Thundersqualls and tinsel - now 120nm north of the equator
S/Y Pelerin
Colin Speedie & Louise Johnson
Thu 27 Dec 2012 15:45
Boy, have we had some lightning & squalls to contend with in the last 48
hours. They’re not joking when they say you should try to hurry through the
doldrums… Santa brought the first batch of squalls on Christmas Day, just as
we were sitting down to our roast dinner (by the way, with all the
trimmings!), and since then it’s been a case of scouring the horizon looking
for gaps between heavily laden cumulonimbus clouds, especially those with
lightning.
And Boxing Day evening (last night) saw us being chased south by the mother
of all developing storm cells – it looked such a scary cell that none of us
wanted to look behind us, the whole sky was being lit by lightning, and you
feel very small. As it was growing behind us, it kept catching us up,
especially as we have up to 2 knots of current against us at the moment…
They make movies out of this sort of experience! I even had to take down my
tinsel in case it got blown out of the cockpit. But although touch and go
for a while, we were fine. But the lightening and squall stayed close behind
all night, and other smaller downpours were mostly avoided by weaving a path
through the worst clouds by use of the radar. What a night! And had a right
downpour this morning – we made the most of it and scrubbed the decks – we
got absolutely soaked, but at least we saved on shower water!
Today, winds are very light. We’ve had to do a fair bit of motoring just to
get us towards the southern edge of this ITCZ zone. We’re all just
desperately looking forward to the SE trade winds reaching us, but we have
to get a bit more south first. We’re currently at 2degrees 11minutes north
of the Equator, and depending on whether we can get any wind, we hope to
cross the Equator Friday afternoon. Fingers crossed…
But the food is lasting well. All our fresh bread has gone, but salad still
fresh, or at least the parts of the lettuce that the caterpillars haven’t
eaten. How can they survive in the fridge?! Mind you, with the temperatures
we have at the mo, I’d like to sit in the fridge for a bit myself.
All the best to all
Lou, Colin & Ronnie x