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
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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.