It has taken us another two weeks before we could finally cross the Equator. The course we had laid out for the passage turned out not to be a good one.A short while after I wrote the last report we started to realise that we were being taken west by some quite strong currents. And the boat would hardly be moved by the wind! During our short swim in the Doldrums we had seen some nasty looking organisms clinging onto the hull. They were reddish and somewhat jellyish, different from the ones we have had before. Could it be these that were dragging us this much? Anyway, we decided to try and scrape it off in order to gain some more speed. This time we used metal scrapes to be efficient. During a couple of hours we had done quite a lot and decided to see if things had changed. Well, it hadn’t changed much so we needed to do something drastic if we wanted to reach the destination we had chosen. After careful studies of the pilot charts, and an old map showing the routes of the sailing merchant ships we realised we needed to go East in order to reach Brazil! There we could catch some of the southgoing currents that could carry us out of the NW currents that were effectively hindering us where we were. So we made a 300 nm detour against Africa before heading south again. And alas! Here we are, south of Equator, heading straight towards Cabedelo in Brazil. Actually, we are now aware of the powers of the NW going currents, and try to keep as far south as we can to have some margin in case the wind dies or something changes unfavorably. There seems to be no problem to get back north again in these waters!
Ours is gonna be one of the very slow Atlantic crossings, but were fine! We have water and food, and yesterday we even catched our first dorado! A small one, 3,7 kilos, but perfect for the celebration of the Equator crossing! Miss Neptun even paid us a visit, so our crossing must havs been registered with the Master of the Ocean!
So long then, until Brazil!
Gjertrud
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