settling in
January 18, 2025, 10:20 UTC | 25º 30.1’ N 016º 12.13’ W | Settling In
Good morning! It’s 10 am here. Jillian is making me a cup of coffee and Paolo is at the helm. Jeanette is waiting for her turn at the helm and Kevin is having some breakfast. We are now 24 hours into the passage—a long way to go, but we have already covered 173 nm since we left Las Palmas.
The team is split into two watches. We have the A team on at the moment, and the B team is hard asleep in their bunks. I am sure as time goes on, there will be a more creative name assigned to their teams!
All is good onboard. We left the marina just after 10 am yesterday—a busy morning getting the final preps done onboard, and we topped up our diesel tanks on the way out. We zig-zagged past some big tankers anchored just outside, waiting for their turn to get into the harbor. The breeze filled in nicely and we had a lovely sail down the Canary coast. Once we cleared land, the pole went up and we have sailed wing on wing all night long, wind between 10-15 knots, with occasional gusts up towards 20.
We all gathered together in the cockpit at 6 pm (at watch change) for dinner and everyone had a big bowl—that’s a good sign on Day 1! Last night we only had one bucket out, but the fishes were disappointed as the bucket was never used.
We are now settled in nicely onboard, but it usually takes a couple of days until everyone has caught up on their sleep and is fully immersed in the watch schedule of being awake a few hours at night and napping during the day.
That’s it for now. If you read the blog, we would love to hear some comments from you who are ashore in the comment section below—our shore team will send them over to us!
From Mia & the FALKEN team
mia@59-north.com
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A last hurrah
Under the dome of stars in a moon-less sky, each of us during our time at the helm used the most rudimentary celestial navigation, keeping a star or two lined up with the mast as a helper to following the heading range. It was a whole crew event to set the spinnaker, reef the mainsail and practice the heave-to in case of man overboard. Alex stressed that the key to success in all of these crucial activities is preparation. It was hugely satisfying to accomplish these tasks through teamwork. We share a constant good hearted back and forth full of stories, one-liners and comebacks that also means constant laughter.
One little bird!
Falken has almost rounded the Channel Islands and is cruising along splendidly about 100 miles offshore. Though several models predicted some slightly fresher winds today, we were met with a consistent 18-20 kts of pure bliss. It seems that from the moment we left the dock in San Francisco, there has been much laughter and conversation amongst everyone. The plan is to gybe in a few hours and begin our approach to Ensenada. As much as I do appreciate the jokes and intellectual musings, I equally appreciate the natural, silent moments we share at night, all of us on watch gazing up above to the shooting stars, constellations, and planets putting on their quiet show.
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.