Day 17 - Passage to the Caribbean
Misterx
Fri 18 Apr 2025 00:10
17/04/25
9:30 pm
Day 17
South Atlantic Ocean
DTD : 2,140 NM (84NM)
50 shades of grey all around us, that is what greeted me this morning as I got up... the sea, the skies, our mood...
It was bound to happen, we have been very lucky so far to have had so much sun and all things considered so much workable winds. Finally, the Doldrums in their full glory, not a breath of air, wall to wall clouds, and laden horizon with loads of rain. No avoiding it...The engine had to be fired up, for a good chunk of the day to keep up the forward motion going. We managed to switch it off around 2pm and we were making progress, between 3.5/4 knots of boat speed, but by 9pm, the wind truly died and the flogging if the main became unbearable. The engine got turned back on, it will probably be on all night, doing around 4.5 knots.
We got thoroughly wet today, a lot of intermittent rain, from light drizzle to tropical downpours and anything in between. We had to have lunch inside, which does not happen very often.
I have been peering at the horizon in front of us all day, hoping to see the edge of the cloud. One of our weather gurus assured us that we were in the middle of "solid but narrow bank - east to west along 2N - sat image confirms - moderate rain\squalls" and that once we have gone through this, it should all be fine, hopefully. This doesn;t feel like a narrow band of cloud... it has been all day, and most of the night!!
A few ray of sunshine managed to pierce the gloom and gave us a magnificent rainbow in the afternoon, and by sunset, we had a fabulous red sky, setting the billowing clouds around us on fire. Red sky at night, sailor's delight? More golden seaweeds floating past us... but not so much rubbish.
And we had a nice chat with another cruiser on the VHF, Spock, a 15 metres sailing boat on it way to Uruguay from Cape Verde. He called up to check we were ok as we were not moving much, we were not motoring at the time. We did explain that we were taking a break from the engine.
Our nightly visit from a pod of dolphins was early tonight, we could hear them splash in the dark. We could have done with the entertainment during the day!
This is going to be a long, hot and noisy shift, but at least we are moving forward, and hopefully by morning we will find the edge of the cloud, as promised.
M