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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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.
Golden Day
The Pacific is giving us “the shimmer” - with a still flat sea seven hours out of San Francisco Bay, we’re motoring south along the shipping channel, with an hour to go to what teases now as a stunning sunset against wispy clouds. Throughout this first day of Falken 11 the sails have unfurled and been furled again as skipper Alex tries to fill them a meager breeze indeed. We’ve seen a few whales traveling along the route, and an otter that was sadly just a buoy. It’s the first open ocean sail for many of us and it’s a thrill to anticipate all the new experiences we’ll have.
Seasickness
But maybe, I thought, with some drugs I could stay ahead of it. The first 48 hours I felt horrible. But luckily with 3 health care professionals on board and in a very encouraging environment, my body found its way. Anyway, someone offered me a patch (unavailable in Canada) and someone else gave me some pills for nausea and now I feel much, much better.