I have to comment on the evil presence of the “The Squall” that has been ruling my life here for days and the easiest way is to just post one of my emails to Mary ( I took all the kissy mushy stuff out though). I think that I have sailed past it, but I can still see the wall of cloud looming in the sunset again tonight

5/8/10

I am 295 miles to Papeete, but have been so slow it is just painful to think about how long it will take. Last daily runs have been 66 miles, 85 miles, 43 miles... This is some of the most frustrating sailing I have ever done in my life and I am almost going nuts trying to get off this area of water. There is a super active SPCZ down here and I can not escape. Last night was a repeat of the night before and it is setting up the exact same tonight. Every night I think that I am free of the wall of squalls and clouds, it is safely to leeward and I am clawing away slowly to windward. As soon as it got dark last night the light show started and there was lightning like you would not believe south of me. I was moving along slowly eastward and it just kept getting closer and closer to me, from leeward. Finally the squalls hit me and I was forced to reef all the way down, then there were torrential rains and the water looked like a washing machine. There were lightning strikes so close and bright that I would count to three before I could see anything but white. It was really scary for a while and I put a radio and GPS in the oven wrapped in foil. If I left the self steering on, we would suddenly start racing off in the wrong direction, once due south, as these huge shifts and gusts hit. Last night I was so ragged tacking and reefing that I took the jib all the way in and hove to just getting up to tack if we were heading some weird direction. This morning I was determined to get out from under the cloud but could not do it. I hand steered with the downpour beating on me, tacking back and forth as the wind did these 90 and 180 shifts but as I approached the next squall it would head me into the center or it or bounce me off into the next one. I would go from 6 knots in the wrong direction to dead stopped in the chop, over and over again. I had spent over 12 hours without moving! Finally, I gave up and motored for an hour and a half to get out from under it. In just a couple of miles, the rain quit, the sun was out and I sailed all day in really light wind trying to get to windward. Again tonight there is huge lightning just to leeward of me and I am clawing my way away... The GRIBs show less than 5 knots for the next 72 hours so I may be a bit screwed.

I watched the clouds all afternoon and what I think is happening is that there is a big stationary block of probably low pressure with warm wet air stretched across below me. As the wind blows towards it, clouds were forming that got bigger and taller as they approached from windward of me. But the air being forced up meant that there was no, read zero, wind in front of the cloud bank. So as I tried to escape, the squalls would form to windward of me and camp on me over and over. Argggg.