It’s going to be a sleigh ride from Saint Helena to Recife for the intrepid sailors racing around the world in the Mini Globe Race.
It will be a sleigh ride without any snow and definitely no Santa on a sleigh because soon the ice cream is going to melt. They are going to ride the top edge of the South Atlantic high pressure system and get close to where the real hot part of the world is; the equator, a place where it’s always summer.
Let’s take a look at this. The planet spins on it’s axis. In the Northern Hemisphere the high pressure systems spin clockwise. In the Southern Hemisphere they spin the other way. It’s called the coriolis effect. Don’t ask me to explain it, just Google it, but for those sailors it’s a time to be clever and be careful. It’s a longer route to ride the edge of the high where there is more wind. There is less wind if you try and cut the corner, but of course it’s a shorter distance to sail. It’s like that one time I was in Las Vegas and bet everything on black. You just never know.
It’s also a long held myth that the water going down the sink suddenly goes the other way once you cross the equator. We tried it, and because we were young and dumb, we didn’t realize that the shape of the sink was the way the water would flow. Compare the drain in your sink to the size of a hurricane and you will understand, but all joy to the 11 sailors that are on the last legs of an incredible around the world race.
I say to the MGR sailors, look out for squalls as you get closer to the hot zone, ride the edges of them, and if it’s your thing, take a fresh water shower while you ride on some breeze. At that point we didn’t care which way the water was coming down. 
