We entered the doldrums about 4 degrees south of the equator in about longitude 27 degrees west of Greenwich and so began our sojourn into the intricacies of light wind sailing.

The spinnaker had been flying for about 8 days and nights of beautiful 10-12 knot SE'ers giving us 5.5 to 6 knots headway in relatively calm seas. when it just started to "hang". We did haul it in a few times for squalls but otherwise this was the first time it had been pulled as non-effective and the starboard engine started to give us 4 knots at 1400rpm. It should be 5 but our prop and bum are a bit foul.

4 degrees latitude near the equator equates to 240nm but as our course is WNW it actually was 620nm and on day 5 of none or very little wind we crossed the imaginary great circle back into the northern hemisphere. It was nice to back down in the lower half of the world again. For those that believe the northern hemisphere is on top of the world how can you be sure of this illusion? How does an astronaut know if he is upside down or right side up in space?

Anyway we have begun to look forward to the NE'ly trades and although it is early yet we still have no wind and the engines are clocking up the hours and the fuel tanks are sounding a tad hollow.

It is a good time to check everything and we have replaced the topping lift as it was about to fail. All other lines are quite new and have no chafe apparent to the eyes of this fella. The rigging , standing and running is checked every day when we do a breakfast run for Tizer around the decks. He loves his fresh flying fish and screams the cabin down until the checks are done.

Making lists and reading books is the order of the day. We have a very extensive e-library for the Kindle and PC-Kindle with over 5000 assorted books. The kids get to watch lots of movies as the engines are on providing power and the PS3 works overtime. I make work lists..........Grenada will see us out of the water for a fortnight making good repairs and servicing the saildrives and antifouling the hulls.

The shipping has been as slack as the fishing with zero fish landed and 5 lures lost to giant tuna and marlin. We did cross a shipping lane 2 nights ago and recorded 5 ships in the log during the evening. Yesterday a catamaran came within 1nm of us but did not respond to our hail. Perhaps they were asleep (or French)

While we were in Thailand I altered the groundplane of the MF/HF radio and it operates really well for an amazing distance (It always did, thanks Gavin!!) and because of this we are the "Atlantic Second Fleet" Net Controller and conduct skeds with all sailing boats and record positions etc and provide weathers for all. Keeps boredom at bay....

The GRIB files show wind for tomorrow...............................yep I believe that as much as you do and am not holding my breath just yet....We just had a 20knot squall and it was such fun scooting along at 10 knots again...........Give me more wind, I am doldrummed out!!!!!!