Post-passage
June 27, 2024
During our final 24 hours of the trip, a warm front approached. The wind picked up, we put two reefs into the mainsail and deeply furled the Yankee. Still, in 28 knots apparent wind on a broad reach, Falken flew along, surfing faster and faster until Allison hit the record speed of the trip at 17.8 knots. The front passed fairly quickly and with it the wind eased. The anticipated cold front brought little wind but a huge wind shift, so that we ended up sailing on a close reach for the final few hours of the trip.
We approached the channels between the Aran Islands in the early morning hours and pushed on to make the lock to Galway Harbor, which only opens from two hours before high water to high water. We tied up alongside the harbor wall and celebrated a fast and fun passage with a glass of Prosecco. 1,285 nm sailed in 6 days and 18 hours, with the last four days seeing daily runs of well over 200 nm.
For me, this is the end of three months on FALKEN, all the way from Antigua to Jamaica to Cuba, Bermuda, the Azores, and finally Ireland. It has been a blast and though I can’t wait to go home and see my family, I am already looking forward to my next passage on FALKEN from Plymouth to Lagos—the heavy weather Bay of Biscay crossing. Until then, fair winds and a following sea.
- Chris
ChrisKobusch
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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.