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My improbable southerly break!
May 8, 2008 - Day 304 (0.0007S,144.3962E) 0.0007S,215.6037W
I finally crossed the Equator at 144.3963E longitude, at 10:50:54UTC on May 8, 2008.
On May 3-5, I received sustained winds from the west. According to our weather expert Dane Clark, a series of low pressure systems keep forming nowadays along a trough north of me around 8-9N and moving west. This time of the year, any one of these has the potential to gain further strength and to turn into a tropical depression, a tropical storm or a typhoon, increasing in strength respectively.
Low pressure systems rotate counter clockwise in the northern hemisphere. One of these low pressure systems was just north of me this past week, causing the westerly wind reversal on its south side at my latitude. I took advantage of that change to row due southeast. Any southerly progress was good to get away from the problem areas.
Lately, the convergence zone phenomenon had left its place to tropical disturbances with variable winds. I was getting either doldrums or the wrong winds. I was too close to the counter current, which always affected my course. I had started to feel like I was at a dead end, with negligible westerly progress to show in April. The temptation to rise north across the counter current to gain the westerly currents was always there, but I never got the winds to help me north, for which I am glad. Had I been able to rise north, I would have been on storm tracks all the way to the Philippines up there!
When I started progressing southeast with the westerly winds on May 3rd, the day after my encounter with QUEEN EVELYN - 168, I was far enough south initially that, soon I was entirely free of the effects of the counter current.
Once I crossed south of about 2.2N, I even started to suspect that I had entered an area of westerly flow. At that latitude, my course shifted due south dramatically. As the WNW winds pushed my boat, the westerly current kept directing me south. This was the reverse of the problem that I had faced in the counter current earlier, where my boat was driven north and south with fluctuations from ESE winds to ENE winds, respectively. For a change, the combination of winds and currents worked in my favor; what a novel concept!!!
In the evening of May 5th, I started receiving light northerly winds. Coupled with the currents under me, I quickly moved further south. A tropical cyclone (typhoon) started forming northwest of Palau on May 6th, moving away from my location. The sinking motion that this cyclone created in the atmosphere at its periphery, sustained my NNW winds all the way into the southern hemisphere. It took a typhoon now, to create the conditions we had counted on but had never received to set a course south toward the Solomon Islands further east.
So, I crossed the Equator today, a full six months and 3500 nm farther west than when I had first tried for it near Christmas Island. The Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone and the counter current toyed with me for half a year, holding me captive all the way across until now. That powerless feeling of captivity was the hardest part to endure. Better late than never, I guess...
This spectacular reversal of fortunes has now created the possibility of a landfall at Jayapura. If I can manage that, a whole new world of options become available. I will have to evaluate all options to keep the human powered circumnavigation in progress, to consider how Carstenz or Kosciuszko may be possible as part of the Six Summits Project, and to balance time with family. I do realize that I have been absent as a husband for over ten months.
So the resupply team, Kenneth Crutchlow and Osman Bayrak may be able to see me pull into port at Jayapura, becoming the welcoming party instead. I so look forward to seeing them!
They have been in the kind care of Philippe Courrouyan, CEO PT CLS Argos Indonesia ever since they landed in Jakarta. Philippe has been an angel in hosting them and in providing the local outreach necessary to keep the resupply operation in motion. Thank you Philippe!
Erden.
NOTE on terminology:
Westerly winds blow from west to east.
Westerly currents flow east to west.
Counter current is flows west to east.
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I finally crossed the Equator at 144.3963E longitude.
