Escape from Alcatraz?

After battling big swells out of the south, no wind most of the time, and near constant downpour, today we may have broken out of the ITCZ. We saw two separate storms coming from the south this morning, but today, instead of eight foot swells, the swells had laid down and were running only four feet. Also, this time there was a barely perceptible gap between the storms. There lay our chance.

With the winds freshening quickly from the south, we sailed SE toward the leftward (eastern) storm cell, then the gust front reached us, and we had almost met the eastern edge of the cell, we tacked quickly and sped south - riding the entire length of the gust front until we ran out of storm. The winds kept pushing us toward storm cell # 2; another quick tack, and the winds rushing out of it's gust front kept us moving. And after an hour we were free the little area we have called home for three days. Try as we could the past few days we could advance no further.

As I right we are still headed south, trying to get clear of, and far away from the ITCZ. The skies have opened up somewhat, cumulus clouds crowd the sky (along with some isolate thunderstorms - but not the wall of storms to the north), and the winds have been steady out of the NE for over 7 hours. Happy to be moving. Have our daring travelers escaped? To find out tune in next week; same bat channel, same bat time.

Owen

N 4 25.000
W 129 00.000

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