“Reeves, you are a beacon on the shoals of life,” a man yelled from up the dock. All morning I worked on deck. The weekend had emptied the boatyard, quieting the bustle of lifts and cranes. Today there would be no interruptions from passersby, and I could happily focus on the present task: preparing Moli, my 45-foot aluminum cutter, for her second figure-eight-voyage attempt. Then the voice: “I am thrilled to follow your adventure,” the man said. “You show me places I never wish to go; you have experiences I never wish to have. You are a warning to others: ‘Pass not this way.’”

Such sentiments, I had found, were not uncommon, and even I had to admit that the first figure-eight attempt—a solo circumnavigation of the Americas and Antarctica in one season—had not exactly gone to plan. The plan, in brief, was to sail the Pacific south from my home port of San Francisco, and, after rounding Cape Horn, to proceed on a full east-about trek of the Southern Ocean; after rounding Cape Horn again, the course would proceed up the Atlantic, into the Arctic, and then would transit the Northwest Passage for home. Admittedly, it was a challenging goal.

Mo and I departed for the first time via the Golden Gate Bridge on September 30, 2017, but heavy weather knocked Mo flat west of Cape Horn and then again in the Indian Ocean. The former incident dealt fatal blows to both self-steering devices; the latter broke a window in the pilothouse, drowning most of Mo’s electronics. Both required unscheduled stops for repairs, by which time it was too late in the season to continue. The only logical solution: Sail home and start again.

RELATED: My Seventh Circumnavigation

On July 10, 2018, Mo and I returned under the Golden Gate Bridge, closing the loop on a 253-day 26,453-mile solo circumnavigation, which some had dubbed, and not by way of a compliment, “the longest shakedown cruise in history.” Three months later found me in the boatyard readying Mo for her second attempt when the stranger’s words broke my solitude.

Departure day came on October 1, 2018. Indian summer in San Francisco is warm but windless. Mo motored under full sail out to sea—and with an escort fleet of exactly one vessel. On departure the year before, I had looked to the horizon from under a cloud of foreboding, but now I felt relaxed. Now I knew what lay ahead, and I had a plan.

Our first test of this second attempt came in the Pacific at 49 degrees south, in the form of a Force 8 and 9 northwesterly blow lasting four days. My assessment of the previous year’s ­failure was that I’d not sailed fast enough. From the beginning, I had intended to follow the example of heroes such as Vito Dumas and Bernard Moitessier and keep moving through the worst of blows, but as conditions eased and seas stood up, I made the repeated mistake of staying on the tiny storm jib for too long. Counter to all intuition, speed is safety for a heavy boat in heavy weather because it provides the rudder with needed corrective power when the extremities of motion are making control a precious commodity. Thus, my vow on this second attempt was to keep up speed, to carry more sail—to leave the damned storm jib in its bag.

By day two of this blow, we were surrounded by great blue heavers with long troughs and cascading tops. On a deeply reefed working jib (over twice the sail area I’d carried on previous occasions), Mo rushed along with a steadiness that thrilled me. Several times she surfed straight down a massive wall, throwing a bow wave whose roar rivaled that of the gale. But she never faltered. Standing watch in the security of the pilothouse and amid this orchestrated chaos, I felt my satisfaction growing. Now we had a chance at a full circuit of the south, I thought. Soon I found myself whistling happily with the whine in the rigging. Only later did I recall with embarrassment that whistling in a blow is terribly bad luck, and forthwith, I scrawled instructions on a piece of duct tape fastened to the companionway hatch by way of reminder: “No Whistling Allowed!”

And then it was time for the Cape Horn approach. Out of prudence and heartfelt respect, I had planned this rounding to pass south of Islas Diego Ramirez, a group of rocks 20 miles below the Horn and on the edge of the continental shelf. South of these is open water of true, oceanic depth, but between Diego Ramirez and the Horn, the bottom quickly shelves to as little as 300 feet. Here, seas unmolested by land since New Zealand can pile up dangerously when weather is foul. In this case, however, a low sky brought only a cold and spitting rain. We had a fast wind but an easy sea, and on November 29, 56 days out of San Francisco, Mo and I swung in so close to the famous Cape that we could kiss her on the shins.

By morning, the headland could still be seen as a black smudge on the gray horizon astern. Mo creamed along under twin headsails in a brisk southwesterly, and as the water of the Pacific blended into that of the Atlantic, so my pride at the summit just attained was quickly cooled by thoughts of the challenge ahead.

My Southern Ocean strategy was simple: to stay as far south as I dared. There were two reasons for this. One was that at my target latitude of 47 degrees south, the circumference of the circle from Cape Horn to Cape Horn again was almost 2,000 miles shorter than at the more-typical rounding latitude of 40 degrees south. Secondly, Mo would wallow in fewer calms. The monstrous lows that march endlessly below the capes tend to hoover up everything around them, leaving vast windless spaces in ­between. The farther north of the lows one sails, the longer the calms last; the farther south, the more ­consistent the wind.

As it turned out, a lack of wind would not be a problem during this passage. By early December, we were above the Falklands and had turned to an easterly course when our first major low approached. Its winds built during the day but really came up to force overnight, with the anemometer touching 45 knots and gusting higher. The main had been doused, the boom lashed to its crutch, and the working jib was deeply reefed. The sea continued to build. Near midnight, I was dozing fitfully in my bunk when I felt Mo lift sharply, then there was a heavy slam of green water hitting the cockpit and companionway hatch. The boat rolled well over, and I rolled with her from my bunk and onto the cupboards. Then she righted, and I could hear the tinkling and splashing of water in the pilothouse.

I groaned at the thought that we’d yet again broken something vital. Grabbing a flashlight, I crawled into the ­pilothouse but found no shattered glass. In the cockpit, the dodger’s plastic door had been ripped open and the windvane paddle had been pulled from its socket. We had been badly pooped, but all that streaming wet below was from nothing more than the wave squirting in between the ­companionway hatch’s locked slide. “Keep the water out,” was Eric Hiscock’s advice for those making a Southern Ocean ­passage. As it turns out, this is rather more ­difficult than it sounds.

Two weeks later and halfway to Good Hope, we’d already ridden out three gales, and two more were in the forecast. My log was a succession of “large low arrives tonight”; “winds 35 gusting 45″; “chaotic seas—wind continues to build”; “the ocean is like a boulder garden”; “another low on the way.” By Christmas, we were well past the prime meridian and into the Indian Ocean. So far Mo had averaged a fast 140 miles a day, and the storm jib hadn’t budged from its position lashed onto the rail.

The most dreaded of questions an adventurer can face is why—why pursue such long, lonely, tiresome, risky voyages? At first, such inquiry caught me off guard, and my responses were halting. Wouldn’t anyone, given the opportunity, put at the top of his priorities list a solo sail around the world?

To me the answer is an immediate “yes.” But to others, and when the endless days of discomfort are weighed in—the sleepless nights, meals eaten from a can, the perpetual, clammy damp, hands so raw that the skin sloughs off, the gut-gnawing fear of an approaching storm, the inescapable wrath of a heavy sea, and months of exposure to a remoteness that makes the crew of the space station one’s nearest neighbors—when all that is known, most would choose not to go to sea and regard as crazy those who do.

But here’s the attraction: Sailing the Southern Ocean is like exploring an alien world. Down here, there isn’t the evidence of civilization that one finds in other oceans. Down here, there are no ships on the horizon, no jet contrails in the sky; no plastic trash ever clutters one’s wake. For months on end, there isn’t so much as a lee shore, and the waves, freed from all confinement except gravity, roam like giant buffalo upon a great, blue plain.

Moreover, down here, the animals one encounters live in such a purity of wildness that you could well be their first human encounter. Many days Mo and I were visited by that absolute marvel, the wandering albatross. As big as a suitcase and with a 12-foot wingspan, this bird lives most of its life on the wing and beyond the sight of land. It can glide in any direction in any strength of wind; so adapted is it to this environment that it can even sleep while aloft. When my little ship is struggling to survive, this bird hangs in the air with an effortlessness that defies understanding. There, above that crashing wave, it is poised so still as to seem carved out of the sky.

Or take the stars. Out here, on a clear and moonless night, the heavens shine such that our brother constellations recede into the melee of twinkling and are lost. On such a night, looking upward with binoculars is like dipping one’s hands into a basket of pearls. Look down, and galaxies of phosphorescence spin in your wake.

By January 18, Day 105 out of San Francisco, we were nearing the opposite side of the world and the halfway point in our circuit of the south. After dinner, I noticed that the barometer had dropped from 1,010 to 1,002 mb in a mere four hours. What had been an easy 20-knot westerly soon veered into the north and hardened. At midnight, I dropped the poled-out twin headsails and raised the main. Winds continued to build, and by 0200, the main was down again and lashed to its boom.

By 0400, pressure had reached 998, and brought with it a freight train of wind from the northwest. Now there was just enough light to make out the cement-colored sky pushing down upon the water. Seas were smack on the beam but manageable.

The front hit at 0600 with winds of 40 gusting to 45 and a pelting, horizontal rain. Crests of waves were blown off; the barometer dropped another 2 points. When it passed, the gale settled down to do its business. Long, wide crests of sea broke together and stained the black water with city-block-size patches of cream and ice blue. The barometer kept on sliding. At each two-hour log entry, it was down another 2 points. Four reefs in the working jib, Mo laboring.

At 1400, we reached the bottom of the low, and the barometer flattened out at 989. The wind roared. Mo shuddered in its force. The log read: “Seas massive; some plunge-breaking.” Two hours later: “A crazy, mishmash heavy sea. Pyramidal.” At 1700: “Long gusts to 50. Working jib down to a hanky.” Later that night: “Our first screaming surf down a wave I cannot see.”

To this point, Mo had been sure-footed. Always at the center of the surrounding chaos, her decks seemed as still and solid as Mother Earth. Yes, there were times when she stumbled, fell off a breaker and was thrown over to the windows, but she came back to rights and shook off things so quickly that the fall seemed hardly worth mentioning. Only when I went on deck did the fierceness of the gale become apparent.

On deck, I moved aft to adjust the windvane when I heard a crashing from the blackness astern. But I did not look aft, I looked up—and there a white wall hung for a moment. I leaped for the rail as it consumed the boat. Mo rolled. She was under. Immediate cold down foulies and boots. And then she was up. Cockpit a bathtub. Sheets trailing in the water. The main halyard was wrapped around my leg. Amazingly, there was no damage.

By 0100, I had been working the boat for 20 hours, was achingly cold and beginning to feel undone. Wind had eased significantly, and with its diminishing, so too the sea subsided. The moment had come to start adding back the sail we’d withdrawn so long ago, but this time I did not. I left Mo with but a handkerchief of a jib, tore off my foulies, and hit the sack. I didn’t even set an alarm.

On and on like this goes the Southern Ocean. By February 12, we were below New Zealand; by March 5, we were 5,000 miles due south of San Francisco; and as we descended for the second Cape Horn rounding, Mo and I were weary but battle hardened. This approach proved more tempestuous than the first, but now even dangerously foul weather couldn’t keep us from spying that great rock, that Everest of the watery south. Another gale came on. Mo pointed steadily onward and to within sight of our goal. The seas built. The wind roared. And then all cleared. Cape Horn came out of the abyss—gray, hulking rock not so much barren as raw, and with breakers throwing themselves at her feet. Then we were around, and yet on we raced. On and on and on…

On March 20, 2019—and as part of the figure-eight voyage—Mo and sailor-adventurer Randall Reeves completed a 15,343-mile 110-day circumnavigation of the Southern Ocean but continued north for a first stop in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after 237 days at sea. Coming next month: Mo and Reeves heed the call of the Northwest Passage. For more, check out Reeves’ book-length account of the voyage, available at figure8voyage.com.

The post Sailing the Southern Ocean appeared first on Cruising World.

When I woke, my seasickness had subsided to a general feeling of queasy unease, like snapping to in someone else’s house after a big night out. The constant slamming of the previous two days was gone, replaced with gyroscopic rigidity. The boat was on rails. The sea bubbled along the hull and a curious clicking sound tickled the side of the boat, like there was something loose in the bilge. But the noise came from outside: a pod of dolphins caressing us with their sonar. Other, subtler sounds filtered through. Distant music, melodious but indistinct. Was it whale song?

I was grateful to be free from the nausea, so grateful that it didn’t occur to me that the Southern Ocean should not be smooth, particularly Drake Passage, south of Cape Horn—the 500-nautical-­mile stretch of big water separating South America from our destination of Antarctica. Not long after we’d departed from Puerto Williams, Chile, but before we had entered the Drake itself, I’d been struck with a cold sweat and irrepressible nausea. I filled a bucket with my breakfast and the boat with lamentation. Eventually Alec, the skipper, injected me with promethazine, probably more as a mercy to the rest of the crew than to me. Since then, I’d been cosseted in my bunk, gnawing at an energy bar during brief moments of consciousness.

I tried to get up and realized that all was not as it seemed. I had barely cocked my leg over the lee cloth when I was shoved back into my bunk by an unseen hand. I lay there peeved. I tried again, made it over the lee cloth, but stumbled against the bulkhead. I was a drunk trying to get dressed: a tangle of arms, legs and foul-weather gear. And yet the boat wasn’t moving. I didn’t understand.

I emerged from the cabin tentatively, clinging to handholds to make sure I didn’t fall over, and climbed the stairs to the pilothouse. We were riding a 4-meter swell; we were moving after all. My brain had just become attuned to the motion. The rest of the crew was on deck, watching an iceberg emerge from the haze off the port bow. At first little more than a pale silhouette, it grew into an island of towering white crags. Apparently, two days had passed; we were south of 60 degrees S, which explained the cold that suffused the boat.

Land remained elusive, beyond the bowed horizon but near enough for the arrival of seabirds. They skimmed the sea, breaking its skin with their breasts, daring it to pluck them from flight. A pair of whales emerged nearby, blasting frigid water from their blowholes. They dived back into the deep, water running from their slick skins like oil. Growlers, craggy bits of calved ice, hid themselves among the whitecaps. And between them, smaller shards, some shaped like birds that had frozen in flight and fallen into the water like forgotten ornaments.

Early in the morning of the third day, we sighted a shadow on the horizon: land. We had already slid unseen between Smith and Snow islands in an overcast twilight. Ironically, it was another isle, called Low, that first showed itself, only 4 miles to starboard. Seven hours later, we dropped anchor in the southwestern corner of Mikkelsen Harbor. We had arrived in Antarctica.

We’d completed the journey from Puerto Williams in just under three days aboard Pelagic Australis, Skip Novak’s 74-foot expedition sloop. We were 11 on board: three professional crew and the rest of us, whose experience ranged from very to none. Pelagic Australis is used for both tourist voyages and expeditions: mountaineering, skiing, diving and documentaries.

The pro crew comprised the skipper, Alec, his inimitable wife, Giselle, and Tom, a German mountaineer and sailor who looked remarkably like Capt. Haddock from The Adventures of Tintin comics. They were more than capable of sailing Pelagic Australis without any help, but the rest of us all stood watch and assisted with sailing duties.

RELATED: Unforgettable Antarctica

Before our Drake crossing, anything not fixed to the deck had been stowed below and strapped down. Now, before we could go ashore, the crew extricated the inflatable and its motor from the forward hold and assembled them. Tom ferried us to a flattish rock on D’Hainaut Island, where we carefully clambered onto the slick stone, and stood on the continent for the first time. The island measures less than 700 yards at its widest point, and is home to a cluster of seals and a colony of gentoo penguins. It was our first of many encounters with the captivating birds. We made our way through thigh-deep snow to a small rocky outcrop, next to the Argentine refuge that crowns the island, where the penguins had made a home.

Gentoos collect assorted rocks and pebbles to construct small stone circles for nests. While one parent sits on the eggs, the other fussily rearranges the stones, constantly shoring up their crumbling castle. But the number of loose stones on the island is finite, fewer than the penguins need. Consequently, they spend a lot of their time stealing stones from other nests in an infinite cycle of pilfering.

A sinister silhouette wheeled overhead. There were myriad nests for the skua to choose from, each holding a coveted meal of orange yolk cosseted in gelatinous albumen. The penguins responded to the imminent attack with flashing beaks and a rattling bray. But the skua was spoiled for choice, and it took only a careless ­moment—an instant of distraction—for it to seize an egg and fly off with it clamped in its beak. The skua landed nearby, cracked the shell and dipped into its rich reward. The bereft parents looked on glumly from their empty nest.

While most of us were engrossed by the penguins, Margie, an airline pilot, had other priorities. She stripped to her long johns and slid into the frigid water like a seal. And when he saw that he had been pipped, Eddie, a Scotsman, stripped to his goose pimples and waded out for a quick wallow. There were no other swimmers that day, but a challenge had been issued, and we would all, sooner or later, take a dip in the icy water.

We returned to the boat, raised anchor and, without a puff of wind to propel us, motored to Foyn Harbor, where we tied up to the rusting hulk of the Governøren, a Norwegian whaling ship that caught fire and sank there in 1915.

As an expedition vessel, Pelagic Australis carries most of the equipment needed for exploration on land and underwater. Among the “toys” aboard were two bright red inflatable kayaks, which were brought out and filled with air, adding color to the deck. My wife, Nicky, and I eased ourselves carefully into one and set off to explore some of the nearby inlets and coves. Having our bums below water level provided a new perspective. Soaring spires on our horizon hinted at ancient cities of ice; low dark shapes slipped between the cities like ships. It was unsettling, being away from the warmth and security of the boat, with handheld radios our only umbilical cord, as if we might slip into a void, never to be seen again.

That afternoon we donned snowshoes, climbed the hill overlooking the bay, and gained a different perspective. The vessel that had seemed so substantial when we crossed Drake Passage lay tied up below: a small and fragile thing in a landscape painted with a meager palette, a vista of infinite shades of blue and white. Snowy peaks stretched to the silent skyline, where they fused to the clouds. And, away from the babble of the penguin colonies, the jealous snow subsumed not only color, but sound too.

The following day we cast off from the Governøren and motored slowly into a bay of ice. Mist draped the mountains like a shroud, and a blanket of gray clouds hid the sun. Water lapped against the hull and trickled from ebbing icebergs.

Then, breath. A short, sharp explosion of air. A plume of water and frigid vapor pierced the scene as a humpback surfaced and blasted spent air from its lungs. Then another. The first noisily drew in a lungful of air, ducked its head and arched its back. Its tail slid from the sea, traced a trickling arc, then slipped back into the water. The whale disappeared, leaving only a ring of ripples as a reminder. Another surfaced, closer to us, and blew a cold cloud into the quiet air. And as we watched in silence, the whales dived and surfaced and blew and breathed and dived again; the bay echoed with their symphony.

When the whales submerged for the last time, we were left in frosty silence. We waited patiently for their return. When they didn’t, we departed reluctantly, like an enthused audience denied an encore. Pelagic swept us onward, down Gerlache Strait to Orne Harbor, where Spigot Peak hid itself in glowering clouds. The snow was firm enough to navigate without snowshoes, so we all went ashore and climbed to the col, where we found a small colony of chinstrap penguins safely ensconced. It seemed an extreme refuge, but the chinstraps were undeterred by the challenge and plied back and forth to the water some 500 feet below.

On the morning that we entered Lemaire Channel, the ice was sparse. A flurry of snow born by a fresh breeze brought a promise of sailing. We hoisted the main with two reefs and headed south along the eastern shore of Booth Island.

But after a few hours, the wind eased and the ice thickened, and Alec started the engine. We rounded the southern tip of Booth Island in polished water that reflected the mountains behind and inverted them in flawless symmetry. The kayaks were launched again, and four paddlers meandered to the anchorage in Salpêtrière Bay. We shadowed them in Pelagic, picking our way carefully between the icebergs.

The next morning there was too much ice for the inflatable, so Alec nosed Pelagic up to the rocks, and we disembarked over the bow. We quickly fragmented into isolated huddles of penguin watchers. The penguins, with their impossibly short legs and squat bodies, trundled up and down well-worn paths with their wings thrust out behind them like aged priests in tight cassocks, late for vespers.

RELATED: Sailing the Antarctic Island of South Georgia

Too soon ice began to crowd the bay, and we were recalled to the boat. We nudged through sheets of sea ice as flat as billiard tables, and bergs sculpted by wind and waves into intricate triumphal arches. Some were marbled with turquoise veins, while others harbored shallow grottoes with luminescent water and walls of iridescent blue.

We headed south, to Hovgaard Island, where we learned the value of the yacht’s lifting keel and the challenges of navigating in Antarctica. Alec was feeling his way into a bay when there was a loud metallic clunk, and the boat stopped. Despite his intimate knowledge of the area, we had hit an uncharted rock. We had been moving very slowly, so there was no damage, but it was a reminder of our isolation, our vulnerability and the potential consequences of getting something wrong in an unforgiving environment.

And then, too soon, it was time to plan the homeward journey. The relentless fronts and regular storms that lash the Drake meant that timing the return passage was crucial. Alec had analyzed the GRIBs and had chosen the upcoming Saturday as the best departure day. It would avoid the northerly gale that was forecast to reach Cape Horn in the early hours of the following Wednesday.

The news brought mixed feelings. Saturday was only three days away. The Drake was always going to be an ordeal, and one I would rather not subject myself to. But it’s part of the essence of being in Antarctica, and it must be endured. Our journey was always finite, but three days seemed like little more than a camera flash, and I didn’t want it to end.

Our imminent departure meant leaving tranquility and returning to a world that was dirty and noisy and crowded with the constant electronic chatter of mobile phones and televisions. We were filled with a new sense of urgency, a desire to make the most of every moment.

When we arrived at Port Lockroy, a sheet of ice still covered part of the bay and, with few opportunities to anchor, Alec drove Pelagic Australis into the ice, cleaving a red V into the shelf and creating a secure parking space for us.

After the solitude of the previous two weeks, Port Lockroy was a return to civilization, to a version of normality that I no longer desired. The station comprised a small cluster of black, painted buildings with red-framed windows perched on a small knoll. After lunch on board, we filed over the bow, down the boarding ladder onto the ice. At the world’s most southerly post office, we wrote postcards and succumbed to some souvenir shopping.

The following morning, we motored up the Neumayer Channel toward the Melchior Islands, home to another Argentine base, and a convenient departure point for the return voyage to Chile. On the way, we received a distress message about a trimaran that had capsized near Cape Horn in winds of over 70 knots. We were too far away to provide any assistance, but it was another reminder that the inescapable Drake Passage crossing was imminent.

Alec snugged Pelagic into a small inlet on Omega Island for the night. The next day was to be our last on the continent. Nicky reminded me that it was the final opportunity for an Antarctic swim, and persuaded Michiel and Aidan to join us. The water was black as night and littered with growlers. I held my nose and clamped my mouth shut, and Nicky and I jumped off the stern together. The water snatched the warmth from my body, and I fought the urge to gasp. Bubbles foamed around me, and I sank into the darkness. I kicked for the surface and emerged like a missile, gulping for air. The four of us scrambled back onto the boat and, still in our underwear, we posed for photographs, glowing pink in the relative warmth. And before hypothermia set in, we dashed downstairs for a welcome hot shower.

The next morning, Pelagic Australis raised anchor to sail back across Drake Passage for Cape Horn and Puerto Williams. I expected the worst and, with a sense of foreboding, slunk below to my bunk.

Brady Ridgway is the author of two novels and a professional pilot who, with his wife, Nicky, own an Ovni 435 that is currently on the hard in Greece after an eventful cruise through Europe and the Med after purchasing the boat in France. While current sailing plans are on hold, he is flying a Beech 1900 in the DR Congo on a peacekeeping mission for the United Nations.

High-Seas Charter Adventures

For the accompanying story, the author signed on with Skip Novak’s Pelagic Expeditions, which offers berths on a pair of custom, high-­latitude yachts on voyages to the Arctic and Antarctic, Cape Horn, Spitsbergen, Greenland, South Georgia and the Falkland Islands. For more info on their destinations and itineraries, visit their website.

The post Voyage to Antarctica appeared first on Cruising World.

The Antarctic island of South Georgia is the most nerve-racking place I know. Along its spectacular coast — nearly 10,000 feet high in places, where hurricane-force winds can replace a flat calm in seconds — simply being there requires tenacity. Sailing away from the island is a kind of game of chance. Whether attempting the 800-nautical-mile upwind passage to the Falkland Islands or the 3,000-nautical-mile downwind one to Cape Town, South Africa, an oceanic gantlet of icebergs, fog and gales is unavoidable.

And getting there? That is also far from child’s play. On our Wanderer III, a 30-foot wooden boat with sextant and compass but no radar, weather forecasts or communication other than VHF radio, it’s pure psychology. Each phase of a voyage to the most fantastic island of the world is more than demanding.

When I first conjured up South Georgia as an idea, Kicki and I were still sailing in the Pacific. Later, in Cape Town, in 1997, after 10 years of being underway, a mere Atlantic passage separated us from a return to Europe. But I couldn’t get South Georgia out of my mind. I knew: If not now, then never. Rules and fees increasingly restrict the movements of curious sailors and simple boats like Wanderer III. Exploration has been replaced by tourism and orderly experiences, even at the far reaches of the planet.

So we recast our thoughts and actions. We sailed 55 days, first to Montevideo, Uruguay, for the cakes at the Cafe Rheingold, then on to a face-lift for Wanderer in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and finally to the Falklands — this last step in borrowed foul-weather gear. With our necks and backs suddenly no longer wet, we were encouraged to aim for South Georgia, after the winter.

On November 27, we had Wanderer shipshape for the passage into the cold, and had even stashed aboard some quebracho firewood from Argentina. The saloon table was in the forepeak; all four anchors and mooring lines were secured between the midship bunks. Diesel, kerosene and cocoa powder were topped up, and everything was ready; we just needed a forecast. So, in those pre-GRIB-file days, we contacted the met office. “Monday: Severe storm.”

RELATED: Arm Yourself For Cold-Weather Cruising

Actually, that suited us just fine. It gave us two or three days to properly say goodbye to a place and people we had grown very fond of over the year. In my irrational habit of pursuing chimeras, I even proposed a return: We’d beat back 800 nautical miles through the Southern Ocean, from South Georgia to the Falklands, I told folks. The conviction with which I announced this fooled even me.

On Saturday it blew just like normal, but not a storm. Sunday likewise. In fact, there was no storm in sight.

“Never be impatient in the Southern Ocean,” came the advice from, of all people, French navigator and sailor Philippe Poupon.

On Monday, finally, hurricane-strength winds swept all impatience into outer space. Even the oldest Kelpers, the Falkland locals, couldn’t remember seeing their harbor white-washed for four solid days. A Spanish fishing boat steamed up and down the cigar-shaped harbor for three of them because the anchor would not hold and coming alongside was totally unthinkable. A multistory Princess cruise ship couldn’t retrieve 200 of its 2,000 passengers from their shore leave, and required the help of a tug to reach open waters, where it held its position through the blow.

Wanderer, well secured with shore lines, heeled heavily. Stanley Harbour came to a standstill and my knees went weak — both in direct relationship to the storm’s intensity. And once it abated, I promptly developed a mysterious fever. Coughing heavily, I retreated to my bunk. Nothing could be done.

The longer I stayed horizontal, the more consciously I coughed, perhaps a symptom of the impossibility of setting out to sea like this. I did manage a little test sail with friends in Force 6 winds, which caused some alarm ashore due to the boat appearing so low in the water; Wanderer was heavily laden.

Yet neither my feverish cough nor my soft knees would budge. The mental preparation for such a passage begins long before the start, by inwardly playing through all the possible scenarios. But I was shaken. Such a storm-of-the-century would have blown us God knows where, certainly not to South Georgia. My courage was blocked, day after day. What kind of weather was I waiting for? Finally, when the met office produced a decent forecast, my fever left as suddenly as it had appeared. If we didn’t cast off on Thursday, it would turn into Friday. And leaving on a Friday — impossible!

That’s the psychology of such an unscripted voyage. And so, 11 days after the storm, Kicki and I tacked Wanderer, still heavily laden, against a fresh northwest wind through Stanley Harbour’s Narrows. Eight hundred miles of Southern Ocean separated us from an extraordinary adventure and South Georgia. I had prepared myself nautically for the passage, but had not exposed myself to any images of South Georgia. This attitude pervades our sailing: Keep yourself as visually innocent as possible in order to allow the joy of discovery. Instead, I carried dream pictures within me, full of imagined bays and hideaways.

And I was swept away by reality.

Nearly 2 miles high, just over 12 miles wide, 75 miles long and two-thirds covered in permanent ice, the island is as spectacular as a maritime Himalayas. And an ocean Serengeti: 450,000 elephant seals, 4 to 5 million fur seals, endless millions of seabirds; albatross and penguins share a coastline that in summer holds the highest density of birds and mammals in the world.

Such tightly packed pockets of wildlife are precious few on our planet. Nowhere else do ocean and land mingle in such an irresistible way, with such beauty. Our landfall, after days of icebergs and fog, was a burst into magnificence. It touched us like no island ever had. This changed us profoundly.

After three summer months on South Georgia, the grand loop of life didn’t end up taking us back to Europe, as had been envisioned back in Cape Town, but instead led us ever farther into experiencing the high southern latitudes. We could do this because we have the boat, the simplicity and the time. That’s why I sail: to reach out into nature, not for commercial reasons, not to discover the already known, but to experience life and to counteract the tendency to accumulate things. We gather instead experience, wisdom and friendships.

South Georgia became the focal point of 30 deliberately chosen years upon the oceans. It wouldn’t let us go, and in 2009, we returned. This time we didn’t only wish for a summer of animal abundance, but also for an island totally clad in white. We wanted to experience also the winter, an entire year: us, tiny; the island, huge; totally out of this world.

As mentioned, getting to South Georgia is one thing. It’s another thing entirely to endure. The shortest passage from bay to bay is notoriously unpredictable. Winds jump from zero to 100 knots within minutes, and alter their direction unforeseeably. Speeding fog banks can overtake you at the drop of a hat, or similarly, ice will choke a whole bay. Our biggest challenge was to survive in such a place without weather forecasts or a strong engine for out boat.

Another was Kicki’s provisioning, since you can’t buy anything on South Georgia. Besides storing everything from flour to lighter cubes to last a year, we also had to find room for skis, crampons and 500 meters of heavy rope on 30 feet of boat. This was a logistical exercise that hardly left room for us. But that was not the only reason we so often sought the outdoors. Whenever possible, we went up into the mountains and off to the animals. When possible, we used muscles rather than wind to hike or ski miles to reach fairy-tale beaches populated by black-white-golden figures: 200,000 king penguins. These were majestic creatures we mingled with. Surrounded by penguin muck we felt filthy rich.

Back on board Wanderer, the animals didn’t let up. Elephant seals visited nonstop. They announced their 4-ton arrival with heavy breathing, and stayed peaceful. First a ruffian would rub along our hull, then a bigger-nosed bull would take a liking to our dinghy. I have little confidence in the compos mentis of these fellows who focused so much attention on our deckside fenders. Their intellectual competence will always lag behind their physical strength. I didn’t like them near our boat, especially not aft at our vulnerable bumpkin stays. I was even less enthusiastic about them 6 inches from my ear, on the other side of the planks, when they roared into Wanderer‘s hull, using the boat as a resonator — well past midnight, every night. Their interest in us seemed inflated, as was my reaction: standing in the companionway with a whistle and a 400,000-candlepower spotlight in a fruitless attempt to deter them.

But at some point, I stopped needing my arsenal. Winter came, and the animal voices left us. What remained was the wail and roar of the wind while we stayed below and fed the wood burner with coal collected ashore. Sometimes the open bays would freeze over, but storms and ocean swell would always break up the ice. So we could sail, and every three months or so, visit the scientific base near Grytviken’s old whaling station.

Outside of Grytviken, we were alone. The island was ours the whole winter. We could reach nobody, and nobody could reach us. On skis we climbed to glaciers and sped back down. Whenever possible, we secured the boat not only to anchors, but also with lines to rocks. If it felt safe to leave Wanderer for a few days, we’d heft our backpacks and tent to cross the magical winter mountain ridges to visit the few remaining winter penguin colonies.

On Wanderer, small as it is, we are always immediately in touch with the elements. They surround us, penetrate us, for better and for worse. The winds positively exploded around us, their intensity at times frightening, at times wonderful, sometimes both at once. And when we were on skis or listening to a leopard seal duet, and these winds suddenly abated — when all fell quiet and the sun reigned again on South Georgia’s sparkling white winter dress — then there was nothing more beautiful. It was the South Georgia we loved.

One year was not enough for South Georgia. It’s impossible, in one summer, to be with each species for its relevant breeding season. The more you immerse yourself, the greater the desire for more. We had plenty of firewood. Right at the beginning of our stay, I had offered to dispose of the old jetty timbers in our wood stove. Sometimes we collected a bit of whalers coal in Ocean Harbour. We still had kerosene for cooking, and diesel for our 20-liter tank because our engine is small. We know our monthly food consumption precisely. Multiplied into a year, it adds up to little more than the average First World citizen discards unused. Our organic waste tends toward zero.

The forepeak, in which we sleep, was our fridge, and kept the breakfast apples fresh. We had beans and seeds for sprouting, and home-pickled meat remaining from an island in the Falklands that we looked after. It was plenty. Kicki’s inventory permitted a second year, as long as our friends on charter yachts brought us the staples: apples, oats, flour, rice, spaghetti, cheese. So we stayed a second winter and a third summer, at the end of which we found ourselves squatting next to a juvenile wandering albatross.

RELATED: Seafaring History: Shackleton Traverses South Georgia Island

All of us, each in our own way, had our thoughts on the inevitable departure. The Southern Ocean awaited us. The bird had never yet flown and, still on his nest, was training his wings in large arcs. Once airborne, he would not return from the nourishing ocean for six to eight years. Nobody was feeding him now. He had to go, couldn’t stay. The impending departure — for him as well as for us — was a leap into uncertainty.

That Kicki and I hesitated was not due to a any clock, not even due to the upcoming stretch of ocean with the world’s highest incidents of storms, but purely because of emotions. After precariously learning how to stay, we found it nearly impossible to leave.

Nevertheless, leave we did, while things were good, and with a stadium-style Mexican wave from Grytviken’s bay. Distress-flare smoke shrouded the British research base. Everyone ashore threw up their arms. Slowly the promontory with Sir Ernest Shackleton’s cross moved between us and them. We were left in tears — and initially were windless. Then northwesterlies and fog swallowed us as we sailed, knowing there was iceberg risk in the first 300 nautical miles. At first, during the second double-reefed day of bucking headwinds, two weeks looked like an eternity. In retrospect, on day 14, it seemed frighteningly brief. Time melted. Meanwhile, we had reached 40 degrees south, and in light winds, as if on tiptoe, approached Tristan da Cunha for the second attempt at a landing, many years after the first. Sadly, our arrival coincided with a storm warning.

When it came, it took our windvane and blew us northward under bare poles, toward St. Helena. All of a sudden, we had to pump the bilge 80 strokes every few hours — way too much for Wanderer.

I checked aft, under the cockpit, in the galley, the seacocks and, though skeptically, also the keel bolts. They had never, ever leaked. To sort out the forepeak was nearly impossible, as stuffed as it was with sails, fenders, the table, rope and the small tire we use for our drogue. Right at the stem: a little trickle, not more or less than normal. It’s been there for years, the only one I know of. Under the forepeak floor: dry. By the head, dry also. This post-traumatic leak was as mysterious as my post-traumatic fever back in Stanley.

However, in better light, the damp up forward betrayed movement. Water must be coming from the head after all. I touched the bronze seacocks again: dry, or? Hold on, my fingers got wet. That’s when I turned the conical seacock: It was incredibly loose. In South Georgia I had hardly been able to move it; in the cold it had been tight, but not so now. With every plunge of the bow, a small jet of water shot into the boat. Slowly, I understood: the grease! It had gotten soft like butter in the heat. Kicki handed me a screwdriver, and I tightened two little bolts. That was it. After 26 months on the most breathtaking island, we were now worry-free. It was warm.

Thies Matzen and Kicki Ericson are winners of the Cruising Club of America’s Blue Water Medal. They have been roaming the world’s oceans for over two decades aboard *Wanderer III, which has earned the Blue Water Medal twice.*

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The grand, unspoiled scenery of the high latitudes lures more and more yachts to places like Labrador, the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Svalbard and Iceland. South of the equator, it’s the Chilean Channels, Antarctic and South Georgia. Whatever the destination, a well-built, ­strongly rigged sailboat designed for blue water can get to these seemingly faraway places in time to cruise through the summer season and then ­escape before winter gales ­arrive. Still, even the most seaworthy of boats must prepare for seriously cold climates and ­water cold enough to maintain ice, both factors on our minds when my wife, Nancy, and I modified our Mason 44, Frances B, for several summers in Labrador and Greenland.

Keeping Warm

A reliable cabin heater is the first equipment to install. A diesel heater that works with a gravity-fed fuel supply has the appeal of simplicity and easy installation. We were choosing between a Sig Marine model and a Norwegian Refleks, both sold in the U.S. by Maine’s Hamilton Marine. The Sig 170 fit our available cabin space. We had an 8-gallon aluminum tank made, which we ­installed 4 feet above the heater. Plumbed with a shut-off valve and a filter, it’s now been silently working for four years, eliminating the need to run another fuel line and pump from the main fuel tank. In addition to the usual exhaust pipe, we also put in a pipe to draw air from outside. This balanced setup helps maintain a draft in strong winds, and you don’t have to worry about becoming ­asphyxiated from the heater using all of the ­oxygen in the closed crew quarters. Many high-latitude yachts carry bus heaters that circulate air warmed by the engine. They consume a lot of DC current but work great when powering. On Frances B, we decided we’d rather layer on more clothing than tear up joinery for the ­installation of a ­duct/­blower assembly. For the same reason, we rejected electronically managed diesel-burning units that employ ducts and power-­hungry pumps. As for the less efficient solid-fuel heaters, we lacked space to load wood, coal or charcoal briquettes. And forget finding wood north of the tree line. A propane heater would present the challenge of installing absolutely leakproof piping throughout the cabin, so that got a thumbs-down too.

Keeping warm on board ­also relies on the consumption of hot coffee, tea, soups and stews. Our use of propane in the galley skyrockets. We take off for Greenland and Labrador with five 15-pound propane bottles. These typically last from Baddeck, ­Nova Scotia, through a voyage to Greenland and back to Newfoundland — not quite five months. It’s difficult to refill propane bottles in Labrador, and shops refuse to exchange bottles not previously bought from them. Greenland uses European-style fittings, so it’s best to carry enough of your own bottles.

Keeping warm on deck in windy weather is easy in these days of modern, light gear for outdoor activities. Very protective but pricey drysuits marketed by Musto, Kokatat, Neil Pryde, Ocean Rodeo and others keep you absolutely dry and don’t hinder physical activity on deck. With some layers of fleecy underclothes, however, modern offshore foul-weather gear will be quite adequate even in Davis Strait or Baffin Bay, between Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. Make sure to get foam- or fleece-lined boots, big and loose outer gloves with space for inserts, a fleece neck gaiter and several hats that lower over the ears.

We have immersion suits aboard too. They are awkward to don and restrict movement, but they may still come in handy if it comes to abandoning the boat at sea or wrecking on rocky shores. The latest immersion suit design, Stearns’ I950 Thermashield 24+, circulates the wearer’s warm breath and provides cold-water protection for over 24 hours.

Stop Condensation

Condensation is a real problem in colder weather, and not just in high latitudes. Our Mason 44 came with insulation in all lockers. It’s thin, and we have been adding layers so it’s now three-thick. On a new construction, one should line the hull with up to 4 inches of insulating material, especially for boats planning to winter in ice. Overhead hatches can rain condensation, so Nancy, ever inventive, has sewn some i­nsulating pads — canvas pockets filled with 1-inch-thick medium-­density foam. They sit against the hatch lens and are supported by mosquito-net frames. These pads block out light, which we found helpful when sleeping during the 24 hours of sunlight in Greenland, and really help stop the drips. Deckhouse portholes sweat condensation as well. I was able to stop this with ­Lexan storm covers I installed over the portholes as protection against damaging waves.

Condensation can also ­accumulate in the fuel in the integral tanks often found on metal boats. Preventing ­water from overcoming the ­fuel filter’s capacity is essential. Take fuel samples from the bottom of the tank and use a water-­detecting paste on a stick or electronic sensor to determine if water is in your fuel. Installing larger filter sizes and changing them more often helps. In the super-cold waters of Antarctica, Svalbard and the Canadian Arctic, the sea can get cold enough for diesel fuel to begin congealing. ­Carry a supply of winter fuel additives and octane boosters. It is also good to have a separate fuel tank in a warm engine space. In Greenland, fuel suitable for local conditions and season can be bought in ­every village. In Labrador, where you may be sold heating diesel, the fishermen add a quart of automatic transmission fluid per 55-­gallon drum to increase ­lubricity. I add Opti-Lube XPD, which I purchase online.

Ice Ahead!

One of the best ways to prevent trouble is to prepare the boat for the ice you will ­surely encounter while voyaging in the high latitudes. A ­propeller working in an aperture ­behind a keel or rudder skeg is a lot less likely to foul than a prop on a shaft held by a strut. Apart from getting fouled, an exposed prop can get damaged by chunks of ice when powering through even light brash ice. For ­navigating in heavy ice, a ­protective cage around the propeller helps. Rudders are also vulnerable, and going into icy ­waters with a spade rudder is plain ­crazy. Boats exploring ice-prone ­waters like Melville Bay in northwest Greenland, the Northwest Passage, or Antarctica sometimes install ­another skeg aft of the rudder to protect it when going in ­reverse. Any boat that may encounter ice, even occasionally, should carry ice poles, also known as tuks, that are 15 feet or so long; a metal blade at the end can be useful when pushing off threatening floes. That said, some boats with rudders and propellers ill-designed for coping with ice survive and have made it even through the Northwest Passage. Some people are just plain lucky.

Because chunks of ice are common in high-latitude ­waters, good visibility from the cockpit is essential. On Frances B we can lower the ­dodger when the wind is down to see better. If the wind picks up, whitecaps may mask the ­smaller pieces of ice. In some circumstances, one may have to heave to, as the radar picks up only icebergs and, in a flat sea, very large bergy bits. Dense fog also forces heaving to in an area with low-lying ice. The state of the sea will decide this for you.

Keep the Ocean Out

Install a valve to shut off the exhaust system to prevent flooding the engine with following seas. In extreme conditions, the boat may pitch the bow down so much that water can run from the lift box into the engine block. Few boats have a valve between the mixing elbow and the muffler lift box, but the box may have a drain valve ­already installed that can be used to empty it into the bilge. Heavy following seas may climb aboard, so the companionway hatch has to have storm protection covers. Cockpit drains must be effective and large — preferably two drains with a 2-inch diameter or four with a 1 1⁄2-inch diameter. ­Water is heavy, and on our boat I had to glass in two stout ­partial bulkheads under the cockpit sole to shore up the cockpit well, as it was originally supported only at the ends.

Anchoring

Generally, anchorages in high latitudes are very deep. On Frances B, we carry 400 feet of 3⁄8-inch G4 chain, the longest uninterrupted length you can buy, and it’s about right. We ­also have two 600-foot nylon anchor rodes. Most of the time, our Bruce anchor works very well. For particularly weedy bottoms, frequently found in Labrador at depths less than 40 feet and in the Chilean channels near Cape Horn, Frances B carries a heavy Northill anchor. An aluminum Fortress and a folding fisherman-style anchor complement our inventory.

Keep Safety Top of Mind

In August 2014, south of Greenland, the eye of Hurricane Cristobal caught up with Trevor Robertson in his 35-foot Wylo II, Iron Bark. Trevor set the Aries windvane to steer the boat with the wind on the port quarter; for the next 10 hours, venturing on deck would be suicidal. As a Cruising Club of America Blue Water Medal recipient who has spent years sailing in the extreme high latitudes, wintering in Antarctica and Greenland, Trevor certainly prepared his boat well. He reported that loose items and lockers on Iron Bark were positively secured and nothing came adrift. That must mean that his usual supply of rum in jerry jugs also survived to continue keeping the skipper warm.

Tom Zydler is a frequent CW contributor.

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Sailing through the endless seas of Antarctic ice, the crew of Pelagic gets creative and calls on the use of a drone to help navigate the trecherous waters.

Read more about Skip Novak’s Antarctic adventures here, and check out Pelagic’s Vimeo channel for more awesome videos of life at the bottom of the world.

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For adventurous sailors, the northern Antarctic Peninsula is one of the world’s last unspoiled cruising grounds. Last February, I was part of a group of eight who chartered Pelagic Australis, the 73-foot aluminum sloop designed for high-latitude sailing expeditions by Skip Novak, legendary long-distance sailor and mountaineer. Brawny as its owner, rugged and equipped with a big Cummins diesel, Pelagic Australis is cutter rigged with genoa, yankee and staysail, all on roller furlers with lines leading to the cockpit. The 800-pound mainsail carries four reefs and can be reduced to the size of a handkerchief.

We spent more than three weeks crossing the turbulent waters of Drake Passage, threading our way among icebergs and islets along the Antarctic coast and then recrossing the Passage via Cape Horn.

The cruise started in Puerto Williams, Chile, on the Beagle Canal. We met Pelagic Australis tied up at the Micalvi, a grounded Chilean navy supply vessel that serves as the Puerto Williams Yacht Club.

Soon enough, we were underway on a 650-mile crossing of Drake Passage, one of the most inhospitable bodies of water on Earth, known for its large and unpredictable seas and successions of storm-laden lows. We dosed ourselves with Stugeron, the powerful motion-sickness medicine. The weather gods were good to us. Although some of us were a bit green at various times, we all made the four-day passage without losing our cookies.

Our Antarctic landfall was Deception Island, a sunken crater once the site of whaling and sealing stations, now abandoned and desolate. There, in Whalers Bay, we experienced our first Antarctic storm. During the day the wind increased to the 50s with gusts over 65 knots. Our anchor and 350 feet of heavy chain couldn’t hold us on the narrow shelf under the crater wall. By nightfall we were idling under power in the middle of the caldera. As we drifted to leeward, once in a while one of us had to go out in the cockpit, rev up the engine and drive the boat to windward to gain drifting room. Then we could sit tight again. It was a long night.

But storms pass. A day later we were nosing south among snow-crowned peaks on islands and mainland, nudging small icebergs and spotting seals, whales and, of course, penguins in abundance. We launched the Zodiac and a couple of kayaks to explore.

Our first major destination was Port Lockroy, a former British research station on tiny Goudier Island, in front of the large glaciers of Wiencke Island. The huts of the former research station are now a museum, a post office and a gift shop managed by the Antarctic Heritage Trust. Port Lockroy is a mandatory stop for cruise ships along the Antarctic Peninsula each summer. The proceeds of the gift shop support the historic-preservation program in the peninsula region.

From Port Lockroy we pushed south along the west side of the peninsula, through the “iceberg graveyard.” The might of the crags, the whiteness of the snow — everywhere — and the extraordinary blues and greens of the icebergs made us gasp.

Our next destination was Vernadsky Research Station in the Argentine Islands, south of Anvers Island. Vernadsky is a prized destination for Antarctic sailors because it’s the site of the world’s most southerly bar, the Vernadsky Station Lounge. We brought our own wine, but ended up drinking locally produced vodka with our Ukrainian hosts.

While at Vernadsky, an approaching low required us to tie up in a tiny cove on a nearby islet. Pelagic Australis has four large reels of Spectra cable to secure the vessel to boulders on the shore. Four corner ties plus the anchor make a classic Antarctic five-point moor, which kept us safe from winds of 40-plus knots. Although the Spectra lines were taut as bowstrings, they held.

The five-day trip back across Drake Passage to Puerto Williams was enlivened by a near collision with an iceberg on our first night out, and a race to shelter behind Cape Horn to beat an approaching low, which kicked up quite a wind and sea at the end. Par for the course with Antarctic cruising.

Peter L. Murray has cruised Serendipity, his 30-foot wooden schooner, along the Maine coast for nearly 50 years.

Click here to read more about cruising the Antarctic

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Skip was born in Chicago in 1952 and started sailing at an early age. He has raced in four Whitbread around the World races and in 2001 co-skippered the 33-meter catamaran Innovation in The Race Around The World In 65 Days.

In 1987 Skip designed and built the steel cutter Pelagic for exploring the southern high latitudes and to allow him to pursue his passion for mountaineering. He has spent 26 seasons in Tierra del Fuego, South Georgia and Antarctica. Pelagic supported and often has starred in 15 documentary film projects. She has carried sailors, scientists, researchers and filmmakers to Antarctic shores.

Recognizing the need for another and bigger vessel Novak had Pelagic Australis built in Durbin, South Africa in 2003. The 74-foot aluminum vessel is cutter-rigged, and like her smaller sister Pelagic, has a unique swinging ballast keel and rudder. These features reduce draft and allow the vessels to be beached without damage. Pelagic Australis was built for exploration and can accommodate 10 guests and 2 crew. The vessel is equipped with a complete communication center allowing for worldwide contact.

Skip Novak is a firm believer in keeping it simple and having all aboard participate in shipboard duties. As such, there are no “appliances” on board to fix. He says “the Pelagic way, means keeping it simple on a voyage of participation.” Skip does allow one luxury item on his expeditions: “plenty of red wine!”

Skip is well known for his contributions to sailors worldwide, with lectures, publications, and his beautiful photographs. He has written two books, “Fazisl the Joint Adventure” and “One Watch at a Time. Around the World with Drum on the Whitbread Race.”

When not sailing in icy waters, Skip lives with his family in Hout Bay, South Africa.

The Cruising Club of America is dedicated to offshore cruising, voyaging and the “adventurous use of the sea” through efforts to improve seamanship, the design of seaworthy yachts, safe yachting procedures and environmental awareness. Founded in 1922, the Club has 11 stations throughout the U.S., Canada and Bermuda, with approximately 1200 members who are qualified by their experience in offshore passage making. In even-numbered years, the CCA organizes the Newport to Bermuda Race in conjunction with the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. Through the Club’s Bonnell Cove Foundation, grants are made to 501 C3 organizations for safety-at-sea and environment of the sea projects. Learn more at http://www.cruisingclub.org.

Sailor Skip Novak

The post Skip Novak Honored for Cruising the Antarctic appeared first on Cruising World.

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