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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Taha’a-haha (say that correctly five times fast)
Ten heads bobbing around the stern, cold beers hidden a meter below the waterline, and coconuts dodged through the reef — the crew of NORDIC FALKEN have arrived at Taha'a, and they're wasting no time. First Mate Pheebs reports from a golden-hour anchorage in the Society Islands, where strangers became shipmates somewhere between Papeete and paradise. Manta rays and what might be the world's best coral drift snorkel are on tomorrow's agenda — if Skipper Mary's mushroom risotto doesn't slow anyone down first.
Tahiti-Taha’a and a birthday
Bora Bora who? Leg 6 crew are aboard and setting their sights on the lesser-known gems of French Polynesia — Taha'a and Huahine — where vanilla farms, manta rays, and drift coral snorkels await. The new anchorage booking system is a noble idea in theory, though its website appears to share the reliability of the wind, which has cheerfully decided to blow from exactly the wrong direction. It's upwind sailing, birthday cake, and uncharted territory from here.
”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.