It is still one of the rare places in the world, where intuition and the qualities of observation have proven to be necessary. The inter-tropical zone of convergence as meteorologists and geographers call this area, displays a character of extreme instability, alternating between stormy squalls, zones of flat calm, strong winds and uncertain directions… Though the grib files manage to identify the calm zones, they are on the other hand, incapable of anticipating their evolution. As a result, to pass the doldrums, the sailors have to revert back to their intuition, the revision of statistics laws and a small amount of luck… All this because, what may be true at a given point in time, may not be so a few hours later.

In this affair, we do know a certain number of things nevertheless: the doldrums tend to be a lot more active along the African coast as opposed to the South American coast. The further West you are, the easier your passage is likely to be: however, gaining Westing is also consistent with distancing yourself from the direct course and taking the risk, once you’re in the tradewinds of the Northern hemisphere, of being on a point of sail which is closer to the wind than the competitors who are further East.

You can see on the scale of scientific guarantees, the cat here isn‘t a fat one… Especially as you then have to make your way through heavy showers an stifling heat, which transforms the mainsail into an enormous water tower likely to spill onto the sailors at the first movement of the boom, added to which are the incessant manœuvres… Tackling such a zone at night is an extra nightmare for some sailors. Some of them believe in their lucky star, quite happy to note with every passage, they have been relatively spared, others harbouring memories, which associate the zone with an area where their hopes of victory were lost. Still feared and never really liked by sailors, the doldrums doesn’t have the aura of other infamous sailing zones: the angers of the Indian Ocean, the icebergs of the South Pacific, the mists of Newfoundland, all of these form part of the founding legends of ocean racing. The doldrums, like the ugly duckling, is not really part of that same family, but it doesn’t stop it from knowing how to reshuffle the cards like no-one else!

Translation KJ