Day 7

Have truly entered into the ITCZ (doldrums) and spent an extremely rainy day trying to keep the boat going as the winds came and went – by mid afternoon the boat speed was around 2 knots.  We had just furled the genoa and brought in the main sail and started the engine when the wind got up – it then came from ahead of the beam so we were able to sail on a reach with a very reasonable speed and lovely flat seas.  This lasted late into the night then it swung back but still blowing at around 15 knots from astern.  We kept up a good speed through the night until just before dawn then the sea started to get lumpy and the wind dropped.  It’s back up a bit again – very overcast – so we’ll see what the day brings. 

We’re now just picking up the westward flowing equitorial current, (the current gribs seem to be right!), which eventually become the Guyana current. This should increase in speed (2-3k) as we progress along the north Brazilian coast and hopefully whisk us all the way to Grenada in a couple of weeks. We’re now only 65nm from Cabo de sao roque (the north east corner of Brazil) and over a third of the way there – only another 1900 miles to go!

PS. Just got a visit from a very large pod of small high leaping dolphins waving welcome to Brazil flags!

PPS Officially identified as pan-tropical spotted dolphins or maybe Atlantic spotted dolphins – difficult to distinguish between them!

Date and time: 23rd Feb 2016; 0800 GMT

24 hours distance:   163nm

Position: S04:34:94 W034:28:26