We crossed the equator on Day 20. It was a joyful event for my two crew members and me on our 2,700-mile voyage from Mexico to the Marquesas aboard my 37-foot sailboat, Honu.
And not just because we have reached the legendary South Pacific.
No, the equator crossing was momentous because it came so hard. To get here we had to cross the Intertropical Convergence Zone — ITCZ — a belt of marine latitudes where the northeast tradewinds meet the southeast tradewinds.
It is not a sailor-friendly meeting. The head-on winds swirl upward, creating thunderheads that roam between 3 and 10 degrees North like a gang of thugs looking for trouble. We saw the black squalls prowling around us for days, but as they have no predictable direction, we never knew if or when one was going to clobber us.
They struck twice. The cooling, boat-rinsing rain was a relief from the salt and equatorial heat, but the squalls also packed lightning and they fired wind in bursts from various directions. We managed to take in sails, stash books and don foul-weather gear in time, but the confused seas and driving rain made for a couple of long nights.
The ITCZ is tricky because it moves north and south, and lurking somewhere inside are the doldrums, calm patches. When the Ancient Mariner was becalmed in the doldrums, he moaned, "Water water everywhere and all the boards did shrink; water water everywhere nor any drop to drink."
But times have changed since Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote his epic poem. Because Honu is made of Fiberglas, we have no planks to dry out, and our water maker keeps our freshwater tanks full. We also have a diesel engine to power through the seemingly endless glassy blue water.
One day in the doldrums we stopped the motor to take a swim. It’s a daunting moment, jumping off a perfectly good boat 1,000 miles from land, but, like lemmings, John and I followed Alex’s dive off the aft deck.
With the boat not moving, we saw the water’s surface come alive with water striders, the only insects of the sea. Storm petrels, 6 to 8 inches long, had been swooping and dipping over the ocean’s rolling swells, and now we saw what they were doing: plucking goodies from the surface.
The ITCZ is hard for sailors to cross, but it’s impossible for some marine animals, such as soaring seabirds. Albatrosses don’t cross this barrier between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, and the booby birds that had been following Honu stayed behind.
"So long, suckers," I imagined them saying.
While swimming, I saw that gooseneck barnacles had set up housekeeping on parts of Honu’s hull. John kindly scraped them off while Alex stood on deck as shark lookout.
Making it through the ITCZ and crossing the equator gave us a grand feeling of accomplishment, but with 1,000 miles to go, we know the voyage is far from over.
But our spirits remain high. We know that on a long ocean passage it’s not the destination that’s key, but the magnificence of the journey.
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Reach Susan Scott at www.susanscott.net.
