The basics
16:00 UTC | 33°42.0N 158°37.4W
Sailing
Nordic Falken and her crew have been in a steady course of NNW since the departure of Hawaii. A course that has seen us mainly close reaching with the occasional close hauled. For those who don’t understand what sailing to this angles with the wind we’ve had means it’s basically a constant battle of the basics. Brushing your teeth, putting your shoes on, changing clothes or even just eating become extremely complicated, you forget the basics you learned when you were a toddler and find yourself questioning your existence for most of your watch.
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. The waves have died off over-night and we’ve had the first bit of dry deck since we departed, a pleasure to our butts which have been sitting on the damp since then!
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. I keep pushing for bare-feet to make me feel like I’m still in Hawaii but the sleeping bag and greyness keeps reminding me that perhaps it is time to realize that the tropics indeed, are long gone.
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.
Mahalo
Alex
Alex
View more passage logs
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.
Dolphins and Bioluminescence
We had a good run with the sails but weather has changed and we are once again chasing the wind. Everyone is getting a chance to practice helming in big swell; starting to get a feel of the wind and water and how it pushes and pulls the hull. A pod of dolphins came to visit at night, splashing in the bioluminescent water, and again in the day, dancing in the bow wake. For now enjoying the calmer sea state and falling asleep to the rumble of the engine and the gentle whooshing of the water on the hull.
Greetings from Lala Lemonshark
The brave crew is toughing it out and staying cheerful despite being tossed around. The engine is off and we are true sailing-main and jib. In the first 12 hours we saw two pods of Orca and four humpback whales, two of which were 20 yards off the starboard beam!