Next Stop, Tuamotus!
12 May, 2025 | 1340 Ship’s Time | Full-Sail, Beam Reaching
I wasn’t sure we’d ever get out of Nuku Hiva. After spending over two weeks on anchor in a rolly Taiohae Bay, both Emily and I were ready for a change of scenery. We’re not your typical cruisers—after a passage we tend to sit tight in one place and recover, doing small boat projects, going exploring ashore where we can, but generally not moving the boat. For one, FALKEN is very difficult to sail short-handed. Handling the mainsail is the tough part; just flaking it on the boom requires three to four people and a deliberate plan. Plus, we’re happy to sit tight, and normally we only have five days between the end of one trip and the start of another.
But in the Marquesas, we had more time. Partly because we were ahead of schedule on the passage (I always allow more time on the longer trips), and partly because we knew that resources would be scarce in that remote archipelago, and if we did have any problems on the crossing, it would take more time than usual to sort them out. As it happened, we had a pretty uneventful crossing, and besides dropping the jib topsail off for a minor repair with Kevin at Nuku Hiva Yacht Services, we had a pretty mellow stopover. Make sure to read my blog from our hike with Tangy & Ana in the valley near Hakaui, which is posted on The Quarterdeck.
And yet, when the crew finally arrived on Saturday, the island didn’t seem to want us to leave. It’s just the start of the rainy season in the Marquesas, and boy did it show. For almost two weeks Emily and I enjoyed sunshine and the odd shower. I went for several jogs on shore (and got overheated!), and we had starry nights. But leading up to crew arrival, the weather took a turn, and on Sunday, yesterday, when we had planned to depart in the late afternoon, the rains turned biblical. All through the valley in Taiohae, waterfalls sprung up out of nowhere and the harbor turned into a muddy trough of washed-out debris. We couldn’t run the watermaker, but then we had so much water streaming off of our sun awning that we managed to fill our tanks in an hour, redirecting the flow right into the open deck fill.
So we sat tight, and woke up to sunshine this morning and a green light for departure. As I type this, FALKEN is out of the lee now of Ua Pou and sailed fast on a beam reach in bright sunshine and deep blue water, having covered 42 miles in our first five hours or so. The remnants of yesterday’s rains, though, were visible even 20 miles offshore—we sailed past an enormous tree stump, probably half the length of the boat and a few feet thick. A scary thought in the dark…
It’s hot and sunny in the cockpit, and the off-watch crew is taking advantage of the shade up on the bow, sitting on the windward rail behind the jib and watching the waves go by. Feels very good to be at sea again.
// Andy
andy@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.