27°28.15' N 016°20.12' W
The beginning of the end
I listen to the ship’s bell. Tick tock. Tick tock. I’ve never quite understood the landlubbers’ obsession with clocks — seconds, hours, days. For me, it’s the wind that keeps the time, the waves that hold the rhythm of life.
Here, once again on the northern latitudes, I can feel the chill creeping through my rigging — a familiar whisper at my masthead. I know this air; we’re nearing my second home — Gran Canaria.
My crew confirms it. Someone speaks of flight times, another of hotel bookings. There’s something special about the end of a voyage. Even though I find my crew’s ways curious, I know I’ll miss them — their laughter at dinner, the endless conversations under the stars, and their hands and feet pressing gently against my aft deck during those quiet morning yoga rituals.
Soon I’ll be still again, tied to a dock. The crew will leave me, and silence will settle in. On land, all I’ll have left are memories — and they awaken most vividly beneath the stars, when the moonlight slides across my hull.
This crossing has given me many new memories, and from what I can tell, the crew has also shared something truly special. The waves seem to have calmed their souls, and once again the ocean has left its mark upon them. I hope their memories will be as strong as mine.
And when they return to the ticking of everyday clocks, I believe they’ll remember the calm of the waves, the glow of the stars — and that I’ll still be here, waiting, ready for the next adventure under sail.
Until the next adventure…
Tim | Adrienne II Mate
crew@59-north.com
View more passage logs
”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.