Mar 25 - Enroute

Pos: S03deg24min / W032deg53min. We departed FdN this morning, very glad to get away from the rolly anchorage. Overall, I wouldn't rate this stop as a "must-see" destination. It's very expensive; there's a daily fee for the boat to be anchored in the National Park, as well as a daily fee for each crew member on top of that. Further, meals ashore are $15-20++, lunch or dinner. Beer or drinks are likewise expensive. Provisioning is OK, and diesel is available for about $6 USD/gallon. Rental cars are all over the place. They're dune buggy type things, and go for about $50 USD/day, although I suspect a bit of searching would turn up a less expensive cost. The allegedly slow internet was completely down while we were here, so no comments there. A 40+ knot squall came thru the other night. It was complete white-out conditions, and the size of the waves was impressive. They knocked the large, steel marker beacon of the small harbor entrance off it's mooring chains, which then capsized upside down! The anchorage is very rolly to begin with; that night it was just ugly. At this time, we're enroute to Isle du Salud, just across from Devil's Island, in French Guyana. This will be about a 1400 mi passage, as we're going a few hundred miles north of our rhumb line to try to get thru the ITCZ (inter-tropical convergence zone) on a more direct angle across it, rather than along its axis, before turning towards IdS. We're hoping to avoid at least some of the heavier squalls and thunderstorms the ITCZ a few degrees north and south of the equator latitude usually brings; we'll see how it all works out. From the latest weather forecasts, it appears we have about another 36 hours of motoring before the wind fills in. AWA.

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