A dark and stormy night!

Ok, we are getting tired of this....over 300 miles of ITCZ and still not out of it! Gentle peaceful sailing one minute and all hell the next! Very interesting phenomena though, watching these storm cells appear out of nowhere and turn into wind and rain! One of them last night turned into 30 knots of wind! But we have taken a less philosophical view of them now and size them up for what we can get out of them. The rain cleans the boat and the wind makes us go faster! Ergo ergo sum, they are
good things! If we weren't so exhausted from the sail changing and trying to maintain our course in them, it would be fun! Oh, they often come with wind from totally different directions! Did I mention that?
Anyway, we are surviving and becoming inured to them, if that's possible. Linda is in the galley making pancakes at the moment....and the coffee pot smells sweet as always. I suspect this is all preparation for our initiation into the 'shellback' society!
The sun has popped up over the horizon once more and there is plenty of blue sky all around so the dark beasties that haunted us all night have retreated for the day. Hopefully a steady breeze to carry us the last 191.7 nm to the equator...but who's counting!