03:22.0N  083:58.5W

 
Friday 5th March

 
Another rocky and rolly night last night which wasn't great. As a result Amy was ill and so was I! Late evening however we were surrounded by dolphins jumping out of the water, some about 6 ft high. Amy also spotted a curious turtle popping his head out of the water as we sailed past, so we're having to take the good with the bad! Oh and we even found our first flying fish fatality of the crossing this morning, poor thing.
 
All has been well on board Jackamy today. We've been zipping along at 7-10 knots with a strong breeze behind us. There has however been a bit of excitement with another boat. At about 11.00 am this morning we received a call on the VHF radio from Roundabout to say they had just had a fire on board. David thankfully managed to put it out quickly as a fire on board a boat is possibly the worst thing you could wish for. He believes it was an electrical fault with the main bilge so he has that isolated and we're hoping that is what the problem was. Because we have been sailing close to Blue Magic he asked that we start to head his way so that he wasn't alone. Raylah who were closer managed to get to them first and we caught sight of them at around 5 pm. Again it's nice to know that 3 other boats are in close proximity.
 
We're now on the rhumb line heading straight for the Galapagos. We don't know if we have passed the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) which is an area of disturbed unsettled weather surrounding the earth a few degrees north of the Equator where the northeast and southeast Tradewinds converge and where the sea temperatures reach their maximum. It is an area with moderate to strong convection interspersed with areas of calm (the doldrums). There is frequent torrential rain with thunder and lightening and often squally winds from all directions. Last night there was a storm to the north of us and Spirit of Nina who are 38 miles north of us have absolutely no wind suggesting they are in the ITCZ. But if we are south of the zone we should have winds coming from the southeast but we still have north easterlys suggesting we're still above the zone so who knows, we'll just wait and see what happens. We're just hoping and praying that these winds stay with us no matter what direction they are from! None of us fancy motoring for 500 miles!