sunrise
November 3, 2025 | Sunrise!
Yesterday we slipped our lines from St. Francis Yacht Club—thank you Jason for hosting us—and we squeezed past the sandbar at the entrance, hoisted our main, and slowly glided with the tide under the Golden Gate Bridge. What a view! I love when our adventures take us to such iconic places and we get to experience these landscapes to the fullest.
After the thrill of the bridge, we unfurled our headsail and started sailing. First, we had to get through the “potato patches,” as the locals call it—an area where shallow water mixes with big offshore swells and generates some steep waves. After clearing it, we had lunch and enjoyed the views as Falken sailed at 8 knots in 9 knots of wind. The wind lasted until the afternoon and then completely left us, forcing us to turn the engine on to make some more ground south.
We then spent the night furling and unfurling the Yankee as the wind filled and dropped, making the most of it. As I’m typing this, the fog has made an appearance. We’re drifting at 2 knots, trying to squeeze anything out of the little breeze we have, and we’re enjoying some coffee. We’ve just had a stunning sunrise in a very still ocean, and there’s a great vibe onboard.
Lots of love,
Alex | FALKEN Skipper
laline96@gmail.com
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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.
Golden Day
The Pacific is giving us “the shimmer” - with a still flat sea seven hours out of San Francisco Bay, we’re motoring south along the shipping channel, with an hour to go to what teases now as a stunning sunset against wispy clouds. Throughout this first day of Falken 11 the sails have unfurled and been furled again as skipper Alex tries to fill them a meager breeze indeed. We’ve seen a few whales traveling along the route, and an otter that was sadly just a buoy. It’s the first open ocean sail for many of us and it’s a thrill to anticipate all the new experiences we’ll have.
Seasickness
But maybe, I thought, with some drugs I could stay ahead of it. The first 48 hours I felt horrible. But luckily with 3 health care professionals on board and in a very encouraging environment, my body found its way. Anyway, someone offered me a patch (unavailable in Canada) and someone else gave me some pills for nausea and now I feel much, much better.