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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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.