start -4 hrs
19 February 2024
It’s the morning of the RORC Caribbean 600 Race here! All quiet on the docks, except for the divers polishing our hull. It’s going to be a slower race, with the wind forecasted to drop off by Wednesday morning as it gets sucked into a low developing up north. So we will be thankful for the clean bottom!
We started 59º North Offshore Racing as a branch out from 59º North’s flagship product of offshore passages—because we all felt it was a no-brainer to combine my (Nikki’s) experience and passion for racing with the 59º North family and brand, so we can share this amazing side of sailing. Offshore racing can—like sailing itself—be elitist. 59º North Offshore Racing is all about opening doors. We’re opening the racing door to the wider sailing community by offering a significant amount of training before the race in order to train the crew up so that they are safe and competent against the rest of the fleet, who are mostly fully pro teams.
I put amateur in inverted commas because that’s at the beginning! It’s amazing to see how this crew, and all the crews, will develop and learn and grow into a solid team. Cannot wait for the race. Please track us and send us messages. It really feels amazing to know we are not only bringing these nine crew along, but also all of you!
- Nikki
NikkiHenderson
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Quadruple digits!
We are still headed north away from Hawaii, though today we have started to veer ever so slightly east. Speaking of miles, we hit quadruple digits today and are currently 1051 nms into our journey to Alaska. The sea state continues to calm down, and the famous North Pacific high is just out of our reach. The next few days will be a delicate dance of riding the outskirts of the high while avoiding the pesky low pressure systems that are dancing nearby. In his very wise words, we need to get north but not too far north, stay south but not too far south, continue heading east but not too far east, and avoid going west but also stay west.
The basics
Nordic Falken and her crew have been in a steady course of NNW since the departure of Hawaii. But! The good thing of all of this is that the promised land on which the high pressure lies has been getting closer and closer, meaning in a couple of days we're gonna see the wind slowly veer all the way to the South, which finally should see us easing the sails and remembering the basics of human nature all over again. The crew have been amazing and we've had everyone come around to push through fatigue, seasickness and soaking wet clothes. On another note we left the tropics a while ago and we can really feel the shift of temperature, long gone are the shorts and foulies have been the norm. Not much more apart from this, my intolerance to upwind sailing still pretty much alive but doing it with a bunch of such amazing human beings makes it worth it worthwhile.
Pacific pace
After some initial adversity, we untied our lines and left the beautiful island of O'ahu behind as we set sail north on an adventure of a lifetime. And that is exactly what we are - a family of strangers brought together by a passion for sailing and a love for the sea. The passage, while at its infancy, has delivered. The wind and seas, stars and sails all set the stage for a fantastic journey. We will see you on the other side with many stories to tell.