January 20, 2025, 20:26 UTC | 20º 41.5’ N / 020º 17.6’ W | The Apprentice
Good evening! We are still heading south to get down to 20º N as I write this. We have light winds of 8-13 knots and the engine is on to help us get away from the high pressure over us. We are doing a consistent 7 knots and since we started this passage in Las Palmas, we have done 553 nautical miles.
Jillian is at the helm, Kevin, Janette, and Paulo are sitting in the cockpit watching the mesmerizing sky of stars, and the other watch team (Scott, Sarah, Derek, and Brandon) are hopefully able to get some sleep before waking up at 21:45 local boat time to get ready for the watch switch!
The person writing this blog for you is Vilgot, the apprentice on FALKEN, and I thought it would be interesting for you to get to know me—a 19-year-old guy from Sweden on his first gap year after high school, ending up crossing the Atlantic with 59º North on NORDIC FALKEN.
I met Mia and Andy at a local boat show in Sweden approximately one year after I saw FALKEN in Isafjordur, one of the most northern villages in Iceland. Seeing FALKEN in Isafjordur was during one of my two passages with the training tall ship T/S GUNILLA, a high school training vessel that takes students around the world while they are studying regular subjects like science or social studies. It was during these two trips that I got totally obsessed with ocean passages.
I was introduced to the apprentice program at the boat show that 59º North started a couple of years before and knew that this was something I had to apply for. After sailing on FALKEN from Ellös to Marstrand, I submitted my application and ended up on this Atlantic passage from Las Palmas to Antigua. I could not be more excited and grateful to learn from the professional staff working for 59º North and meet all of the amazing crew for this passage—it is truly a dream come true!
Enough about me! The day has been amazing, loads of sun, and with a warm day, the first shower for the entire crew couldn’t have fit any better. Right after the showers, the crew gathered in the cockpit for dinner and, as usual, had our “Glums and Glow” list for the day. There were almost zero “Glumps.” At the end of dinner, we had our first switch of the local boat time to adapt to the sunrise and sunset as well as the local time in Antigua, so we are now one hour behind UTC.
Everyone seems to be settling in well after these few days, and I heard that crew had started to read some books off watch. Seems like a few habits from home are settling in on the boat!
That’s it for today! Hold Fast!
From Vilgot the Apprentice and the entire crew!
P.S. We read the comments from the blog at dinner and the crew loved them, so keep the comments coming and we’ll read them again at dinner time!
59ºNorthApprentice
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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.