41°40'N 125°38'W
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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”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.