21.44.00 N
021.17.45 W
10.09.08
1900
s/y safari
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'tanking along' at nearly 8 knots. a lovely broad reach, one reef in the main and only a wee spot of headsail away. still heading basically south and west. at some point, we'll head west and north, but that's not for a long while. strategy is a part of that. and just the general scale of where we are and where we are theoretically headed.
by now, josephine should be in the caribbean and we can only hope that this one's not too devastating. it must be something to live year in and year out with the possiblity that the wind may one day kick up and wipe all your work away. just started reading 'travels with charley,' which opens with a hurricane. never knew until recently that each year they start with 'A' and ascend alphabetically. in steinbeck's book, "Donna" was on the labour day weekend. so that gives us an idea about how the global weather patterns may be changing in our time. i wonder if they got to hurricanes larry or marvin routinely in that time.
we've crossed the tropic of cancer. therefore we're now in the tropics. heaps of flying fish. they, en masse, spring from in front of our bow waves into the wind. thirty or forty mouse-sized projectiles skipping along the waves. they're elegant and fly like birds; some of them make fifty, eighty feet. occasionally skips like a stone on a creek and doubles its distance.
being between the tropics means also that we should be able i think to see the southern cross. had some dolphins yesterday, more together and also more active /friendly than before. they surfaced right between our hulls and opened their blow-holes. surprise! it sounds like breathing. and man, are they FAST.
at lunch we're told that the cotton-wool ball clouds are associated with the trades. i'd always associated them with stratus clouds. regrettably, i had to stop and ask. no, we don't call it cotton-wool. and nor had i heard the term 'mare's tails' before. stratus clouds. cirrus clouds. easier.
but that's good we're closer to the trades now. it appears out weather window is holding. at this point, that means nothing significant is developing over africa. tropical revolving storms, as they are called, begin as large depressions. if they deepen, they can be upgraded to a TRS or to Hurricane proper. if they're big, they get named.
