Two nights

What a difference a day makes.

On Wednesday afternoon the wind started to drop and move slightly aft. Through the late afternoon and all night the wind slowly dropped and moved aft. The sky was absolutely clear and as darkness fell the roughly half moon was sparklingly brilliant on relatively calm seas. Once the moon had set the canopy of stars extended right down to the horizon. We had a beautiful sail all through the night with dazzling stars. On more than one occasion I thought I saw a ship's lights, only to realize it was a star. A few shooting stars added to the display. Shortly after sunrise the wind had become so light that we were forced to turn on the motor. But the seas were calm and it gave me a chance to take a shower in the cockpit, wipe away the salt, rinse the salt out of some clothes and spread them to dry in the sun.

Then yesterday afternoon (Thursday) the sky grew cloudy, the seas confused and the radar turned red with storm cells and squalls. When the first squall hit the wind jumped from 11kts and almost behind us to 28kts on the beam. With the double reefed main it was not a problem and we got a good ride for about 45 minutes. After that squall I could see a few holes in the cloud cover and look up at towering thunderheads all around. As evening fell the sky had a soft back light from the moon, but there were no stars to be seen. More squalls, some measuring 30 miles long and 10 miles wide, passed through rinsing New Morning with more freshwater until the moon had gone down and the soft glow extinguished. Now the wind is gone entirely, there is a light rain failing and the seas whipped up by the squalls are rolling us around as we motor through the night.

Sailors used to call the area around the equator the doldrums, but this has been upgraded to the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone or ITCZ. Bigger name, same lousy weather. We had expected to pass through the ITCZ from roughly 5N - 8N, only 180miles, roughly a day or so of unsettled conditions as we would transition from the SE trades (which were really East for us) to the NE trades that would carry us to Hawaii. But this is weather and it never seems to be "normal". The squally weather began about 4N and the NE trades are at about 11N, over 400 miles of "unsettled" weather.

And I've just learned that we're going to need to go to Honolulu, not Kona, to get the main repaired. More on that after I adjust the route.