Saturday 20th February
Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Sat 20 Feb 2016 18:40
We are puzzling whether we are still in the ITCZ or not. The amount of lightning about in the night watches suggests that we are. The barometer remains low and unchanged over the last 2 or 3 days whereas it fell steadily as we came down to the equator and we are expecting it to start rising as we move away from the convergence zone. It's cloudy with frequent rain as well and the wind is from the SSE or even due S. This implies still firmly in the convergence zone as we'd expect it more like E or ESE and blue skies (which is what's predicted by the GRIB file we downloaded at 7 am this morning) were we to have passed through the ITCZ. However 3° is rather south of its normal southern limit for this time of year, or so I understand.
Anyway we are making progress hard on port tack and more or less in the right direction.
We hove-to for an hour this morning to get the second jib down and off the track in the twin luff-groove forestay. We have removed it because it stops the yankee from setting as well as it could and we are unlikely to need it as we don't expect to be running anytime soon. Getting it down was easy enough but then folding it up neatly was hard on a moving deck in a wind. But with much exertion and not too much bickering we folded it up and even got it into its bag and stored below.
Sea birds have appeared, in particular a juvenile booby keeps returning and going and peering at the mast head.
Fiona's notes on boat life: everything seems to be covered in salt. Us, the bed sheets, our clothes, the sails and the rigging to mention a few. James took advantage of one of the frequent rain storms this morning and as the water poured off the sail and down the stack pack he took a shower complete with shampoo. Waste not want not!