19. Cape of Storms
To face the
elements is, to be sure, no light matter when the sea is in its grandest mood.
You must then know the sea, and know that you know it, and
not forget that it was made to be sailed over.
- Capt. Joshua Slocum
My ten-week layover in Natal allowed the southern hemisphere summer to settle in before I set sail for Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. The weather, which in this region finds fertile waters for storm formation, was also the main concern of every sailor moored at the international jetty next to the yacht club. As the frequent spring storms gave way to milder summer gales, the dock became busy with crews preparing their boats for the passage around the cape to the Atlantic.
One evening the local yachtsmen invited us visiting sailors to
meet at the Point Yacht Club to share strategy on making the passage to Cape
Town. Here we heard stories of shipwrecks, sinkings, and near disasters
recounted by survivors who challenged these waters in the wrong season, with the
wrong boat, had bad judgment, or just plain bad luck. John Sowden told us of his
first rounding of the cape years earlier when he was caught in a storm offshore.
His hands moved up and down like pistons as he described how the sea pumped
itself up with storm winds blowing into the opposing current. Yet here he was
back to test the waters again in his little wooden boat.
An experienced local yachtsman informed and frightened us further, explaining how the weather pattern here is dominated by a succession of southwesterly gales sweeping up the coast in opposition to the swift-flowing Agulhas Current. Between the southwesters were brief periods of fair northeast winds. Winter storms here brought hurricane force winds creating some of the largest waves in the world, even threatening well-found ships. Now, during the two-month height of summer, was our best weather window to make the passage.
The
usual strategy for yachts rounding the cape, as laid out by the resident
experts, is to sail from one port to the next, ducking inside when each gale is
forecast and departing with the next fair wind. The first leg is the longest,
350 miles from Durban to East London along the shelterless “Wild Coast” of
Transkei. On the remaining 500 miles to Cape Town there are five harbors
offering refuge, provided you can
safely approach shore in possible gale conditions.
The commodore told us about two yachts that sank in a storm
during an offshore race the year before. A third yacht was heading inshore to
escape the worst seas when it ran out of sea room and up against the Wild Coast.
Running blindly through the black night, a great wave picked the boat up and
deposited it on the top edge of a cliff. The crew then stepped from the deck to
shore, barely getting wet. The skipper, who had been asleep in his bunk at the
time, was dumped bruised but largely uninjured onto the ground when the side of
the boat cracked open, or so the story went. They walked to the nearest village
to arrange their rescue and later a crane picked up the broken boat, set it on a
trailer, and returned it to Durban for repairs.
Despite the horror stories of their mishaps along the coast, all the local experts agreed on one thing: the port-hopping coastal route was the least dangerous and logical choice. Once they had their say, to the bewilderment and disbelief of most of the sailors present, John Sowden pointed out that the coastal route was actually the most dangerous and that he would make his third rounding of the cape as he had his previous passages – nonstop and well offshore. The commodore and his crew countered that shelter must be sought during storms because the seas were unmanageable by small craft. John explained how a well-found boat handled with good seamanship and a cool head could survive most any storm at sea. What it could not survive, he stressed, was being driven ashore by overpowering winds while the skipper is searching for a port of refuge. Leaving us with that last bit of advice, he walked out.
By their nature,
sailors are an opinionated group, none more so than the solo sailor who is used
to getting his way with no dissenting voices. John probably felt there was not
one man among us he would trust to advise him on a course across the harbor, let
alone around the cape. I was left with the dilemma of whether to follow the advice
of an eccentric old salt who survived many solo passages, or to listen to the
voices of self-proclaimed expert authority with that all-important “local
knowledge”. The lemming effect is powerful to those of uncertain mind. What it
comes down to is that certain boats and certain crews are better suited to
different tactics.
Cash on hand was getting low as I prepared for departure. I
had waited in vain three weeks for my American bank to transfer $500 to a
Barclays Bank in Durban. It was supposed to take two days. After numerous
queries went unanswered, the Durban bank officer suggested that a third party
bank in New York was stalling in order to make a few dollars off the rapidly
dropping exchange rate. I couldn’t wait any longer and just hoped the $300 I
had would be enough to get me back home. That meant foregoing my planned stop in
Brazil and staying longer at sea where money is not an issue. At any rate, a
lengthy stop in Brazil would put me into the Caribbean during hurricane season,
which was an unneeded risk.
The commodore of the yacht club was more worried than I about my vanishing funds and insisted on taking me to the local mega-market where he paid for a trolley filled with exceptionally low-priced food goods for my trip. Perhaps this was in repayment for the week before when he had taken me to see my first cricket test match, an excruciatingly slow game played over several days whose rules and purpose I never quite grasped.
This was the same
commodore who some fifteen years earlier had a glass of beer hurled in his face
at the yacht club bar by Robin Lee Graham, the 18-year-old solo-circumnavigator
aboard Dove,
who felt the commodore was behind the rumors and comments going around
questioning the morals of his visiting live-aboard girlfriend. That was a time
and a place when behavior of that sort was unwelcome at this conservative yacht
club. According to the commodore, after tossing the beer in his face, Robin ran
down the stairs with a gang of angry club members on his heels. They all rolled
together into the club’s lobby in a tangle of fists, arms and legs. I was surprised
the commodore was still so friendly and accommodating to solo sailors after that
experience.
I was now as ready as I ever would be to set sail for the Atlantic. A rising barometer indicated a retreating atmospheric depression, confirmed by a weather bureau forecast for at least twenty-four hours of settled weather, which was the extent of reliable forecasts in this unsettled area. The port authorities proved as serious about documenting my departure as they were my arrival. After traveling to four different offices for various port clearance papers and a final visit aboard by immigration officers, on January 30 my South African friends cast off Atom’s mooring lines.
I tacked offshore in light winds, threading a course through several ships anchored and waiting to unload their cargo. Once I cleared the dangers near shore, the wind settled in the northeast and I took some sleep while I had the chance. I stretched out on the leeward main salon bunk, and with what had become an automatic reflex, reached up and turned on the radar alarm.
This stretch of the African coast is
notorious for congested shipping. But as long as a ship was using its radar, I
was confident my alarm would detect its pulse and awake me if it approached too
closely, in much the same way as motorists use radar detectors to alert them to
a speed trap. This time however, instead of awakening to the alarm’s familiar
beep tone, I awoke to the deep drone of a ship’s engine. Barely a full second
later, I was on deck watching the black wall of a hull sliding by a few boat
lengths away. I could clearly see his radar unit above the bridge was not
rotating and told myself from here on I must sleep more lightly and keep a
vigilant watch.
A gradually increasing wind warned of more changes to come. By two o-clock the next morning, I was tying a third reef in the mainsail and hoisting the storm jib from a plunging deck. The disturbed sea whipped up whitecaps that glowed ghost-like in the beam of my flashlight. I knew immediately when we entered the Agulhas Current because the waves stretched out in length and doubled in height. The remainder of the night we set a fast stroke swimming down the coast, making a combined eight knots over the bottom with the current’s help.
At dawn, a round of morning star sights indicated I was well
off the Wild Coast somewhere along the Republic of Transkei. From late morning,
an overcast sky lingered and made the next day’s positions all guesswork. In a
compromise between John Sowden’s advice to stay further offshore and the local
experts who said to stay close to shore and run port to port, I steered a
compromise route of about twenty to thirty miles offshore. Here I could catch a
ride on the axis of the current and safely rest without risk of running ashore
in my sleep, yet be close enough, in theory, to get into harbor within a half
day if I felt the need.
By afternoon I was becalmed with the barometer pointing ominously to an approaching low. Rows of sullen black clouds swept towards me in wind-torn shreds from the southwest that seemed to scrape the masthead as they passed. The gale arrived all at once in a furious blast of wind and spray. We were deep-reefed and at first I was able to keep Atom mostly on her feet, but she began to complain as we fell off the increasingly slab-sided waves. As conditions worsened, I turned and ran downwind under storm jib alone. The chaotic waves flung their breaking tops aboard from all sides.
It was painful to
think that a mere thirty feet below, the waters were perfectly calm and I found
myself wishing I were commanding a submarine rather than a small sailboat. My
periscope-like view out through the plastic dodger windows showed decks nearly
awash, being swept stem to stern with foaming water. Each wire and line of the
rigging moaned in the howling wind as I climbed onto the cabin top to secure the
mainsail tighter to the boom. Bent over the boom, I looked up to see waves
breaking above as we dropped into the troughs, giving me the feeling I was
standing on the surface of the sea itself.
Our speed was too great for the sea conditions and I considered dropping the jib to run under bare poles. Too late! While dropping headlong down one flat-sided wave, the windvane jerked so hard on the tiller that it snapped in two. The boat broached in a sideways slide to the seas. At the same moment the lee spreader dipped into the sea and a sharp snap signaled a shroud had broken at its lower swaged fitting. Atom rolled with beam broadside to the pounding seas. The tiller stub slammed back and forth as I worked quickly with wrenches to bolt on an emergency tiller.
Since I had added extra masthead rigging in Florida, the mast thankfully stayed intact while I attached bulldog clamps and lashings to hold the broken wire in place. I also felt reassured that I had prepared for heavy weather by strengthening bulkheads and locker seals and reduced the volume of the cockpit footwell by installing storm shutters.
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At midnight the faint glow of a lighthouse confirmed my estimated position and I hove to on the offshore tack for the remainder of the night. The motion was better with the boat drifting slowly and had the added benefit that I was not losing as many precious miles to windward. I even managed a few moments of near sleep that night as the gale died out.
By morning, a gray
mountain range revealed itself some five miles away. All day I worked at coaxing
and urging Atom to gain sea room against a current pulling me towards the
uninhabited shore. Under full sail in light wind we struggled against the
different leftover wave trains that intermingled and engulfed each other in a
confused pattern, causing Atom to pitch, yaw, and roll at the same moment. Again
and again, waves broke over the bow and stern at the same time, slowing our
slight forward motion until steerage way was lost. Then she rolled, dragging her
boom in the sea and slowly built up speed to the next double wave set. As the
feeble breeze strengthened, it shifted around the compass. The same sea-building
power of the wind also lessened the waves as it shifted against them. Vigilant
sail trimming eventually allowed me to make progress to a safer distance
offshore.
Just after midnight, as I close-reached at three knots, I
set the alarm clock for one hour and let the accumulated fatigue and sense of
security lull me into deep sleep. I awoke five hours later at dawn feeling
refreshed and surprised at my carelessness. It was hard to shake that shore-side
habit of sleeping through the night. If an ill wind shift and change of current
had caught me during those hours asleep, I’d have become bones for the jackals
of the Wild Coast. As luck had it, I was instead carried far offshore during the
night. My next two sun sights put me an unexpected fifty miles from land.
As the barometer jumped up, a strong easterly wind sent me scurrying on my way southwest. The strengthening winds and fair current combined to push us 180 miles during the next twenty-four hours. The lively roll and flying spray were uncomfortable to be sure. But this was, as they say, a fair weather gale, with following wind under fair skies and high barometer. Back under storm jib alone, I climbed to the cabin top as the only partly dry spot on deck and enjoyed the view of the sea’s friendly fury. Heading in the opposite direction would not be so friendly. I braced myself standing at the mast watching the sea puff up its chest and blow us ahead and downward with foaming and hissing water engulfing the stern.
A wandering albatross glided past in the
high winds. These denizens of the Southern Ocean are habitual ship followers and
have long been a sign of good omen for mariners plowing the empty temperate
southern latitudes. The stronger the gale the more effortless their flight. This
albatross viewed me with unconcern as he displayed his superior power and grace,
swooping low over the tumbling waters, yet never wetting a wing.
A ship passed less than a mile away. Plowing directly into
wind and current, its progress was laboriously slow as it hammered into the
seas, sending solid sheets of water high above the bow. We glimpsed each other
only when by chance we both crested a larger wave simultaneously. Most of the
time there was nothing to be seen between us but great walls of water.
Using the sextant was a challenge despite my being as familiar with it as if it were an extension of my own fingers. I needed half my concentration and strength just to keep myself securely on board, with one hand holding and protecting the delicate instrument. If I banged it against something hard it would be out of adjustment, perhaps permanently. As I lifted it to my eye, the pressure of the wind gusts caused the instrument to vibrate, producing an unclear and bouncing image. To compound the predicament, wind and spray made my eyes water so that after a few seconds I couldn’t see clearly. When by intuition I felt I had two reliable sights, the resulting running fix put me well offshore at thirty-five degrees south latitude. We continued running hard for the cape, 180 miles to the west.
With the port of East London lying
well behind me, I realized that even if I wanted to, it would be too risky to
head for any port in these conditions, and so proceeded nonstop for Cape Town,
regardless of vagaries of the weather. Old John Sowden was right, if you sail
far enough offshore to be safe, you are too far out to come cowering in for
every bit of threatening weather before that weather is already upon you. One of
the reasons today’s sailors choose ever larger and faster boats is to beat
bad weather into port. This tactic is part truth and part illusion. You cannot
outrun all storms, or all your fears.
My hopes of rounding the cape the following day were dashed
when the wind dropped and then shifted against me. Again I patiently sat hove to
for a full day drifting about, this way and that, as the wind made its cloying
dance around the compass. Winds in these latitudes were particularly vexing
after the relatively settled trade wind passages I had conditioned myself to on
the last two oceans. Yet even these tiresome days provided their distractions. I
spent a good portion of each day studying not only the ceaseless flight of the
albatross, but also swift storm petrels, sooty shearwater, cape gannet and other
birds appearing too fragile for this harsh environment. Each day, one or other
of these inquisitive or exhausted birds, perched on Atom’s stern rail for a
few hours rest.
Another short-lived wind blew in from astern and I resumed
my westerly course. The waters turned cold as I entered a region where the icy
Benguela Current from the Antarctic regions meets the warm Agulhas Current. The
air also turned cold and I dressed in extra layers, reveling in the crisp salt
air after over a year of monotonous tropic heat. At night, the cold waters put
on a spectacular phosphorescent light show. On each breaking wave crest burned a
sheet of cold fire. Atom’s wake contained uncountable sparkling lights tracing
a path to the horizon. The knowledge that this marine version of the firefly was
caused by billions of tiny bioluminescent shrimp called meganyctiphanes, come up
to the surface to feed at night, did not diminish the endless wonder of the
spectacle.
When we were again becalmed, the weather pattern of this
region became obvious. A falling barometer precedes a gale from the southwest
that backs to south a day or two later. Then the barometer rises as the wind
backs further to the east. A few days of variable winds follow until the pattern
is repeated with another southwester. If the northeaster blows strong it foretells an equally
strong southwester.
For another day I waited in a calm off Africa’s
southernmost point at Cape Agulhas. Here the two oceans met in a shoving match
with me in the middle. In these turbulent waters on the edge of the Benguela
Current, a curious seal swam alongside, cocking his whiskered face at me before
wandering off to other games.
The fickle breeze scratched cat’s paw ripples across the otherwise satin cover of the rolling water and gave a call to action for trimming sails. A small, light, easily driven hull like Atom is just what the solo sailor needs in conditions like this. A big and heavy boat that offers more comfort in a storm is mulishly stubborn in fluky airs and the sailor ends up relying on his engine more than he might want.
By early afternoon I was tacking
into a light westerly with a full mainsail and genoa sail that gathered the
lightest of winds and drove us forward. Creeping along from one cat’s paw to
another, Atom lay suspended motionless for minutes at a time until a new puff of
air filled the sails and worked its magic. On what I considered the favorable
tack, we sailed parallel to a shore of empty sand dunes and scrub brush. Plain
as it was, my eyes feasted on the slowly changing scenery of the beach, and
behind it where a mountain rose into the clouds. Sailing here less than a mile
offshore, I risked grounding, but the coast seemed to beckon me closer. I
crept in closer yet, until I saw the waters boiling on the reef only a few boat
lengths away.
Along this indent in the coast between Quoin Point and
Danger Point, I sailed up to the half-submerged wreck of a fishing trawler. It
held some luring fascination for me as I watched the sea heave and pound its
fist against the rusted hull, seeming to punish it further for the crime of
closing in on a forbidden coast. Beyond the wreck, a Jeep kept pace with me by
stopping and starting along the otherwise deserted beach. Finally, the siren's
spell was broken when the low sandy paw of Danger Point threatened me with its
embrace and I tacked seaward.
As the day’s light faded, a fishing boat hosting a cloud
of scavenger birds pulled close alongside. Three fishermen leaned over the rail
and shouted a hearty greeting to me then changed course and pulled away.
Throughout the night on the Agulhas Bank, Atom tacked into
a stiff wind in company with a steady procession of ships running blindly into
the night. In the mix as well, were clusters of fishing boats out from Hout Bay
and Cape Town. The bright lights of the fishing fleet lit up patches of the
night near and far like floating Christmas trees reflecting splashes of colored
lights on the water. Eventually, in the background I picked out the flashing
light from the long sought after Cape of Good Hope lighthouse.
By morning of my ninth day at sea, I sailed within sight of
the cape’s cliffs where the winds deserted me again. With limp sails under a
sunny, cloud-flecked sky, a gentle current pulled me past the rock buttress of
the cape. Staring enraptured at the southwest extremity of Africa thrusting its
dark cliffs into the sea, I completely agreed with the old pirate Francis
Drake who claimed, “This Cape is the most stately thing and the fairest Cape
that we saw in all the circumference of the earth.” And even more fair for the struggle to reach it. For me,
passing this cape marked more than a point between oceans. Having put the more
dangerous passages behind me, I now had the confidence of knowing I was within
reach of my goal, that my voyage could and would be completed.
While drifting past the purple-toned mountain range named The Twelve Apostles, I counted off their dozen weathered peaks. Beyond this saintly column, flat-topped Table Mountain cut a horizontal slice across the sky. As I waited for the wind I knew would return, I used the day to organize gear and prepare for landfall.
During the night, I coaxed Atom close to shore and
found a light cool wind dropping off the mountains to fill our sails. Then at
sunrise, I sailed past a long stone jetty to enter Cape Town’s Table Bay,
behind which a sprawling city of high-rise buildings and Victorian style homes
stand between mountain and seascape.
At the Royal Cape Yacht Club I was given a guest membership
and a spot on the dock to moor Atom for a small fee. At the club I met up with
old cruising friends and sailors I’d met in Durban. An atmosphere of relief
and satisfaction prevailed among the cruising community at the yacht club. The
feared cape passage was behind us and we acted like climbers back at base camp
after summiting our Everest. Ahead lay the South Atlantic with its kindly
reputation for year-round trade winds. Unlike any other ocean, the tropical zone
of the South Atlantic is generally regarded as having never hosted a storm of
hurricane strength: a suitable reward for those having had the stuffing knocked
out of them along the South African coast.
Within hours of settling Atom into her dock, I discovered
stowaways. The boat’s interior and lockers were crawling with cockroaches
regaining their appetite after their miserably rough passage. I had picked up a
crew of roaches in New Guinea and though I had never quite succeeded in
eradicating them with poisons and cleaning, we had developed a ceasefire where
they remained mostly hidden during the day. Apparently another tribe of roaches
came aboard in Durban and mated with their New Guinea cousins to produce a super
race of roach. These bold little vermin now began to roam the boat at will, day and
night, laying claim to anything in their path. Again I offloaded every item from
the boat and scrupulously cleaned out the lockers. Finally I defeated them with
a liberal sprinkling of boric acid powder, which kills them over time,
apparently through dehydration and constipation.
During my Cape Town layover, I joined up with the Mountain Club of South Africa for some local mountain climbing. The next Sunday morning about twenty members met at the base of the Twelve Apostles where we prepared to climb to the summit and cross the tabletop of Table Mountain. I had done strenuous climbs on my own before, but had never tried the technical climbs where you put your life in the hands of your fellow climbers and their ropes, harnesses and climbing gadgetry. We divided into five smaller teams, each group tackling a different route of more or less difficulty. I joined the beginners group led by Mike, a rock-hanging veteran who volunteered to introduce us to the basic climbing techniques.
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At the base of Kasteels Buttress, we strapped on our
borrowed harnesses and began the first pitch. Mike positioned a man as anchor,
or belay, who payed out a line attached to Mike’s harness. Mike pulled himself
hand over hand up the near vertical face, expertly using each crack and dent in
the rocks as a finger or toe hold. At strategic locations he stopped to attach a
clamp into a crack in the rock through which he threaded his safety line. On his
belt he carried five-sided aluminum blocks with wire leaders, called nuts, in
several sizes, fitting the appropriate one into cracks in the rock and turning
it until it jammed more or less securely. He also carried an ingenious gadget of
four ratcheting aluminum half-wheels, that rolled and locked into the rock
cracks. Swinging himself over a narrow rock ledge far above us, Mike secured
himself as top belay, calling down “Off belay” to the man on the lower end
of the rope.
One by one, we nervously followed him up, trying to
remember Mike’s exact route and use the same handholds. With himself firmly
anchored to a rock, Mike took up the slack on our lines as we climbed. Even with
the safety line, the higher the beginner climbs, the more slug-like his progress
as he attempts to press himself ever closer to the rock. Once attaining the
ledge, a rush of relieved satisfaction is your reward. The thrill of a first
climb is unequaled – heart racing as I cling to a crevice by my fingertips,
the toe of my boot jammed into a small crack, while my other hand searches for
the next handhold out of sight above me.
We ascended four of these pitches, resting on ledges at
each interval as the other climbers caught up, until we were far up the
mountainside and nearly to the summit. A cloud, locally called the
“tablecloth” that hung over the edge of Table Mountain all morning, was now
dispersing in the afternoon sun. Here the winds blow vertically up or down the
mountain. As the wind blew down on us, we paused to observe the progress of the
other groups. Across the ravine of Kasteel’s Poort, I watched five climbers
ascend the broken face of Vaulken Buttress. They were on a tricky pitch with an
overhanging ledge that looked impassable. “They’re on a difficult F rated
climb,” Make told us. “The same one I did last week. It took us nearly an
hour to get past that same ledge. A dangerous spot.” Beyond the Vaulken was
another group of climbers moving slowly and steadily up Barrier Buttress,
looking like a team of assassins scaling a castle wall.
On our final pitch I had trouble locating a grip. The wind tore at me as I hung precariously from a tiny dent in the rock. The cliff face here overhung slightly making it a constant effort just to hold against gravity. I could see no other hand hold available. Mike called out there was a slight ledge about three feet above me. To reach it I would have to let go of my only hold, and with blind faith, quickly stand up from my crouching position and make a desperate grab while falling away from the cliff. If not quick and accurate with my grasp, I’d end up swinging from the rope with feet kicking in the air.
For a moment I hesitated. Looking up I saw Mike silently watching me. He would
not coax me further, it was up to me to trust him and make the move. Like a
human magnet, I pressed myself against the rock and reached up, catching the
promised ledge to stop my backward fall. With this firm handhold I was able to
pull myself to the top alongside the others. The man behind me misjudged his
grip on that overhang and when he dropped off the wall, he called out, “Coming
off!” We pulled up his dead weight on the belaying rope until he was on our
ledge.
From atop Kestreels Buttress we sighted along the Twelve Apostles ridge line all the way to the distant cliffs of the Cape Point. As we rendezvoused with the other climbing groups, we split up again and most of the others descended back to the base using a series of rapid rappels on ropes with hand brakes. With two other members of the club I headed on foot across the top of Table Mountain and descended the other side.
Up close, I found the apparently flat tabletop was not entirely level and held within it a depression named the Valley of the Red Gods. In counterpoint to the bare dirt and rock around its edges, the small valley is bordered by green pine forest. I had not expected to find the top of the mountain crisscrossed by marked footpaths, a stone rest house, and ranger’s station. There was even an ancient series of water pools and dams cut by hand from the stone to provide water to the city below.
At one edge of the mountain we passed a restaurant and cable car station, which brings the mountaintop within reach of anyone who has the fare. Beyond the pine forest, the tabletop held fields of brown scrub brush and rocks, punctuated by the striking bright blossoms of the King Protea, South Africa’s national flower. By descending the winding Platteklip Gorge, we returned directly into the heart of Cape Town’s business district.
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Back at the yacht club, on another day I met Eric Clapham, a retired English South African, living with his family in Wynberg, a suburb under the shadow of Table Mountain. We struck up a conversation and within minutes we were in Eric’s car on the way to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. A grass fire had recently wiped out all visible life over a third of the park. We drove through extensive fields of parched earth covered in gray and black ash, charred stumps of bushes and scorched rocks. The park had seen these fires before and the local naturalists expected the veld to recover within ten years.
Meanwhile,
a troop of baboons ran onto the road in front of us, screaming and grabbing at
each other's tails. We parked and waited until the dispute was settled and then
motored on. Near the lighthouse at the end of the road another group of three
baboons sat guarding a trash can as if it were there own.
At Cape Point I climbed the stairs to the lighthouse that a week before had dutifully flashed it’s greeting to me as I drifted past in a calm. On this day a moderate gale blew in from the west, increasing in force as it funneled up the cliffs to the lighthouse. I gripped the circular steel railing and leaned into the fierce wind, thankful that I was not at sea that day.
From here I looked down on the cape’s long rocky point where the sea smashed the coast, sending spray high into the sky where it blew back and I tasted the salt on my lips. Gulls tacked in winds alive with the sound of gale-driven surf. Beyond the shoals offshore, a ship rounded the cape, rolling heavily to the sea. Here where no offshore islands give protection, the cape stands exultant in the embrace of restless surge from two oceans. Between the cape and the Antarctic Continent lie the roiling waters and ice of the Southern Ocean. Away to the northwest, beyond the Cape of Storms lay the welcoming route home.
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