Becalmed in the Doldrums proper

Nine in the evening was our first lightning, its an eerie business at sea, trees all around without shelter  and not a golfer to be seen. The whole sky ignites like a flash bulb so bright you can hardly see the paparazzi, let alone where the fork came down. Somewhere later in the night the wind went all peculiar for the beginning of the doldrums proper, there had been a few false alarms but this time it swung all about and rain so bad you could have been in Gibraltar. We put the motor on at eleven. By one am the log mileage reading crossed five thousand miles from Ipswich back in England, that’s a long way in a boat! Oh What a Night! The Bee Gee’s never meant it this way surely. We turned the motor off a half hour later at one thirty Saturday, sailed again a little more then by sunrise the autopilot woke us with a failed course alarm. The wind and speed of boat were both zero, we were bobbing nowhere and nowhere fast. Six thirty am Saturday morning motor on, half the cutter bang in the middle of the track and some main to steady, all south. A rough bearing starboard off the Sao Paulo Rocks a few days ahead and back to bed.

12 utc position is 03.54.00N  29.03.00W