11/26/11

Noon Position 03 36' N 112 35' W, SOG 6.5, COG 240 T, Days Run 100nm.
Wind and Sea, incessantly. Groaning, pounding, creaking, moaning,
Odyssey struggles southward. It seems an eternity ago that the bow was
actually pointed south, that we loafed along in the puffy clouds of the
trade winds, that I thought the equator was only a few days away. Today
is our fourth day of beating hard, our second day of sailing west -
West, when we want to go East and South, but nature opposes me. I tried
tacking six or seven times this morning, hoping that perhaps something
had changed, that the currents that have bedeviled me all morning had
switched, for anything, but to no avail. I clambered into my harness,
braved the gloom and spray, eased running backstays, turned the windvane
to tack, released the working sheet, sheeted home the new working sheet,
got Odyssey hard on the wind, only to go below and see the GPS reading a
COG of 089, or 077, or 065 - NE, an even worse direction than SW. So
back on deck again, swapping runners, changing the windvane, passing
sheets, just go be heading at right angles from where I want to go. The
SE trades seem a thing of myth. Each new weather file I download seems
to have them retreating further south into the overcast skies. I
realized a few days ago that every day now I am the furthest south I
have ever been - I just expected to be quite a bit further south than I
am right now. 18 full days underway, and not yet at the equator.