Drunken sailors?

If you have been following our progress via Yotreps you may have wondered about our erratic path. Things went well for the first three days or so after departing C. Corrientes. Then we found ourselves wanting to sail down wind but with only 5 to 10 kts of wind to do it with. Poling out the genoa was scary since the wind would sometimes gust to 20 kts. My scariest bit occurred during a depoling operation. We won't go into details here since Susan will be reading this. (I now know how better to do it.) After crossing 121W we were in the NE trades with winds from 14 to 20 kts. We took all this as a reach (sails all hanging off the same side of the boat). We could get no closer to our desired SW course than 180 deg on port tack and 270 deg on starboard tack. We covered 130 or 140 miles in a day, but they weren't all pointed the way we really wanted to go.

Last night it appeared th[at we left the NE trades and entered the infamous ITCZ, the Intertropical Convergence Zone (called the Doldrums in the old days). This is a region of no winds, winds from a variety of directions, towering cumulus formations trailing rain looking like airborne jelly fish, and thunder and lightning. So far the winds have been from the E (good) while we are in an amphitheater surrounded by jelly fish but with clear sky above.

We have done about 1800 iles from PV and have about 1000 to go. We are feeling that we may be seeing some kind of light at the end of some kind of tunnel. When the sailing is good it is grand to be here. But we are tired of having to hang on all the time and I am tired of preparing meals on flat surfaces that are not level. We are looking forward to uniting with Susan and Judy in Hiva Oa and seeing land there. Also, I am looking forward to tapping into our alcohol locker, which we haven't touched at all.

Oh, and Susan, the main has been reefed most of the time.

Kit and Tom