13.02 BOAT TIME | 07º 58.0’ S 103º 14.1’W
Sailing
Mia prompted the group to provide the answer to why are we doing this trip?
From my perspective, we sail for ourselves. Not to impress anyone with dramatic story or photo. Not to run away, And certainly not for the creature comforts. We can only dream of air conditioning, ice and a comfy chair in the shade.
Are we here to visit a place we have only seen pictures of? Sure. To see wildlife, stars and miles of deep blue ocean? Maybe, but it goes deeper.
We are sailing to feel alive. To reconnect with ourselves. To simplify. To strip away everything we thought was necessary and get back to basics.
To be 100% in the moment. To be present at 3:00am, the time when all bad things happen, and the 65’ Nordic Falcon is clicking along at 10 Knots on a broad reach with a single reef in the main and the jib half furled. You can’t see beyond the mast as the sky and ocean are pitch black. The waives and swells are incessantly slamming against the hull, splashing and lifting the boat out of the troughs trying to knock you off course. Water crashes across the bow and occasionally into the cockpit to drench the helms-person from head to toe. Absolutely thrilling.
We are also here to slow down. Almost as if we put the whole world on a shelf. No news, no communication except between the 11 strangers on board. We are disconnected from the news, lost in our own space-time continuum of three hours on watch and six hours off watch. It all sounds so normal here.
We know the world will be there when we return, even if slightly changed. In the meantime we appreciate our families, friends, coworkers who are supporting our big adventure. We look forward to seeing you all soon.
But for this moment, we are here, eating, sleeping and sailing. Sunshine on our faces and the wind in our hair. Feeling Alive.
Love to all. Q
Quinn
View more passage logs
First squall of the trip!
"We're gonna get our ass whooped" — not the sunrise greeting anyone had in mind, but Jim called it. The oldest and sharpest hand on board steered them straight through the squall, soaked to the bone and loving every minute of it. He's got a message for his wife, and it turns out she was right about the water.
Sextants, Polynesian Wayfinding, Captain Cook, and Tupaia, Oh My!
Somewhere north of Tahiti and south of Hawaii, aboard a 65-foot rocket of a sailboat loaded with GPS and Starlink, we pulled out a sextant. Not as a novelty—as a navigation tool. Because it turns out the 2,500-mile passage from Tahiti to Hawaii is less a ocean crossing and more a living museum of how humans have always answered the same stubborn question: where am I, and how do I get home? Captain Cook had his chronometers and math; his Polynesian crewmate Tupaia had the stars, the swells, and a map of the Central Pacific stored entirely in his head—and somehow, they were asking the exact same thing.
Star gazing and celebrating
Birthdays at sea hit differently—no cake, no candles, just brownies from a rolling galley and the Milky Way as a backdrop. It's day three aboard, and the skipper's birthday is just one of three to celebrate before landfall. Meanwhile, six crew members sat in silence last night, not from exhaustion or tension, but because the Southern Cross was doing something worth watching.