thanks mother nature
47 06.2N 125 26.9W
OMG! The stars! That’s all… OK, not really—but honestly, it’s magical out here tonight. The girls are steering in 15 knots of wind with full sails on a broad reach underneath a glittering cloak of sparkles, and we all feel the fairy dust effect. It’s dark, but I’m convinced everyone is smiling, pondering, marveling at how extraordinary our universe is. The Milky Way is so defined and hanging so low, the helms are using the edge of it as something to steer towards to stay on course.
As we reflected over Mia’s coconut and ginger curry for dinner, it’s been a dream-field day since the moment we woke up at 6am to lift the hook. The sky was just brightening and we hoisted the main in the lee of the Broken Group, and rose just as we passed the last cluster of rocks. Ahead was thick, thick fog and honestly, if we didn’t have the modern wonders of satellites and space rockets, we might have wondered if we were sailing towards the edge of the world, about to fall off a waterfall.
Around mid-morning, the fog cleared and the North Westerlies gently started to fill in, and by dinner time we turned off the engine and started to sail. It was a wonderful, peaceful, gentle day. Thanks, Mother Nature. You are warming us ladies in softly.
Also, happy birthday to Catherine’s husband! She’s looking up at the glorious night sky, 50 nautical miles from shore, and is thinking about you. She told me you’d enjoy a message from us. If we had a bottle, we’d write it in there and throw it overboard. But hopefully this feels just as magical! Happy, happy birthday.
Enjoy your warm cozy beds, everyone. And we will enjoy our less cozy, less warm, but absolutely breathtakingly beautiful outside world.
- Nikki
NikkiHenderson
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”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.
Kauehi conundrum
Kauehi atoll was always on the itinerary—until the forecast made it a gamble not worth taking. Squalls, bommies, a tidal pass, and no clean escape route: sometimes the hardest call in sailing is the one that keeps you out of a place, not in it. The Tuamotus will have to wait.
Hove-to!
Falken is too fast—a problem most sailors would kill for, yet here we are, tacking back and forth across the Pacific just to kill time. A rogue low pressure system south of Tahiti has stolen the trades and scrambled our timing for the tidal window into Kauehi's pass, leaving us hove-to 45 miles short of our target in the Tuamotus. Salt licorice, dream sandwich debates, and a philosophical question about mermaid reproduction are helping pass the night.