01:08 UTC | 16°16.337’ N 099°12.440’ W
Sailing
Remember sleepaway camp when you were a kid? Bunk beds and cabin mates, sing-alongs and traditions, color wars and duties, friendships formed and cemented in hours. Memories and experiences that last a lifetime. In many ways, Falken is a grown-up floating sleepaway camp.
My bunkmate is also my watch mate, and together we share countless hours talking, sailing, not talking, giggling, doing dishes, and restlessly napping above and below one another. I share my cabin with three other people, our bunks decorated with drying towels, dirty clothes, dangling shoes, and our little nests of comfort.
All eight of us together are a crew, led by our three fearless and eternally joyful camp counselors (not to be taken lightly—their sailing, cooking, and leadership skills are unmatched!). We eat together. We share glums and glows. Dolphin and whale sightings are sounded. Cookies, croissants, and watermelon magically appear. Sing-alongs spontaneously erupt. Tales and stories are shared. Laughter abounds. And together, we make this floating camp move through the water to a common destination.
We are all overtired and definitely over-dirty. But no one cares.
The past two mornings I have found myself lying in bed, looking through the few downloaded pictures (no internet) of my family on my phone and feeling homesick. I haven’t felt this feeling since I was a kid myself, away from family and home and all that was known and safe. I miss them so much. I never knew I could miss them this much. Yet at the same time, I want to hold on to this magical floating world. There must be a word for that feeling, but I am too tired to pull it from my memory. For now, I will just call it joy.
— Marella
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Ladies who reef
The trade winds have been kind, rolling the boat toward Hawaii in a steady, hypnotic rhythm—until last night, when a squall hit without warning and the wind jumped to 28 knots, slamming everything sideways. With rain driving down and the boat lurching underfoot, the crew had minutes to wrestle two reefs into the mainsail and get things back under control. What followed was a masterclass in wet, unglamorous, deeply satisfying teamwork—with less than 250 miles left to go.
Yankee Doodle Died at Sea, Riding on a FALKEN
A thin, foot-long tear in the yankee sail—50,000 miles of ocean behind it—and suddenly the final stretch to Hawaii just got a lot more interesting. The crew of FALKEN had been running a tight ship through the trades, reefing in squalls like clockwork, when the last dance finally caught up with them. How a skipper handles the moment everything goes sideways says everything about the voyage itself.
A Gen Z Perspective
At 31, the crew thought they were reasonably fluent in the English language—then they met Kip. Today, the crew's self-appointed Gen Z correspondent takes over the log from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, delivering dispatches on Milky Way night sails, focaccia-induced visions, and the singular mission of getting eleven people's "badonkadonks" to Hawaii. Consider this your glossary.