[miguelpais]

Well, the portuguese navigators did have a lot of trouble crossing it. This was due to the fact that they mostly always sailed with the coast in sight, but when they reached the equator, there was just no winds or currents to keep pushing them, so they would just get stuck.

It took them a couple of years to find a way out of that point, by making huge turns westwards into the atlantic (which eventually led them to end up in Brazil, but that's another story...)