pre-departure
February 5, 2024
2019 Ship's Time, dockside in Mindelo, Cape Verde.
1st Mate Manot and crewmembers Sara and John are sitting around the saloon table. I'm at the nav station with the fan on over my right shoulder. A few of the crew are showering, the rest are outside in the cockpit lounging. Dinner's been cleaned up, the boat is shipshape and ready to sail, and we've got one more sleep until departure.
I'm relaxed. My 8th trans-Atlantic will begin tomorrow. They're never routine, especially when you're coming and going to new places (never been to Cape Verde before), but I feel less anxious than I normally do before a big passage, which I'm delighted about (but can't explain). Maybe because it's warm and sunny and the Tradewinds are steady but gentle and the forecast looks perfect.
I was surprised to find half the Sahara desert at the top of the mast today during the routine rig check. I was also surprised at the elevator ride the crew on deck gave me. Rene and Veiko jumped my primary halyard at the mast while Sara and Nigel took up slack aft on the winch, and I barely had to climb. Each heave sent me six feet up the mast in one big jump, and I had a bird's eye view of Mindelo. Anyway, from the 'Calima' dust storm they sailed through on the last passage, the sand has accumulated on lines and rigging aloft where we couldn't wash it off and everything is stained red (including now my shorts).
After the MOB drill we organized for the local restaurant here in the marina to cook us a wahoo curry meal, which we enjoyed onboard to 'simulate' a meal at sea, including my classic glums & glows routine afterwards and the normal washing-up drill down below. The food was delightful, and once the dishes were cleaned we did one last top-up on the water tanks and that was that.
Tomorrow we sail.
// Andy
andy@59-north.com
View more passage logs
Quadruple digits!
We are still headed north away from Hawaii, though today we have started to veer ever so slightly east. Speaking of miles, we hit quadruple digits today and are currently 1051 nms into our journey to Alaska. The sea state continues to calm down, and the famous North Pacific high is just out of our reach. The next few days will be a delicate dance of riding the outskirts of the high while avoiding the pesky low pressure systems that are dancing nearby. In his very wise words, we need to get north but not too far north, stay south but not too far south, continue heading east but not too far east, and avoid going west but also stay west.
The basics
Nordic Falken and her crew have been in a steady course of NNW since the departure of Hawaii. But! The good thing of all of this is that the promised land on which the high pressure lies has been getting closer and closer, meaning in a couple of days we're gonna see the wind slowly veer all the way to the South, which finally should see us easing the sails and remembering the basics of human nature all over again. The crew have been amazing and we've had everyone come around to push through fatigue, seasickness and soaking wet clothes. On another note we left the tropics a while ago and we can really feel the shift of temperature, long gone are the shorts and foulies have been the norm. Not much more apart from this, my intolerance to upwind sailing still pretty much alive but doing it with a bunch of such amazing human beings makes it worth it worthwhile.
Pacific pace
After some initial adversity, we untied our lines and left the beautiful island of O'ahu behind as we set sail north on an adventure of a lifetime. And that is exactly what we are - a family of strangers brought together by a passion for sailing and a love for the sea. The passage, while at its infancy, has delivered. The wind and seas, stars and sails all set the stage for a fantastic journey. We will see you on the other side with many stories to tell.