Southern Ocean sojourn

With the steel bow of our Tahiti cutter, Beatrice, surging into the swells, at the helm I felt a long way from the milder climes of mainland Australia, as the foreboding mass of Tasmania’s South West Cape loomed large on our starboard bow. The Pilot book describes this voyage as the ‘Ultima Thule’ of Australian cruising, so my cousin Christian and I had spent a year planning and keenly anticipating this three-week summer voyage, which would require about 300 miles of sailing. At 43°S we were amidst the fabled Roaring Forties, with very little shelter along Tasmania’s unpopulated southwest coast.

The previous day’s voyage had taken us down the sheltered east coast from south of the island’s capital of Hobart after departing