Sailing
Lloyd wished it to be known that this blog was written before the Super Bowl.
Happy Super Bowl Sunday. I had booked this adventure long before I found out my beloved Seattle Seahawks would be any good, let alone playing in the game. Such is life, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I believe I have convinced most of our crew to join me in my rooting interest, while I receive sporadic updates via satellite.
Enough of all that.
I want to talk today about community. We get to know the crew we stand watches with quite well. One of the Falken Crew, Jake (who is wise well beyond his 27 years), put a thought into my head. Talking about his adventures exploring our country via a camper van, he said he had discovered something. All of his experiences meant just a bit less because he was solo; he was not sharing them with others.
An experience is greater when it is a shared experience.
On this leg on Falken, Jake and Delaney are the only two who had previously met, having worked together on the schooner Woodwind. The other nine of us had never met. We are a group who has come together for a common adventure, working towards common goals. Through all of the highs and lows of this trip, we have formed bonds and friendships. This sense of community has amplified what is already a wondrous adventure — an experience made richer because it is a shared experience.
This aspect has been a pleasant surprise.
// Lloyd
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Taha’a-haha (say that correctly five times fast)
Ten heads bobbing around the stern, cold beers hidden a meter below the waterline, and coconuts dodged through the reef — the crew of NORDIC FALKEN have arrived at Taha'a, and they're wasting no time. First Mate Pheebs reports from a golden-hour anchorage in the Society Islands, where strangers became shipmates somewhere between Papeete and paradise. Manta rays and what might be the world's best coral drift snorkel are on tomorrow's agenda — if Skipper Mary's mushroom risotto doesn't slow anyone down first.
Tahiti-Taha’a and a birthday
Bora Bora who? Leg 6 crew are aboard and setting their sights on the lesser-known gems of French Polynesia — Taha'a and Huahine — where vanilla farms, manta rays, and drift coral snorkels await. The new anchorage booking system is a noble idea in theory, though its website appears to share the reliability of the wind, which has cheerfully decided to blow from exactly the wrong direction. It's upwind sailing, birthday cake, and uncharted territory from here.
”For some things, we will never be ready.” - Moana 2
After 852 miles of open ocean sailing, the crew of Falken dropped anchor in Moorea's Cook's Bay—not with a quiet glide in, but surfing down waves in a squall, breaking speed records and cheering each other on through the rain. What started as a plan to "just dip a toe" into offshore sailing turned into something harder to explain: the worse the conditions got, the more alive everyone felt. Turns out the question was never whether the crew was ready—it was whether they even needed to be.