Violent storm force 11, it would have said on Radio 4. Later, they joined and shimmered from horizon to horizon like a vast, green silk curtain hanging down from space, furling and rippling silently.Īnd the best bit? I'll never forget the time we were hit by the last 65-knot gale. They started about 20 miles up you could see the thickness of the atmosphere. Slanting through the clear night sky were shafts of green light. But above our heads there was an extraordinary sight.
#Grim dawn map showing unrestored shrine Patch#
It seemed a patch of ocean much like the other 3,000 miles we eventually sailed. And we found the Magnetic South Pole at three o'clock one morning. We sailed for two sunny days, through icebergs anchored in a calm blue sea like a home fleet of Dreadnoughts. Fortunately, someone grabbed my leg and I came back aboard. As I shot over the rail, I remember thinking that this was a fatuous mistake to make. The ice broke in half and my axe got stuck in it. As I leaned over the rail, hacking at the block, two things happened at once. As we weighed anchor, a huge lump of ice came up out of the sea frozen to the chain. Somehow I didn't mind on a climbing trip you might spend 12 weeks climbing and 10 minutes on a summit, and this frozen shore felt like the summit of the planet. A sailing boat is a fragile thing, and the skipper was nervous. And then, after just eight hours, it was time to leave. We saw the tiny hut where the yacht's owner and his wife had spent a year ("I cried a lot," she said drily). The next attempt was more successful the anchor held the ground and we were able to walk on the continent of Antarctica in brilliant sunshine and a fresh gale of wind.We sat next to penguins as they jumped into an icy sea, and skirted around Weddel seals lying on the ice like bloated carcasses. Unimpeded by land, waves roll around the world in the roaring Forties and the furious Fifties, built up by winds of hurricane speeds and Antarctic temperatures. Even I, who have climbed Everest, was unprepared for the savagery of the sea. Holes appeared in the soft aluminium of the hull, eaten by electrolytic corrosion, so the boat would fill with water. It can only be located by satellite navigation compasses just don't work. Our aim was to sail there, land if possible, and sail back via the Magnetic South Pole, an imaginary entity which roams the seas off the coast of Antarctica as unpredictably as the albatrosses that live there. The landfall is at Commonwealth Bay, where world-record wind speeds in excess of 200mph have been recorded, a fine place you might think for a sailing holiday. Ten of us went on the Spirit of Sydney, a retired, round-the- world racing yacht which is available for charter to the more adventurous. Antarctica When you sail south from Hobart, Tasmania, you have 1,000 miles of empty sea ahead of you before reaching Antarctica, the most desolate continent on Earth.
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