoon, which would have been ideal timing, putting us off Kauehi just at dawn. But with the torrential, relentless rain, we had to delay until Monday morning, which now puts us exactly 12 hours off our timing. No matter though — heaving-to is a fun tactic and I’m always delighted to see how surprised the crew are to see how well it works. I’m planning to stop us about 50 miles NE of the atoll, in open water, and position ourselves upwind of the rhumb line so we can drift happily without worrying about running into anything, or getting set too far downwind so that we have to beat the final stretch. Then we’ll approach Kauehi from the east — the pass is in the S corner of the atoll, so we’ll have a downwind approach initially, then a beam-reach back north and through the pass. First we need daylight, and then a slack tide.

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But that’s all still about 36 hours in our future, so for tonight, it’s still full speed ahead in the moonlight!

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// Andy