pre-departure
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
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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.