125* 19.4 West
Between Latitudes 10 North and 10 South is what old fashioned sailors used to call the doldrums because there was often little or no wind in this band all the way around the
Earth. However, leave it to modern sailors to come with a much more technical, if not accurate name: Inter Tropical Convergence Zone or ITCZ*. Whatever you what to call it, traditional or modern, we are there.
Yesterday, we caught a shift that Brad has been predicting almost since we left Mexico and jibed making south on nice breeze. Said breeze has continued past the 10* North line as the actual ITCZ changes its size and shape daily, if not hourly. Those of our readers who live in Seattle have intimate experience with convergence zones and how difficult it is to accurately predict weather in them. So, we just keep sailing til the wind finally shuts off which Weather Boy, aka Brad, says is eminent. At which point, we turn on our motor and head south toward the closest patch of wind on the other side. One of the boats ahead of us, actually had to motor a little to the east for their wind. We will see what the weather Gods have in store for us.
We had fresh mahi-mahi last night for dinner and also boatmade sourdough bread. The night sailing actually took us through a few squalls, but towards morning as the little slice of moon rose, the skies cleared and showed us a plethora of stars followed by a beautiful sunrise and our first sunny day since leaving Mexico. With regards to where we are, we have the boat all opened up trying to keep as much air moving through it as possible, so that if any of the fluffy white clouds that are all around us decide to go over the top of us and precipitate, we will be able to frantically close it all up.
*We are pretty sure that the "T" stands for "tropical", but please accept our apologies if we are misquoting here. We do not have Google for fact checking.
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