The tradewinds are the belts of generally easterly winds that form equator-wards of the mid latitudes high pressure systems. Basically, they are belts of northeasterly to southeasterly winds in the tropics, separated by the inter tropical convergence zone near (but not always on)the equator. Sailing ships engaged in trade could count on these winds to make long passages on predictable schedules.

So a classic tradewinds passage is a downwind run, with day after day of consistent strong winds. Tradewinds weather should be generally sunny skies dotted with lines of low puffy cumulus clouds. These clouds sometimes develop into wind and rain squalls, especially early in the morning. But the squalls usually pass quickly.

The only other tradewinds passage we have made was a run from Senegal to Guadeloupe in 2015 - and that was a classic - day after day of rolling downwind with a poles out jib and a constant force 5 breeze.

So we keep searching for our classic tradewinds run on this passage. Even though the winds have been consistent from the southeast since we left Santa Cruz, it has been a reaching breeze, not a downwind run, and the drizzly clouds have not felt like tradewinds weather.

Today seemed a little more like it, after last night's starry run and with a tradewinds sky most of today. But Robin had flukey winds on her morning watch. We were still on a reach, with the main up, most of the day. We flew the drifter this afternoon - the winds seemed gentle and consistent enough. The drifter added a knot of boat speed, keeping us over seven knots. But by the early evening it was blowing F5 again, too much for that light sail. When we struck the drifter we found that the halyard had nearly chafed through at the masthead in just four hours, and the light sheet had caught in the fairlead block and chafed it's outer braid off, too.

The winds increased to force 6 this evening, a “strong breeze” on the Beaufort Scale, and even a reefed main got to be too much, so we dropped the main. We are running with a loose footed jib for the overnight, still making seven knots good most of the time in the strong easterly - we'll just have to call it the tradewinds!

Melville described this exact passage nearly two hundred years ago In this paragraph from Typee:

“I can never forget the eighteen or twenty days during which the light trade-winds were silently sweeping us towards the islands. In pursuit of the sperm whale, we had been cruising on the line some twenty degrees to the westward of the Gallipagos; and all that we had to do, when our course was determined on, was to square in the yards and keep the vessel before the breeze, and then the good ship and the steady gale did the rest between them. The man at the wheel never vexed the old lady with any superfluous steering, but comfortably adjusting his limbs at the tiller, would doze away by the hour. True to her work, the Dolly headed to her course, and like one of those characters who always do best when let alone, she jogged on her way like a veteran old sea-pacer as she was.”

And the classic CSN song “Southern Cross” also describes this same tradewinds route:

Got out of town on a boat goin' to southern islands
Sailing on a reach before a following sea
She was making for the trades on the outside
And the downhill run to Pape'ete.
Off the wind on this heading lie the Marquesas
We got eighty feet of waterline, nicely making way.

Both descriptions are full of contradictions, like our own attempt to find the consistency the trade wind under mist dimmed stars of the Southern Cross.