Thursday, April 03, 2008

Further adventures!

Working our way south through this ITCZ beast! It really is a moving target. Last night, just after dark, we saw a very dark cloud formation that radar confirmed was only about 4 miles ahead. Looked like lots of rain. The two other boats we are now in convoy with, Tarun and Tin Soldier, both BWC boats by chance, were ahead of us and radio reports from them had winds gusting to 20 kts and torrential rain! Tarun was blown E 5 nm before they could take action. Having experienced similar squalls
a few nights ago, this time we had a plan! Rolling up the head sail, two reefs in the main and firing up the iron genny we set the autopilot to 180 degrees and attempted to proceed due south through it. Well, they did not exaggerate the rain, it came down in buckets! But no harm there! And the wind was not too bad so we motored blind through it. Seem to be some strange currents pushing in all directions as well, maybe this is where the W Equatorial Current meets the Equatorial Counter Current.
That could explain a lot. For anyone who had ever sailed off Cape Mudge on Vancouver Island, just multiply that by 10! It got nasty but only lasted a few hours and we were out the other side. A light breeze picked up and allowed us to sail the rest of the night. Morning now and need new data on the location of the ITCZ so will download email. We are hoping it is moving north again and we have all day to put some miles between us and it!
To the SW of us is a beautiful rainbow! A sign perhaps? Should we change course and seek the pot of gold? Anything is possible out here!

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