Dripping in the Doldrums

Emily Little reports from the BT Global Challenge on board second placed Team Compaq

Position: 10deg N, 16deg 44W

On paper at least, we are now north of the ITCZ, the Intertropical Convergence Zone or Doldrums. Let's not pretend for one minute (the implications of this could be horrendous!) that we are through the worst of the light and variable stuff, but right now we are moving. And we are still in second place behind Logica and ahead of Isle of Man. If you'd said to us in Cape Town that we'd be going through the ITCZ ahead of our main competition LG Flatron (who are currently first overall to our second) and BP Explorer (who are third) we'd probably have smiled quietly and said 'yeah, right' not prepared to believe such a thing until it happened.
As I write, BP is in fifth place and 75 miles behind us and LG are in seventh place, 135 miles behind us. As ideal scenarios go for crossing the ITCZ you'd have to say this was probably one of them. We have around 2,700 miles to go to La Rochelle. It's not a relaxing place to be in but at the moment it seems to be bringing the best out of Team Compaq. Just over another two weeks of racing to go. We will be keeping the pressure, the focus and the concentration on. We can party and relax later. What will be the outcome?

So far the ITCZ has been dryer than I remember from our crossing in October on the way down south. We have one seriously sizeable squall with heavy rain
and 35 knots of wind but otherwise little rain and plenty of humidity. The sailing conditions are extremely variable in a light wind sort of a way. We've had a watch with almost no wind where multiple headsails were tried in a three hour watch. That's two different spinnakers, a yankee and the staysail going up and coming down with not much space in between. We had a wet watch with breeze on the nose. We've had a dry watch with breeze on the nose. We've sailed slightly off the wind. Sailed as high as we could with a spinnaker up. And we've sat with two knots of wind with no sign of any for a while either. In this part of the world, each watch brings something different.

The one thing they have in common though is the heat. This 72 foot steel yacht is a heat magnet. The water temperature is 86degF and the temperature below decks is sitting at a warm and toasty 97 - 100F . It's all you can do to drink enough liquid to keep yourself hydrated. And forget right now any ideas of a chilled glass of something. We have no fridges or air conditioning on board.

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