Trade winds
January 26, 2025, 03:40 UTC | 01:40 Ship’s Time | 20º 19.5’ N / 038º 23.2’ W | Trade Winds
Happy Birthday Andy! We gave you a big cheer at dinner last night, from the middle of the Atlantic!
Looking at the logbook, we are now on Day 10 of our Trans-Atlantic passage, and we are pretty much halfway between Las Palmas and Antigua if you draw a straight line. Since we came further south, closer to Cape Verde instead of a direct rhumb line to catch the good trade winds, we have sailed more than half the distance. Our log reads 1646 nm sailed, with 1340 nm to go.
It has been a very pleasant day and night today, but we’re still going fast! Once we ‘turned the corner’ and started to head west, we have been in proper trade winds, with winds 20-25 kts and many squalls around. Not so much rain, but clouds that have brought winds in the 30-35 kts and occasional upper 30s. FALKEN has been a rocket ship with two reefs in the main and a partially furled Yankee, surfing down the waves at 12-13 kts at times, with many speed records over 14 kts. I think Vilgot holds the ‘official record’ at 15.3 kts (speed records only count if you are on course!). The smile you see on people’s faces after a big surf…
The last few days our noon-to-noon runs have been 225 nm, 221 nm, and 218 nm. Today we have had fewer squalls and more steady wind. It’s amazing how 20-22 kts of wind can feel mellow—what you get used to after days at sea.
After lunch today, Jillian put on the baking hat and made us a big batch of chocolate chip cookies. Baking onboard a boat is a bit of a challenge. The scones we made the other day turned into what we called ‘breakfast rounds,’ as they did not rise like normal scones. Very tasty, but we wanted to give the baking another go, and the cookies that came out of the oven were amazing. I was joking, “How long will it take before the off watch will wake up from the smell?” and it literally took 3 minutes before Scott poked his head up the companionway. The box of cookies is now almost gone and has been a treat during the dark night.
Since the moon is almost gone by now, it has been very dark nights, and yesterday the moon did not appear until 5:30 boat time! Stars are coming and going as clouds roll in over the sky, but we have been spotting good old Orion and Big Dipper every night, and Scorpion has appeared low in the sky every morning. Did you know that Orion and Scorpion are never in the sky together?
We have changed time zones twice; basically, when the mornings are getting too dark, we change the boat time to better sync with the light hours, and our ship’s time is now UTC -2 hrs. It’s amazing—you can jump on a flight in NYC, fall asleep, and wake up in Europe, and you’ve crossed 5 time zones. Out here, our speed is a good jogging pace, and every 3rd or 4th day, we change the time by one hour. The world feels very big!
Thank you all for the comments on the blogs. We have had them sent to us and have been reading them during dinner when everyone is up. Keep them coming! If you are reading and have not yet made a comment, please send one on, as it is great fun to see who is reading. Also, don’t miss the messages we are sending in that appear on the map itself!
Time for another cup of tea and to join the cockpit and the magic night, hoping for a sky full of stars!
Mia & the FALKEN Crew
mia@59-north.com
View more passage logs
A last hurrah
Under the dome of stars in a moon-less sky, each of us during our time at the helm used the most rudimentary celestial navigation, keeping a star or two lined up with the mast as a helper to following the heading range. It was a whole crew event to set the spinnaker, reef the mainsail and practice the heave-to in case of man overboard. Alex stressed that the key to success in all of these crucial activities is preparation. It was hugely satisfying to accomplish these tasks through teamwork. We share a constant good hearted back and forth full of stories, one-liners and comebacks that also means constant laughter.
One little bird!
Falken has almost rounded the Channel Islands and is cruising along splendidly about 100 miles offshore. Though several models predicted some slightly fresher winds today, we were met with a consistent 18-20 kts of pure bliss. It seems that from the moment we left the dock in San Francisco, there has been much laughter and conversation amongst everyone. The plan is to gybe in a few hours and begin our approach to Ensenada. As much as I do appreciate the jokes and intellectual musings, I equally appreciate the natural, silent moments we share at night, all of us on watch gazing up above to the shooting stars, constellations, and planets putting on their quiet show.
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.