00:56 UTC | 19°39.10’N 109°09.72’W
Sailing
Another perfect sunrise sipping coffee and swapping stories. It turns out that finding cockroaches on your boat is not the worst place to find them. As a young surf shop employee, Robert once found a cockroach duct taped to his back as by one of his coworkers. The most crucial and harrowing aspect of such a horrible prank is he could feel the little bugger squirming around under the tape. Thinking quickly while failing to reach the tape with his hands, Robert jumped to his back to squish the roach and end the horrible prank. Swapping stories is my favorite part of long passages.
The only thing that could top the gut wrenching laughter of the crew while Robert told his tale was after 1 day 23 hours and 5 minutes Christine finally broke Mary down and the kite went up! We were only able to fly it for the afternoon and it was great to see the crew taking turns at the helm whether they were on watch or not.
The yankee is back out and we are ready for a beautiful sunset and perfect sailing through the night.
Cheers,
Jake
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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.
Golden Day
The Pacific is giving us “the shimmer” - with a still flat sea seven hours out of San Francisco Bay, we’re motoring south along the shipping channel, with an hour to go to what teases now as a stunning sunset against wispy clouds. Throughout this first day of Falken 11 the sails have unfurled and been furled again as skipper Alex tries to fill them a meager breeze indeed. We’ve seen a few whales traveling along the route, and an otter that was sadly just a buoy. It’s the first open ocean sail for many of us and it’s a thrill to anticipate all the new experiences we’ll have.
Seasickness
But maybe, I thought, with some drugs I could stay ahead of it. The first 48 hours I felt horrible. But luckily with 3 health care professionals on board and in a very encouraging environment, my body found its way. Anyway, someone offered me a patch (unavailable in Canada) and someone else gave me some pills for nausea and now I feel much, much better.