Off to a flying start

 06 47.983 N 80 34.938 W

We’ve clocked 153 nautical miles with an average speed of a 6.9 knot since leaving Panama yesterday at 1:30 pm. Keeping this speed up, we’ll drop anchor in the Marquesas in 23 days. Nice, strong northerly winds have pushed us along. It’s been sporty at times with gusts up to 34 knots (17.5 m/s).

But in between us and the destination is the ITCZ, the inter tropical convergence zone, aka the doldrums. That’s the roughly 50 - 300 mile area of unstable weather around the equator, where we can expect little wind and frequent rain showers and thunderstorms. We won’t go fast there. In fact, we will likely have to use the engines, but at slow speed to save fuel. 

Once we are through the doldrums, we will catch the steady, beautiful trade winds again, but they too can be fickle. The average speed of the entire trip could be significantly slower than 6.9 knots. We could be out in the blue for another 30 days.

Off to a flying start in more than one sense. My siblings, Axel and Kicki, are a great help on the boat. No surprise there since they have legacy boating creds, albeit a little rusty, like mine were 2 ½ years ago. We grew up sailing from early spring to late fall in the Baltic Sea and share many funny and/or hair-raising memories from those waters. The rust is quickly getting polished off; Kicki and Axel are already getting sails in and out, reefing, adjusting sheets, steering, keeping watch, etc., etc. Go Team Halley!