Rites of Passage

An out-of-order post, written after we passed through the doldrums about 10 days ago, and posted here in Barbados, where we arrived yesterday, safe and sound.  We spent today doing laundry, cleaning the boat, launching the dinghy, and look forward to 6 weeks of cruising the Windward and Leeward islands of the Caribbean.

More posts to follow, with pictures, as we sample the various islands.

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The large scale weather patterns on either side of the equatorial Atlantic Ocean are breathtakingly predictable, consistent, and timeless.  Heading north from South Africa, one moves ritually into the southeast trades, through the doldrums, or, as it is known by meteorologists, the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), and then into the northeast trades. Three distinct weather zones, each governed by the laws of physics: air moves from high pressure to low pressure; the earth's west-to-east rotation imparts a west-bound direction to north-bound air in the southern hemisphere and south-bound air in the northern hemisphere; and where competing southeast and northeast winds meet, at and near the equator, instability reigns.

Leaving the Cape of Good Hope, on a northbound passage, a sailing vessel will experience consistent southeast winds around and beyond the tiny islands of St. Helena and Ascension, as the crew skirts the edge of the massive year-round South Atlantic high pressure system, its counter-clockwise winds defining the weather.  These southeast trades blow consistently as one sails northwest toward Brazil and the Caribbean.  As one approaches the equator, the influence of the South Atlantic high begins to wane, but not before delivering a thousand miles or more of gentle following breezes.

This makes for lovely sailing, and so it was for us, leaving Cape Town and then St. Helena for Barbados, our now-chosen port of call in the Caribbean.  The mainsail of our catamaran, limited in its ability to extend perpendicularly from the boat's centerline by the two swept-back shrouds, is not especially suited for dead downwind sailing, so we deployed our two headsails - our genoa and the larger genaker - in a wing-and-wing arrangement, one on each side of the boat. We set the autopilot on a course dead downwind, and let the southeast trades push us along at about 5 knots, as the boat's stern lifted and surfed gently down the following seas with each passing swell. We're not especially fast under that sail configuration, but the boat is stable, it's very little work, and it's very comfortable.  Other boats our size are faster by a bit - maybe averaging 6+ knots, but we like the steady, effortless glide of our conservative approach.

We left St. Helena on a Tuesday, the 28th of February, and sailed merrily northwest, in a following wind for two weeks, rarely adjusting a sail, catching up on reading, listening to podcasts, doing some writing, and enjoying the isolation of our little corner of the planet.  Day in, day out, we sailed dead downwind, adjusting course a few degrees every day or so, rarely straying from the rhumb line, the direct course connecting our point of departure and the southern tip of Barbados, several thousand miles distant.  A gentle passage leg on the way to a distant landfall.

But eventually the winds diminished, blue skies turned cloudy, and our boat speed fell.  As with the thousands of ships and boats that have gone before us on this journey, we face the requisite and unavoidable crossing of the doldrums, with its windless days and nights, relentless gray skies and torrential rains.  A brief rain shower on March 11th, another on the 12th, and then, on the 13th of March, a few hours after crossing the equator for the second time on this circumnavigation, we enter the twilight zone of the doldrums as the wind falls silent, and the skies open up.

What's going on? Around the equator, where the southeast winds of the southern hemisphere meet the northeast winds of the northern hemisphere, confusion reigns inside the Kingdom of the Weather Gods.  Southern air flowing north meets northern air flowing south, resulting in a Mexican standoff, neither flow willing to cede, neither flow strong enough to prevail.  Without the wind-borne dissipation of the tropical ocean's evaporating moisture, humidity levels rise, clouds form, and eventually, the skies become too heavy and the rain begins to fall in great striated sheets.

These are the doldrums, the price mariners pay for the steadiness of the north- and southeast trade winds.  Little to no wind, hot, sultry weather, frequent squalls and thunderstorms - and perversely, the stronger the trade winds, the more severe the weather inside the doldrums.  For boats headed north, to London or New York , these windless conditions cruelly repeat themselves, usually absent the cooling rains, in the so-called Horse Latitudes, which lie beyond the northern edge of the northeast trades.  There, 18 and 19th century ships would drift for weeks on end, and the logs of these captains and crew talk of men going mad.  Navigators looked for signs that one or another of the competing weather systems would prevail, bringing wind and an end to the rains.  With no wind or waves to disperse the effluent, ships lay adrift amid vast stagnant islands of animal and human waste. Non-essential cargo would be jettisoned in an effort to lighten the boats.  Discipline became a problem.

 Apart from a doldrums-inspired brief obsession with computer solitaire, we are spared much of that scene, thankfully, and encountered no thunderstorms.  Rain, on the other hand, arrived in abundance. We motor across smooth seas, as rain cells, weaving drunkenly across the ocean, surround us with dark clouds and the constant threat of more rain.  One cell appears before us just a mile away, but slides away to the south, while another, barely visible a few minutes ago, re-appears just behind us, overtakes us, and pours thousands of gallons of warm, silky fresh water onto our decks and cockpit.  One day, we experience a near continuous succession of drenching rain showers, their combined precipitation reaching levels that we haven't seen since our last foray through the Pacific Ocean's ITCZ , on our way from Panama to the Galapagos, several years ago.

Over the course of several days, having motored under alternating engines to spread the wear and tear, we still have no wind, and it seems like we're never going to have a dry boat.  Humidity levels are so high that everything inside the boat glistens with a sheen of dampness; we can't keep our kitchen towels dry enough to wipe the countertops; the floor is slippery and the beautiful Persian rug bought by my brother and sister-in-law in Iran is so damp that we're worried about its stitching, about permanent mold spots.  These rugs are made for arid climates, not the persistent wetness of the tropics.

Unexpectedly, the skies clear and we have a day of brilliant sunshine, but still no wind, as if a truce had been engineered between the competing weather systems, or perhaps the sky had just run out of water.  Everything inside goes outside to dry off - the rug lies across the boom, the throw pillows on the cabin top, towels and clothing hanging from every line, our sheets laid out on the trampoline.  Blessed dryness - so, energized, we take some bleach and wipe clean the ceilings and corners of the interior.  If it doesn't rust on a boat, it molds, never more so than now, in these doldrums.  Vigilance is essential; prevention is everything. We tell ourselves that we must be through the doldrums, that the anticipated northeast trades are imminent, that soon we can start sailing again, turn the engines off, at last free of their unnatural noise and vibration.

But that night, the Weather Gods mock our optimism; they remind us of their dominion over this realm, and their rains return in an encore performance that puts their earlier display of precipitation to shame. We can hear them say, echoing the Crocodile Dundee line: "Rain?  That's no rain!  This is rain!!!"  It's as if the ocean is turned upside down.  Under a low featureless sky, the clouds gradually morph from vapors  to waterfalls, and thick long exclamation points of recycled ocean water pelt the boat, overflow our gutters, and run sheet-like down our windows and hulls.  The rain fills our mainsail cover so that it bulges with water, the water oozing out of the tiny pores of the canvas, bleeding more rain onto rain.

As night falls on our fourth night in the doldrums, our fuel tanks read one-third full - we've been motoring non-stop for nearly 90 hours, at the rate of 1.7 liters per hour, moving northwest at 4.7 knots, trying to punch through the northern edge of the ITCZ.  If we hadn't been blessed by the day of sunshine, our spirits would be as soggy as the weather; as it is, we're wondering whether we'll ever experience sun and wind again.

And then, under a drizzling sky, just before the waning quarter moon appears on the eastern horizon, a suggestion of wind from the north, and, to the west, a smudge of lighter sky, a patch where the refracted light of a long-gone sun reveals a break in the cloud bank.  Our hope springing ever eternal, we raise the main to catch the breeze, convincing ourselves that wishing will make it so, and we suffer through the clattering of our sail, as the boat rolls in the modest swell.  A new version of the Mexican standoff:  can the wind prevail over the swell? I'm reminded of the Tom Waits line: "My steak was so tough it attacked my coffee, which was far too weak to defend itself."

At first we motorsail, the thrust of our slowly-turning engine giving us enough of a push to keep the sails full, just barely.  Then the winds gradually increase, to 8 knots, then 10 knots, and the mist disappears.  Soon, we're ghosting forward at 4 knots under our sails alone, the first time in days our engines have had a real break.  Midnight comes, and the risen moon backlights a scrim of clouds in the east; fuzzy dots appear overhead as the light from distant stars penetrates the thinning humidity.  The wind picks up, the breeze steadying from the east-northeast.  Five knots of boat speed, and we can start to hear the schuss of our twin wakes converging on our stern.  Dawn arrives, the rising sun revealing the absence of low clouds, the absence of rain, the wind on our right cheek confirming what we now know to be true: we've passed through the doldrums, and are sailing again, our passage resumed. The North Atlantic's high, with its clockwise winds, now defines the weather: we're in the northeast trades.

Mid-morning, we're flying along at 7 knots, the wind a steady 15 knots on the starboard beam, our sails as full as our hearts.  We can expect these winds to hold, and perhaps strengthen, for the 10-12 days it will take us to reach Barbados.  It's a lovely point of sail for us, allowing us to fly both our main and our genoa, and we expect to make good time.  The seas fill with skittering flying fish; floating lines of yellow sagassum weed extend along the direction of the wind, like yard markers across our path; we begin to see the bluish transparent air sacs of Portuguese men of war, their ridges limned iridescent purple. We've crossed the equator, passed through the doldrums, and are now surrounded by the waters and marine life of the North Atlantic Ocean.

 We count our blessings; cruising friends just one hundred miles to the west of us endured nearly six days in the ITCZ, victims of its wandering nature as the competing wind systems of our two hemispheres vie for supremacy.  Then again, friends that passed this way a week before us had a short two-day crossing of the ITCZ, proving that even predictable weather patterns have their idiosyncrasies.  It doesn't matter; we're all sailing now, bound for different destinations.

As we continue to make our way northward, reflecting on the three distinct wind zones of the equatorial Atlantic Ocean - the southeast trades, the doldrums, and the northeast trades - we are reminded of why we are drawn to quixotic enterprises like sailing around the world.   We do so in part to remind ourselves of the scale and timelessness of natural forces, and to understand that any change in prevailing winds or our life's direction requires a period of transition, where it's frequently cloudy and wet, where progress stalls, and where the prognosis becomes uncertain.  We sail across oceans because we enjoy making sense of the vagaries of weather, and because we appreciate a sunny day amid the rain, and the winds after the calm.  We sail for the rites of passage and the promise of a landfall.

For all these and a hundred reasons more, we sail.