No street signs, no traffic lanes and not ships in this part of the pacific. But today we found cloud streets. If you look out an airplane windows neatly aligned cumulus clouds in parallel rows. What does a cloud street feel like?

Karl said at the early morning watch change over and wrote in his blog the wind was like a carousel. “Winds - up and down and round and round. Or back and forth, at least.” He said not to worry when we headed south of Tasmania and not to New Zealand. He went to sleep. The boat is well balanced, sailing close hauled, although she is slower towards Tasmania and faster towards New Zealand. At dawn the sky lightens and with a flash of an orange the sun disappears into the grey mass of overcast skies. I started to wonder why the wind that has been so reliable so long was now making us look like drunken sailors unable to steer a straight course. Looking up I could not see a pattern to the clouds above just lots of fluffy grey cumulus clouds under a higher grey layer. The low fluff was moving with the wind driving I forward but the upper cloud we moving differently. Weird things happen when things low down move differently from things higher up.

I emailed Samsara, with Jeff and Katie 60 miles north west of us to see if they were seeing carousel winds. Jeff replied their winds “ were clocking and veering within a range of about 30* and went up and down between 10 and 17kts. Lots of adjusting.” They had the same winds.

Then we started to sail into the blue sky lines fluffly clouds aligned with the wind appeared. Cloud streets.

According to the meteorology text book, cloud streets form when the wind direction or speed changes with elevation. There is a weak front moving our way. During the carousel winds the fluffy lower clouds were moving with the surface sailing wind while the high mares tails, hooked cirrus, were off at an angle. Time to ask our meteorologist. Met Bob thought Karl's carrousel description of cloud street winds was perfect. The puffs are under the clouds where air is being drawn up and is slowed by friction with the ocean. With the frictional slowing comes the direction change. The gusts are in between the clouds where the air is descending and is not slowed by friction. Our cloud book says avoid sailing in them. Maybe avoid on a Sunday sail but not an option here.

We have a berth in Opua so are heading there, when the cloud streets allow us. Much of the day was lake like sailing and we know sailing on a cloud street is like a carousel with predictable gusts, lulls and changing wind directions.