THE MOTHER OF ALL WAVE MACHINES
There is a hell on Earth, at least in a meteorological sense. A place where mariners’ superstitions may have been forged, as they brawled with deathly seas and demonic winds. A place named by the first sailors in the early 1600s. A place we still call the Roaring 40s. Below mainland Australia, engulfing Tasmania and the South Island of New Zealand, are invisible latitudinal boundaries, which lie 40 and 50 degrees South of the equator. This global band of perpetual and ferocious westerly winds gust up to such extreme forces, they generate waves that measure in excess of 23 metres (78 foot). How huge are we talking? Simply gaze up a six-storey building to gain a sense of scale. Mountains of water steam train towards their inevitable end somewhere on a distant coast.
The Roaring 40s is a scaleless wave machine, a global wind current that’s vehemently revered. Those that have spent time on these temperamental subantarctic seas would claim that it has to be seen to be believed.
In the days when sailing ships explored the globe, plagued by scurvy, armed with cannons and paid excessive amounts for tea and spices, these winds not only assisted the speed a ship could attain (known as “running the eastings down”) but shaped the shipping routes that were once used. Many are still used today.
This eternal west-to-east air current is
