We officially entered the Dolldrums today.
The last time we were in it we had a repeatedly change of dead calms followed by quick approaching squalls gusting up within seconds to 30-40 knots for about 4 days. It rained almost the whole time and living outside wasn’t possible anymore. The squalls are unpredictable and can hit you any time. They left it’s tall and we sailed out of the Dolldrums with a damaged main sail and spinnaker.
But not this time! So far so good we are sailing with about 16-20 knots of wind and an amazing boat speed of 8-9 knots through it. The reason is a tropical depression passing by north of us. While the storm is making it’s way further west we use the rest of the storm to get through the Dolldrums as fast as possible. With a 45 degree heading and an apparent wind angle of about 95 degrees ZERO is flying over little mountains of waves shaking us a tiny bit more from left to right then we are used to. The last two weeks we were leaning to port and everything on the port side was pretty much save to leave. Now we have to rethink our boat organization a little for the following days though the wind will push us down wind and into the hurricane belt soon.
Fingers crossed that we’ll be safe out of here soon!
Thanks to the awesome weather forecast we get from predict wind. Because of these precise forecasts we dare to go close to those tropical depressions/Hurricanes.
We also have a tracking page with the apparent weather situation on our website sailingzero.com. So if you like you can check it out.
Have a wonderful day out there 🙂 Fay
Sent from the ocean