Alone on a Wide Wide Sea “It was a different world I was sailing in down there, the wildest place I’ve ever been... South of 60° between Cape Horn and the Antarctic peninsula there’s no land to break up the ocean swells, so the waves travel uninterrupted for hundreds of miles and they’re just massive.” “I had to be out there avoiding the breaking waves, especially the hollow ones, the ones that look as if they’re going to swallow you up. Sleep was almost impossible in seas like this, in weather like this. The wind screamed all the time. It was a constant pounding. I was on edge, listening to the boat, trying to work out if she was just complaining, or whether she was telling me something was really wrong.” “You should see the waves she’d be shouting at… They’ve travelled all around the world just to meet us here – Aren’t they nice? aren’t they kind? – building up all the time. Up to 200 metres long, I promise you. Awesome, magnificent, majestic, amazing, exhilarating, overwhelming (running out of adjectives so I’ll stop). They’re wave monsters that’s what they are, and when one decides to break it’s like an avalanche that goes on and on, and Kitty 4 does snowboarding then surfing through the middle of it, raging white water all around, the air snowing foam.”
Illustrations © Tim Stevens, 2006