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
”For some things, we will never be ready.” - Moana 2
After 852 miles of open ocean sailing, the crew of Falken dropped anchor in Moorea's Cook's Bay—not with a quiet glide in, but surfing down waves in a squall, breaking speed records and cheering each other on through the rain. What started as a plan to "just dip a toe" into offshore sailing turned into something harder to explain: the worse the conditions got, the more alive everyone felt. Turns out the question was never whether the crew was ready—it was whether they even needed to be.
Kauehi conundrum
Kauehi atoll was always on the itinerary—until the forecast made it a gamble not worth taking. Squalls, bommies, a tidal pass, and no clean escape route: sometimes the hardest call in sailing is the one that keeps you out of a place, not in it. The Tuamotus will have to wait.
Hove-to!
Falken is too fast—a problem most sailors would kill for, yet here we are, tacking back and forth across the Pacific just to kill time. A rogue low pressure system south of Tahiti has stolen the trades and scrambled our timing for the tidal window into Kauehi's pass, leaving us hove-to 45 miles short of our target in the Tuamotus. Salt licorice, dream sandwich debates, and a philosophical question about mermaid reproduction are helping pass the night.