2216 UTC | 08° 10.72’ S 107° 23.94’ W
Sailing
FALKEN is officially on the highway to the Marquesas, as Alex calls it, also known as the southeasterly trades. She is cruising along with the swell (finally) on her stern and the sails wing on wing. I wasn’t sure the term ‘highway’ could accurately apply to sailing until about five minutes ago, when Kate surfed down an above average wave and reached 17.6 kts of boatspeed. I can confirm that down here at the nav desk, I certainly believed that I was on a highway to something.
The yankee is rigged to the pole, which means I’ll finally stop tripping over it every time I go to the foredeck. It’s been an eventful past 24 hours to reach this point, and I’ve lost track of how many reefs I’ve put in and shaken out. I’m almost convinced that a few of them were just for Alex’s entertainment. The breeze is ever present but constantly in flux, and in a way, I find it strangely comforting that it will never fully make up its mind.
All is well with the crew—we’re enjoying conversations ranging from European bears (they exist, right?!) to electrolytes to sea stories. Some of us even laugh at Ken’s extraordinarily niche jokes. Flying fish constantly zip just above the surface, raising questions of what could possibly be chasing them down below. We’ve stopped keeping tally, but many have found their unfortunate end after flinging themselves onto FALKEN (or worse, straight into Beven).
As for me? I’ve found myself most in awe at night, when bioluminescence sends glimmers of wave crests across an otherwise dark expanse. I’ve seen more shooting stars than I thought physically possible, and I love how Venus is always the first bright spot to appear in the sky as the sun sets. I’ve been thinking much about how space must not be all that different from the open seas, empty and incomprehensible from afar but alive and intricate once you zoom in. I find myself smiling as I realize it’s no surprise those who explore space were named after sailors.
Love to all,
Zoe Peach-Riley (Apprentice)
View more passage logs
Last night in the Southern Hemisphere!
At midnight, Joey's watch sang happy birthday under a sky full of stars; by 0930, the crew had already swum in 5,000 meters of Pacific blue, chased rainbows through a golden squall, and eaten chocolate chip pancakes with Moorea pineapple. That's the doldrums for you—the wind dies and life somehow gets fuller. Tomorrow, Neptune comes to collect his due as SV Nordic Falken crosses the equator for the first time.
First squall of the trip!
"We're gonna get our ass whooped" — not the sunrise greeting anyone had in mind, but Jim called it. The oldest and sharpest hand on board steered them straight through the squall, soaked to the bone and loving every minute of it. He's got a message for his wife, and it turns out she was right about the water.
Sextants, Polynesian Wayfinding, Captain Cook, and Tupaia, Oh My!
Somewhere north of Tahiti and south of Hawaii, aboard a 65-foot rocket of a sailboat loaded with GPS and Starlink, we pulled out a sextant. Not as a novelty—as a navigation tool. Because it turns out the 2,500-mile passage from Tahiti to Hawaii is less a ocean crossing and more a living museum of how humans have always answered the same stubborn question: where am I, and how do I get home? Captain Cook had his chronometers and math; his Polynesian crewmate Tupaia had the stars, the swells, and a map of the Central Pacific stored entirely in his head—and somehow, they were asking the exact same thing.
