St. Helena to the Caribbean - Day 12

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Thu 24 Jan 2013 12:34
00:24.867N  31:52.821W
 
January 24, 2013
 
They are not playing well together.
Nope, the northern and southern hemisphere weather systems do not enjoy each other's company.  Too bad, because it puts us right in the middle of a giant rain storm.  There is no thunder and lightning, and the wind has only gone up briefly as high as 30 knots, so it's not really a storm per se, but the giant blob of rain on the radar says we'll be in this for a while.  Don is excited though because the rain brought the northeast wind with it.  We'll see if it sticks around longer than the east wind that came with yesterday's rain... 
 
Just as the blog went out yesterday, the wind turned east, and spiked up to 25 knots bringing lots of rain.  We thought, 'Aha!  This is it!  The east wind we've been waiting for.'  So we went through the pain and suffering of dismantling the downwind rig in the pouring rain.  It took about an hour, and would have gone perfectly except that the rain (and bit of wind) made it difficult to get the big blue ballooner sail down.  The process we've found works best is to collapse the ballooner onto the genoa by turning the boat to starboard and into the wind until the ballooner is backwinded, then loosening the sheet until the ballooner lays flat against the genoa.  This way when we release the top of the ballooner, the sail should slide down the face of the genoa, and fall neatly onto the deck (as opposed to in the water, which has happened before, and is never pretty).  All good in theory, but the rain and wind acted like glue, keeping the ballooner up and pinned to the genoa no matter how hard we tugged at it to get it to slide down the foil.  By the time the rain had soaked through our clothes and into our underwear, the ballooner decided it was ready to come down.  With a few mighty tugs from Don, the soaking sail came down and was unceremoniously shoved into its deck locker.  There was no time to reminisce about how well our lovely blue sail served us over the past eleven days, paired so perfectly with the genoa, and allowing us to glide more than sail in front of the southeast wind so nicely.  No, there was no time for sentimentality, but I do wonder if all the water running down Don's face as we manhandled the sail onto the deck and into the locker was rain?
 
Of course, as soon as the sail was down, poles brought in and downwind rigging stowed, the rain stopped and the wind shifted back to the southeast.
 
Doesn't it figure?  But that's always the way around the equator where north meets south and the two do battle for dominance.  Anyway, at that point there was no way we were going to put the downwind rig back up, so we broke down once again, and fired up the engine.  After motorsailing in light southeast wind through most of the night, the northeast wind finally showed up in a blast of 30 knots at ten this morning.  We've been sailing ever since in a more moderate 15-20 knot breeze from the northeast, with the rain at first pounding, then tapering off to a steady drizzle (as it continues to do now).  We are hoping this batch of northeast wind hangs around, especially now that we are in the northern hemisphere.  Yup, that's right, we had an uneventful fourth equator crossing last night just before midnight.  I was on watch at the time, and didn't even bother to look for the dotted blue line since we've decided it doesn't really exist.  We do have a few sacrifices we plan to toss to the sea gods, but we're waiting for the weather to clear up a bit.  Hopefully they won't mind our tardiness.
 
And that's not all - later today, about seven hours from now, we'll finally reach the half-way mark.  Twelve days in and we're only half-way!  Holy moly.
 
Oh, and we gave up on the freezer.  It's been cleared out and is now resting peacefully.  We'll be eating lots of meatloaf over the next several days.
 
Half a passage nearly down, half a passage to go (1,875 miles).
Anne