Thai curry and whales!
17.25 LOCAL TIME | 03º 19’S 092º 05’W
SAILING
Happy Birthday, Quinn! It’s hard to believe we have only been underway for just over 24 hours. The day has been filled with sailing, and despite being down to 3 knots of boat speed at times, we have managed to continue sailing due to the flat sea! Most of the day, though, we have had wind between 6–10 knots and had a great sail with both the yankee and the staysail up! It is hot, but thanks to the breeze and the shade that the main is creating, we have managed to stay sane.
Zoey is having a shrimp Thai curry on the stove; I can imagine she is ready for some cool breeze after an hour in the galley :) We are also having a ‘surprise’ chocolate cake for Quinn to celebrate his birthday after dinner. I’m not sure how much of a surprise it will be, though, as it’s hard to cover the smell from the oven when it’s being baked. One little mishap we discovered from Galapagos was that we managed to get ‘wax paper’ instead of parchment paper—not ideal for making the cake, oops! Who uses wax paper? Never understood that concept. Lost in translation…
Vince and Phoebe are on watch, with Vince currently at the helm. Jim just got out of his bunk after a nice little nap, probably waking up to the smell of Zoey’s Thai curry! First full day on FALKEN, and it feels like we have been here a week already. We had a pod of pilot whales visit us earlier today, then a pod of dolphins while I was sound asleep a few hours ago. Last night, we had a few birds circling around the boat, making a cracking sound that, after many tries, we decided was impossible to imitate :)
Cheers,
Mia Karlsson
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Turning the corner
Yesterday found Falken on a Northward course, still heeled to port, climbing and falling over waves. Sunrise this morning found Falken in an entirely different condition, one familiar to her, but not yet to the current crew. And then a truly magic moment, a pod of dolphins at least fifty members strong came to dance on Falken’s bow wave. We are now joyfully headed northeast, on course toward our eventual destination of Prince Rupert. Falken has turned a corner.
Onwards and upwards
Today is set to be the calmest day of our trip so far, waves subdued, wind veering off more south-east, light clouds. What an exhilarating ride it has been, beating upwind non-stop directly north for 6 straight days! What ahead of us is a mostly downwind sail to Prince Rupert, but a very exciting one. This makes it an interesting few days going fast and closely watching the weather, and I’m very much looking forward to it. The crew is happy, everyone seems to be getting good rest, enjoying watches and time in between.
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.