Hi, yang here. Well, we just completed our passage from the Galapagos to Costa Rica. Almost 900 miles in 6 days. The last day-and-a-half we had to motor across the ITCZ (inter-tropical convergence zone) and its associated doldrums and keep our speed down so we wouldn't arrive in the dead of night. Winds of a whopping 1/2 to 1 knot for 12 hours at a time. Then we'd be slammed by a 3 knot gust.
But the way up here was in 20-25 knots from behind. Ceilidh, with a theoretical maximum hull speed of just over 8 knots registered 9.20 on the knot log (through the water speed) and 9.6 SOG (speed over ground, and that was merely the max we saw once ... our GPS doesn't track max speeds).
Convection builds around the ITCZ, the more severe areas further north become low pressure systems, and of those a few become the Pacific hurricanes under the right conditions. But we just had rain with wind gusts to just under 40 knots to push us along even faster. Nothing slamming us over and ceilidh got a good washing. All the Ecuador dirt, volcano ash, and passage salt are now things of the past. Instead of squalls, think of them as sail-thru boat washes. So right now we're tucked in safely north of the ITCZ but still south of the hurricane formation zone.
The convection clouds under moonlight was a spectacular sight. Too bad we couldn't get any pictures, but I've tried to take long-exposure photos on a moving boat ... don't waste your time unless you like an image that crosses impressionistic art with acid rock-concert poster art. If the boat ride doesn't, the photo will make you seasick. Fortunately all the cells with lightning stayed far away where they appeared only as fantastic firework shows.
We plan to stay in northern Costa Rica for a couple of weeks visiting anchorages that we had to zip through coming south last January. Then take off again ... another posting in a couple of days with our plans.
Enjoy!
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