Welcome in the Doldrums !
Yesterday just after sending the email, the rain hit and we were left without wind for a couple of hours. Flapping sails and going nowhere. Well, we knew that this would come. It seems we’ve reached the doldrums at about 07 degrees north. Could that be ? Later in the morning the wind came back and changed direction a couple of times to keep the skipper busy. Hehehe.
It was also during the last night watch that I noticed a flickering in our light at the mast topp. When the sun rose I could see why: The wifi antenna had somehow come loose and was tangling around like a straw in a cocktail glass. So I entered the mast to figure out what happenend and to fix it – only to realise that a change of course would have been convenient, before getting up there. Being at the very top of the mast when tacking against is not very enjoyable. I needed both legs and arms to hold on most of the time and thus it was quite difficult to secure the antenna using electric tape and a string. I was down a couple of minutes later, not exactly feeling very good. But the antenna is safe. Hehehe. After that we had breakfast and sailed until about noon when another rain sqall hit, after which the wind completely died.
So right now we’re sitting becalmed and are drifting with a speed of about 0.6 knots towards northeast. Not exactly helpful. But we can’t run the engine everytime, the wind is out – we don’t have enough diesel for that. So we’re sitting it out and try to cook something while the boat is shaking in the swell. Speaking of – we’ve got a swell of about 1.5m coming from the west. So there IS wind somewhere out there….
LATITUDE: 06-36.12N, LONGITUDE: 083-32.74W, COURSE: 356T, SPEED: 0.6,
WIND:0, DISTANCE TO DEST: 577nm