St. Helena to the Caribbean - Day 14

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 26 Jan 2013 13:13
02:48.072N  37:26.020
 
January 26, 2013
 
It was a dark and stormy night.
Which has turned into a dark and stormy day.  Yesterday's friendly cornflower blue sky and puffy white clouds were never able to completely assert themselves, which enabled this endless gray gloom to move in and toss us around with wave after wave of rain storms, some packing sustained 30 knots of wind.  Yuck.  The wind direction is at least consistent, all of it coming from the northeast, so the silver lining is (oh how we love a silver lining) we are making very fast progress.  188 miles over the past 24 hours - very commendable.  We are not sure where the end of this gloom is, but we hope it's coming soon.  The churned up iron-gray seas are making it difficult to stay seated without falling over, let alone type.
 
On the bright side, the moon was almost full last night, shedding enough light on the gloom to allow us to see the black rain clouds as they approached.  The endless rain has helped bring the temperature down to a level we are happy with, without cooling the air so much that we feel the need to moan about the cold.  In other positive news, meatloaf was prepared for dinner last night using the last of the four freeze/thaw cycle hamburger.  Once again we've had no ill effects, so we can now claim victory over the freezer debacle.
 
We continue to have to work hard to sail the boat, bringing sails in and out as the wind fluctuates up and down with each passing rain storm.  As a result, our reading and email writing has suffered.  We should break out of this soon as we make more progress to the north and leave the messy doldrums/ITCZ weather behind.
 
Two weeks down, one week (plus one or two days) to go.
Anne