41°40'N 125°38'W
41°40'N 125°38'W | 13:30 Local time | 22nd of August
Day three of offshore sailing and we are all falling into the groove of watch, rest, nourishment. We are a small community of wildly brave women who are willing and able to cast off the lines of shore life and head into the unknown. Our varied and different lives are melding together to create cohesion and a vast wealth of experience and perspective. We all delight in the sightings of marine life, the liminal times of dawn and dusk, the phosphorescence, Dall’s porpoises shooting through the dark water creating a trail of effervescence.
Changing watch every four hours means we are interrupting our normal cycles, and it can be a struggle to get out of our cozy bunks in the wee hours of the night, but sailing to the constellation of Scorpio is an experience that makes us feel so alive! At this moment, we have sailed 545 miles south at 175 degrees and are currently crossing into the offshore waters beyond California. We are sailing wing and wing downwind, or as the French call it—“butterfly”—with fair winds and following seas that roll up to 10 feet. Waves always feel bigger when you are in them.
Tonight we will pass Cape Mendocino, the most westerly land point of our trip, and it represents my childhood home. This is quite the mermaid experience for me, as I know about the triple junction fault lines, including the San Andreas fault, and the deep sea trench below the surface of the water. I learned to surf with my dad and brother in these isolated waters, and my long goal was to never find myself offshore… and here I am, challenging myself to reach beyond my comfort zone and see the world with new eyes. I know my dad will feel me as I pass by. I love you, Dad and Vicky!
My dad’s family are the kind of adventurers who traveled across the continent in pioneer days to settle in the great Puget Sound of Washington, and over generations they migrated south to California. Beginning this trip in the Strait of Juan de Fuca reminds me of all my grandmothers who were brave and strong, whose DNA I carry now. On the other side, my mom’s family has California roots that reach deep, before California was a state or part of the US. I have a great-great-great-great-grandmother who arrived by herself in San Francisco on a boat to start a new life, and others who were there before the settlers arrived. Their strength and endurance in the face of adversity are in my bones.
We are all wanderers, all testing ourselves against the elements, against ourselves, to go beyond the mundane… beyond the trappings of shore life to come full circle to who we are in our depths.
- Hannah B.
FALKENCrew
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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.