2012 UTC | 07º22.23’S, 149º25.23’W
Sailing
59° North is old school — but in a good way!
Here we are on Falken, a 65-foot rocket clocking in at 10 - 14 knots and loaded with all the latest technology.
Yet, this morning, we broke out the nautical sextant (note to Andy—we did not literally break it out). Sextants are one of the oldest tools in the mariner’s navigation toolkit.
With a sextant, a couple books, an accurate clock, a few calculations, some charting paper and plotting tools, you can pinpoint your place anywhere in the ocean to within a few miles. No GPs. No satellites. No online technology needed.
It’s old school for sure and right here in the South Pacific somewhere north of Tahiti and South of Hawaii, is a place where sextant technology was paired with an even older form of navigation called Polynesian wayfinding.
In 1769, Captain James Cook landed in Tahiti to take measurements for a Venus transit. He was armed with the latest nautical instruments the western world could offer.
While there, Cook met a Ra’iatean master navigator name Tupaia.
Cook took Tupaia aboard the Endeavour as a key crew member to help him navigate the Pacific Ocean.
Tupaia was a master at Plolynesian wayfinding. He carried a map of the Central Pacific in his head. He knew where he was by remembering where he came from and then using stars, wind shifts, speed changes, swells, bird flights, and cloud formations and colors to tell him his approximate location.
I love the juxtaposition of Captain Cook, the most advanced European sailor of his time using sextants, chronometers, telescopes, and math, with Tupaia, who carried it all in his head and read the signs of nature around him.
Two completely different systems to answer the same question: Where am I and how do I get home?
Nainoa Thompson, a modern Polynesian navigator, said you can find Hawaii by sailing north from Tahiti and watching the Southern Cross constellation sink lower in the sky each night. You’ll know you’ve reached the latitude of Hawaii when the distance between the top and bottom stars of the cross is equal to the gap between the bottom star down to the horizon.
We measure our progress north as the Southern Cross drops South and the sky tells us when we arrive. So cool!
So Tahiti to Hawaii is not just a trip.
It’s a reawakening of the way navigation used to be done. It’s about reading, interpreting, and embracing what Mother Nature has to offer.
Sure, we can turn on the GPS or fire up Starlink and know where we are in an instant in the South Pacific to within a few feet.
But where’s the romance in that?
Celestial navigation and Polynesian wayfinding are navigational systems effectively made obsolete by modern technology.
Yet for romantics like me who love being connected to nature and history, there’s no better place than Tahiti to Hawaii and 2,500 nautical miles to put them into practice.
Steve Sanduski
View more passage logs
Ladies who reef
The trade winds have been kind, rolling the boat toward Hawaii in a steady, hypnotic rhythm—until last night, when a squall hit without warning and the wind jumped to 28 knots, slamming everything sideways. With rain driving down and the boat lurching underfoot, the crew had minutes to wrestle two reefs into the mainsail and get things back under control. What followed was a masterclass in wet, unglamorous, deeply satisfying teamwork—with less than 250 miles left to go.
Yankee Doodle Died at Sea, Riding on a FALKEN
A thin, foot-long tear in the yankee sail—50,000 miles of ocean behind it—and suddenly the final stretch to Hawaii just got a lot more interesting. The crew of FALKEN had been running a tight ship through the trades, reefing in squalls like clockwork, when the last dance finally caught up with them. How a skipper handles the moment everything goes sideways says everything about the voyage itself.
A Gen Z Perspective
At 31, the crew thought they were reasonably fluent in the English language—then they met Kip. Today, the crew's self-appointed Gen Z correspondent takes over the log from somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, delivering dispatches on Milky Way night sails, focaccia-induced visions, and the singular mission of getting eleven people's "badonkadonks" to Hawaii. Consider this your glossary.