Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Day 13: the ITCZ times

*** Jamie found inspiration under the stars on watch last night, and offers this for today's blog post ***

While traversing the Inter Tropic Convergence Zone (ITCZ), we sought to learn about local happenings. Being underway and with determined purpose to cross the equator soon, acquisition of the local newspaper, ITCZ Times, was a thoroughly rewarding and expeditious delivery of "local flavor". Indeed, you can go online at ITCZTIMESHAHA.com to read for yourself. To further tempt you here are some of the headlines:

Irate Tonto Condemns Zorro
Idiosyncratic Tourist Considers Zen
Indentured Tiger Confronts Zoo
Infinity Transforms Confused Zero
Ichthyologist's Testimony Corroborates Zoologists
Indians To Columbus: Zilch!
Inter-Terrestrial Courtships Zoom
Infertility Taunts Courageous Zebra
Itunes Trumpets Consumer Zillions
Intestinal Trauma? Consider Zucchini

OK, ITCZ in meteorological terms is the band of weather along the equator. Because of the sea temperature, currently Totem is in 90 degree water and the rotation of the Earth the weather can be very interesting. In lay terms, one patch of area can be hot, humid, and seemingly void of air while the patch next to it can be a rather prickly convection cell with dense rain, big wind, and lightening. Oh joy!

It's slow going now, but all is well; better really after going into the water today to remove the 6' section of nylon fishing net hooked on one blade of our propeller. The kids are great with not a single complaint about the heat or tedium of this stretch. In fact, they're having a blast together.

Our fishing portfolio in Mexico, while not outstanding was quite respectable. Of the 1740.4 miles covered in route to the Marquesas, we have utterly failed to produce fish for the dinner table. The kids crave fresh Tuna sashimi. Alas we have failed them! Oh well, with 6 months worth of fresh and canned good onboard are serving us well.

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