Overnight to Antigua
It’s 00:55 and I start hearing some rather interesting sea shanties through the speaker—it’s time to get up and leave Marie-Galant! Andy is in the galley prepping coffee while everyone is slowly rising from their bunks. Our night mission to Antigua has started. We leave the anchorage and hoist our mainsail and staysail in a quiet fashion. The first bit of the trip is going to be tacking upwind towards the eastern side of Guadeloupe, so I go back to bed (or try to) as they start tacking. You can hear laughter and feel the tacks getting better and better. I think to myself how cool it is that we are sailing a 65ft ex-racing boat with a bunch of like-minded people who a week ago didn’t know each other, making almost perfect tacks through squalls in the middle of the night.
After reaching the east side of Guadeloupe, we are able to bear away and it’s a sprint from there. FALKEN flew at 10-11 knots, first with the staysail and then with the Yankee and staysail on a close reach all the way to Antigua. She was loving it and so were the crew, feeling her speed on the helm. We directed FALKEN’s bow towards English Harbour, where Nelson hid his fleet of boats back in the day, as Andy explains to us. It was a fabulous entrance to the bay under sail, dropping sails as we turned the corner. After a little tour of the bay, we decided to head to Falmouth Harbour and ended the night enjoying some Caribbean Piri-Piri Chicken ashore at Flatties.
It is now, when I look back, that I realize how proud I am of what we do, what we bring to people who join us, and all they bring to us. It has been a blast! // Alex
After reaching the east side of Guadeloupe, we are able to bear away and it’s a sprint from there. FALKEN flew at 10-11 knots, first with the staysail and then with the Yankee and staysail on a close reach all the way to Antigua. She was loving it and so were the crew, feeling her speed on the helm. We directed FALKEN’s bow towards English Harbour, where Nelson hid his fleet of boats back in the day, as Andy explains to us. It was a fabulous entrance to the bay under sail, dropping sails as we turned the corner. After a little tour of the bay, we decided to head to Falmouth Harbour and ended the night enjoying some Caribbean Piri-Piri Chicken ashore at Flatties.
It is now, when I look back, that I realize how proud I am of what we do, what we bring to people who join us, and all they bring to us. It has been a blast! // Alex
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View more passage logs
Hat overboard!
On June 4, we reviewed our passage plan before our departure from the marina in Hjellested.
Departure from Bergen!
The crew on the women’s sail training on Isbjorn is settling into a great routine for managing the boat and life onboard.
The sun sets on another journey
The hardest part of sailing across French Polynesia wasn't the night watches, the heat, or the open ocean — it was the prospect of being trapped on a small boat with a group of strangers. First-timer Natalie boards as a self-described land crab and discovers that the sea has a way of reshaping both your sea legs and your assumptions. What follows is dolphins, sharks, the Milky Way in full technicolour, and a crew that somehow made the whole thing better than she ever imagined.