Chris Tibbs is a meteorologist and weather router. He has sailed over 300,000 miles, including three round the world races
‘Doldrums’: a state of stagnation or depression, or an equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean with calms, sudden storms, and light unpredictable winds. Or so my dictionary puts it.
For sailors, the transition from the northern to southern hemispheres in the Atlantic can be a trying and often frustrating time. We leave the steady tradewinds of the northern hemisphere with our main aim to minimise the time taken before we progress into the South Atlantic trade wind belt – this is passing through the doldrums, or the ‘Pot-au-Noir’, as the French put it.
In meteorology we now use the more scientific term Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) where we can meet conditions we associate with the
