The Beautiful night!
0630 Boat time | 08º 11.7’N 112º 53.4’ W
Sailing Wing-On-Wing
It is now 6.30 on FALKEN and the sun is about to come up over the horizon, but the glow started already a half hour ago and it has gradually been getting lighter. Kate was at the helm, while Jim, Adam and I were chatting about who knows what in the cockpit when we heard a flap on the side deck. A beautiful bird had landed on the side deck. I am not sure what kind it is, need to go and dig into our books onboard, but it’s definitely one of the seabirds that has been circling around us since we left Galapagos! He is now resting just outside the cockpit, nicely tucked over the jib sheet and behind the preventer, it’s almost like he wants to hang out with us, or maybe he is simply just getting a well needed rest?
We had an amazing night with a sky filled of stars, except for a short lived rain cloud that came over us earlier in the night. We had Scorpio behind us with Libra above, while Orion was setting just behind the jib. Big Dipper was ‘upside down’ to our starboard and the little sliver of moon comes up later and later now. It’s amazing though how much light we get from the moon, despite being so small. In Swedish we have a word ‘mångata’, the reflection of the moon on the water (translates to 'moon road’ - I love the nights!
Mia Karlsson
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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.