Friday Noon
The Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ is an area of light winds and bad weather located north of the equator. It is caused by the North East trade winds coming down from the Northern Hemisphere meeting the South East trade winds coming up from the Southern Hemisphere. You might wonder why this is important? Well it's very important to us because the ITCZ is our next big hurdle as well as one of the major factors in the weather we have. Right now there is a minor low pressure system embedded in the ITCZ just to our south. This is causing higher than normal trade winds and cloudy skies. It's making a pretty rough ride and both of us are commenting on the amount of exercise we're getting just hanging on. We both go to bed exhausted at the end of our watches only to be tossed around in bed making it hard to sleep. Somehow we manage to get 6-8 hours a day, in 2 hour increments.
We have crossed the ITCZ 6 times and have never had what we would consider a 'bad' crossing. Sure we've experienced light winds and some rain, but it wouldn't take much effort on Google to find stories of horrendous lightening storms and squalls. These things we have been lucky to avoid.
We're not sure what our next crossing will bring, in a week or so, but we're working to make sure it is as calm as possible by being in the right place at the right time.
{GMST}14|55|N|117|38|W|Mexico to Marquesas Day 10|Day 10{GEND}
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