Pre-Departure
Hjelmås, Bergen
We are in Bergen as we speak, or actually, to be more correct, in Hjelmås, about 45 minutes north of the city, rafted up to ISBJØRN at her summer berth. FALKEN arrived to Bergen from Galway on Saturday and I flew in with Andy. Last year when we looked at the schedule, we realized that both ISBJØRN and FALKEN would be in Bergen at the same time, for the first time. We had to do something special! We hosted an ‘Open House’ on Sunday in downtown Bergen, and on Monday we took both boats out sailing up the fjords and got some stunning photos of the two boats alongside each other.
Nikki, who is the skipper for this leg, arrived Monday and we have spent the last few days getting the boat ready and planning the passage south to Amsterdam, a new port for 59º North. Crew will come out to FALKEN today; this will be our third ‘All Female’ Crew, something we started back in 2022 when Emma, Nikki, and I sailed ICEBEAR from Marstrand, Sweden to Portsmouth, UK.
- Mia
mia@59-north.com
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”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.