“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.

Ever since I was 7 years old, I’ve wanted to circumnavigate, and to do so in the Southern Hemisphere, following the routes of the great clipper ships. No canals, just the great capes!

In 2006, I built a wooden schooner in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and took her on her maiden voyage: around the world via the Southern Ocean. It took two years and two months to sail the 38,400 nautical miles back to Lunenburg, sailing together with many different friends for the various passages.

My boat, Maggie B, was designed by eminent nautical architect Nigel Irens to be “fast, safe and comfortable” in the deep south. Most boats that circumnavigate in those waters are race boats that are just designed to be fast. Others are designed more for coastal cruising—and often end up with serious problems when put to the test in the open ocean.

My log from the voyage was detailed both about our experiences at sea in the great passages, as well as the fascinating ports—Buenos Aires, Argentina; Cape Town, South Africa; Hobart, Tasmania; and so on—where we stopped. These stories became the basis for my book, The Schooner Maggie B., a Southern Ocean Circumnavigation (seapointbooks.com).

After the trip, I focused on what I learned from the experience. I came up with 13 principles. Left out are obvious points such as “plan ahead” and “don’t sail into hurricanes.” Here’s my list:

1. You need to be a good librarian. Every piece of information that comes aboard with all the different systems should be saved and cataloged. When something broke, we were almost always able to grab the manual for the system and find the answer. Along the same lines, much of our electronic gear (flashlights, VHF radios, etc.) used rechargeable batteries. Every one of them seemed to have a different charger, which needed to be kept track of. So everything was labeled, like “big yellow flashlight.”

2. At sea, there is no such thing as a good new noise. Why is the bilge pump running? (All the fresh water was being pumped out!) Why is the mainsheet block making a funny noise? (It was failing.) On passage, it seems that something is always grinding, rubbing, breaking, chafing or otherwise coming apart. Find it. Fix it. Make it stop.

3. GPS and chart plotters can wreck your day. Many navigators relax because GPS is accurate to 30 feet, and every chart in the world can be called up on your plotter. What could go wrong? Lots. Like new sandbars, inaccurate charts, uncharted meteorological buoys, mis-entered waypoints, and new wind farms or oil rigs. A top professional race crew put their multimillion-dollar race boat high and dry on a reef in the Indian Ocean during a round-the-world race because the navigator didn’t use the right scale on his plotter. A good navigator should always be somewhat paranoid.

4. It’s OK to be “the captain.” I started off on the trip after 20 years of teaching Outward Bound. Many of the early discussions were classic “What do you think?” group-interaction efforts. (They were not always the most fruitful.) Later in the voyage, I was much more ready to comfortably give orders. A boat works better with clear lines of command and responsibility.

5. Different countries work differently. Don’t sit and fret that getting a load of diesel, for instance, is not as easy as in the United States. Or if the bureaucracy when clearing into or out of a country is maddening. Try to relax and enjoy the cultural experience.

6. Speaking of bureaucracy, the two hardest things about cruising the globe are clearing customs and getting your propane tank filled up. Regarding the former, customs clearance is helped somewhat by fancy crew lists and “Official Ship’s Stamps,” especially if you have a bright red stamp pad, or could seal your signature with engraved, raised lettering like a notary. But propane is amazingly unstandardized: metric, SAE, left-handed, right-handed, male, female, integral or external step-down valves, rules against filling bottles not properly marked, etc. We ended up with five different types of bottles on board and a huge mayonnaise jar full of every sort of connector.

7. Don’t have anything on board just because “that’s how they did it in the old days,” or because “it’s the latest and greatest!” Every piece of equipment has to “buy” its way on board and be the best thing for the job. Our new mainsail strops, for attaching the mainsheet to the boom, were one example on Maggie B.: very high-tech fibers and the best blocks but protected with classic leather done in baseball-stitching style.

8. Modern materials such as carbon fiber and Spectra lines are better and safer than what we had 10 or 20 years ago. So use them! Wooden masts and hemp sails are great for boat shows, just don’t go offshore with them. The same idea goes with other gear too: Our new Manson Supreme anchor was simply a lot better than our big, cast Fisherman’s anchor that was replaced by it.

9. You want to choose what is going to break. What does that mean? Everything today is strong, but something is still going to break; you should choose where so that it will be a little deal, not a big deal. Say your boom can take 6,000 pounds a third the way out from the mast. Where would you put the preventer that helps keep the boom in place? Make the attachment point to the preventer a line with a breaking strength of less than 5,000 pounds. In other words, it’s better to break the line than the boom.

10. Meteorology is pretty good these days. Excellent, in fact. You can get good advice anytime, anywhere. If you are paying attention, it is much, much harder to get into weather trouble than it used to be.

11. In my opinion, a full-keel schooner is a much safer boat offshore than a sloop, yawl or ketch. You want flexibility and balance. You want directional stability. You want to be able to pile on lots of sail in light air, and reef down safely when it blows hard. If it becomes a big blow, you want to bring your main down to the third or fourth reef, furl up the foresail, and drive off with half a jib. That is easy to do in a schooner, very tough in a sloop. But the real killer is broaching, losing directional control in big seas and big wind. On my schooner, you can reef down the main, bring the center of pressure forward, and use its long keel for directional stability. Modern sloops with skinny keels and little rudders might be faster racing around buoys but can be uncontrollable in big water.

12. A boat built by sailors will be safer in hard use than a boat built simply by good boatbuilders.

13. Simpler is better. Lots of gear can look great in a catalog or a store, but rope, knives and pulleys will win the day most times over some fancy, specialized piece of gear.

Frank Blair served five years in the Navy, flying single-seat fighters off aircraft carriers, including low-level reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam, for which he was awarded five air medals. A US Coast Guard Master, a registered Maine guide, and an instructor in the Outward Bound sea program for 20 years, he’s now based in Maine. Editor’s note: The content from this book excerpt was edited for style and clarity.

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It was just past midnight on Friday the 13th. Anasazi Girl, our family’s Open 40, was rounding the Cape of Good Hope in the dark.

“Are you superstitious?” he asked me.

Our lines were now lying on the dock of the False Bay Yacht Club in Simon’s Town. My partner, James Burwick, liked to do this — depart at night and leave the lines. We were setting out on a nonstop passage from South Africa to Western Australia. James was driving the boat. The kids were in dreamland, tucked into one sleeping bag in the quarter berth. I was lying next to them, trying to rest.

“No,” I answered.

I was not superstitious, but mixed with the usual excitement of leaving was an elevated sense of apprehension. This was not our first voyage. However, we were beginning our most challenging journey as a family.

It’s always such a mind trip to leave port, especially after being on land for a long time. Nearly four months had passed since we’d made landfall in Cape Town. Our son, Raivo, was now 1, and our daughter, Tormentina, was 3. We had split our time in South Africa between Cape Town and Simon’s Town, and had rounded the Cape of Good Hope three times prior to this.

The preparation for departure was the standard: high-intensity and high-stress, with long and detailed work lists compiled and completed. The watermaker membrane was replaced; all systems checked; food, fuel and water provisions stocked; everything packed and stowed. Unnecessary items were purged or given away. Our bicycles, boat spares and shore clothes were on a freighter. Bills had been paid, emails sent, passports and boat documents stamped. We were cleared to leave the country.

More than anything, I was ­utterly exhausted, and relieved that at last we were underway. It was such an irony to be so tired before we had even left port.

The entire time in South Africa, James and I had agonized, out loud together and silently in our own minds, about the upcoming ­voyage. We went back and forth countless times about whether or not we would all go, or if James would sail this next segment alone.

Our family approach to life is to stay open and flexible in our plans. We take action only when we are certain it is the best decision for the family. This method of living often leaves our immediate ­future ­unknown. Just days before we departed, neither of us was completely sure how things would unfold.

We’d already got a small taste of Southern Ocean sailing with the kids on the South Atlantic side, en route from Cape Verde to South Africa. James was well seasoned, having completed a solo loop around Antarctica prior to the birth of our first child. We were eager to experience with our children the isolated beauty of sailing across the southern Indian Ocean, but we were also aware of the risks that would be involved if anything went wrong in the high latitudes. Even with excellent onboard communications and safety gear, we would be a very long way from any possibility of help.

In port, I’d read Derek Lundy’s Godforsaken Sea and Ellen MacArthur’s ­biography Taking On the World. These Vendée Globe stories revealed to me the most extreme version of what could happen in the Southern Ocean. It was in the 1996-1997 Vendée, profiled in Godforsaken Sea, that sailor Gerry Roufs disappeared in the South Pacific. In the same race, it was the Indian Ocean segment that ­capsized racers Dinelli, Dubois and Bullimore. Fortunately, all three were rescued, but not before teetering between survival and death. I knew we would not be pushing the boat as hard as they did, but their tales gave me a real sense of the difficulty of our upcoming task.

No matter how much preparation, care and caution we took to get the boat and ourselves ready, we always had to contend with chance and the possibility of dangers that were totally out of our control.

Who would choose to go there with their kids?

When we discussed the voyage, James and I would often ask ourselves if we were completely out of our minds for wanting to make this passage.

Who is lucky enough to sail this stretch of wilderness with their family?

Other times, we felt that we’d been given a rare and extraordinary gift — a chance to experience with our family one of the wildest, purest, most inaccessible places on the planet.

South Africa held for me a similar kind of edge between beauty and danger. In Cape Town and Simon’s Town, we were surrounded by the most stunning landscape you could imagine. It is a world-class destination for rock climbing, sailing, surfing, paragliding, kitesurfing and cycling.

The flora and fauna in and around Cape Point provided a perfect natural classroom for the kids. Blended into the scrubland known as the fynbos were baboons, turtles, lizards and wild ostriches. There were both cobras and guinea fowls in people’s backyards.

The ocean was healthy. A treasure of marine life awaited the kids’ discovery in tidal pools. African penguins played on the same rocks the kids scrambled over. Sea lions swam alongside us in the ­marina and basked in the sun next to us on the docks. We spotted whales and dolphins in Table Bay and False Bay. We even had the sad experience of seeing and touching a 4.5-­meter great white shark accidentally killed by fishermen in False Bay.

We experienced the ethnic diversity of South Africa, and we saw the British, Dutch, Portuguese and Malay influence on the culture. We met African refugees from Zimbabwe, the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. We learned words in Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu. We were exposed to the distinctive styles of African art, crafts, dance and music. We went to braais, drank South African wine, ate biltong and tried bunny chow.

Though we appreciated all of the above, we were not naive about the reality of being in a post-apartheid country. We were sickened by the segregation, racism and corruption that still thrived in the modern day. We maintained a simple life on the boat, but I knew that even our humble standard of living was lavish compared to many others’. We saw the disparity between rich and poor, from the township slums to the affluent neighborhoods. Daily we read about the crime and violence that had become a fact of life. In South Africa, you can easily pretend these things do not exist, but the reality is that the landscape is woven with concertina wires, security gates, alarms, locks and armored vehicles.

As a woman with two small children, I was constantly on guard to prevent any harm that might come to my ­family. I ­hated the feeling of being unable to simply look people in the eye as a human ­being without also suspecting they could be a threat to our safety. I didn’t go out at night or very far alone with the kids. I avoided situations that I wouldn’t have thought twice about entering in other parts of the world. South Africa was such a bittersweet place to be.

In that oppressive reality, I often felt we had the same chance of facing peril on land as we did setting forth in the Southern Ocean. Success on land or at sea had a great deal to do with how we managed the risk. To a lesser degree, it simply had to do with timing and luck.

In the end, James and I chose to take our chances with the ocean. Fear of nature felt like a much healthier sentiment for us to battle than fear of man. We wanted to give our kids a wild and adventurous life. Sailing and an ocean crossing were something that worked for us as a family.

We departed South Africa with an enormous amount of trust in the strength of our carbon-composite home, Anasazi Girl, as well as in our own strength as adventurers, sailors and parents.

Away we shifted, from the Cape of Good Hope, from the chaos of the land and the people.

Forward we went, into the dreamy realm of the albatross.

Our objective was simple: make zero errors on the voyage and arrive safely in port without breaking down or calling for rescue.

It was mid-April — late in the season for the Southern Ocean to many, but not to us. James and I felt we could sail just above 40 degrees south, avoid ice and miss the low-pressure cells dropping off of the ­Indian Ocean tropical cyclones. For us, leaving this late just meant more darkness; all the bad stuff on a voyage seems to happen at night, so with longer evenings, there would be a greater possibility of more bad stuff to address. Longer, colder nights also meant an increase in air density and, in turn, greater wind pressure.

Despite these factors, we felt the risks could be managed.

Our roles underway were easily defined based on our levels of experience.

My primary responsibility, as a ­mother, was to keep the kids safe and make sure we were all fed, clean and healthy. My ­secondary role was to support James whenever needed, and stand his watches when things were calm and smooth. My third obligation was to photograph and document our trip.

As captain, James had the heaviest weight on his shoulders. All the boat preparation prior to leaving, systems checks while underway, and weather forecasting and routing decisions were his. If there were any problems or repairs to be undertaken while en route, he was accountable. We would discuss options and make decisions together as much as possible, but ultimately he was responsible for the safety of the crew and vessel.

His previous solo circumnavigation on Anasazi Girl had given him the needed experience to go south again. On one ­level it was easier, because he’d already been down there. With me on board, he also had some relief from his solo watches, and a second set of hands when needed. But in another respect it was a million times harder, because now he was carrying the priceless cargo of our family.

As soon as Anasazi Girl was underway, James and I shifted into high-performance mode.

After passing Cape Point, James pushed hard to get us ahead of a fast-moving low-pressure system forecast by Commanders’ Weather. It was uncomfortable with the wind still forward of the beam, but we made it, and soon we were sailing southward.

We cut the corner of the Agulhas Current too tightly; the seas were a confused mess that made both Tormentina and me completely seasick. Then there was a close call with a freighter. Fortunately, that was the last ship we saw for the next month.

James’ plan for a safe passage was to keep the high-pressure systems to port and the lows to starboard. Just once did a high slip under us, and the three days of easterly headwinds weren’t pretty. We chose to go due south, which meant the true wind was on the beam, but on speedy Anasazi Girl, the brisk apparent wind was in our faces. The easterlies eventually passed and the cold fronts progressed. The nights were long and dark. Our typical sail combination was three to four reefs in the main and a fully battened storm jib made of Spectra. I did not go on deck to help James with sail changes, as I had on our Atlantic crossings, because often the seas were too aggressive, and I had to be vigilant down below to make sure the kids were always safe.

In extreme sailing conditions, the ­simple acts of moving around the ­cabin, cooking basic meals, eating, maintaining personal hygiene and using the head ­become a real physical effort. The galley becomes dangerous; knives, hot ­liquids and flames must be kept in complete control. A toddler on the toilet is very ­vulnerable when a big wave hits the boat.

The constant objective was to stay ­balanced, braced and safe. Order was maintained to avoid flying objects that could create a mess, cause damage or ­inflict injury. Above all, we wanted to ­prevent broken bones and burns.

When the wind and seas were perfect, we experienced the wild sensation of Anasazi Girl accelerating and surfing in the Southern Ocean. When the wind speed increased from 20 knots to 30, then to 40-plus knots, it was a velocity rush — like the first steep drop after climbing a giant crest on a roller ­coaster. The cabin became pressurized, and I found myself just holding on. Speed down south was our friend, keeping us in front of the weather systems.

We passed below remote St. Paul and Amsterdam islands just in time, as a 982-millibar low we were surfing finally caught up and rolled over us. We were 100 miles past the islands when the gusty shift of nasty southwest air arrived. We jibed to starboard tack and headed due east.

When the seas were confused and ­coming from multiple directions, I experienced some paranoia about the ­possibility of Anasazi Girl breaking. I think I was especially wary because the Volvo 70s, sailing at the same time in the 2011-2012 Volvo Ocean Race, were getting pounded. James reminded me that the Volvo boats were being pushed extra hard. In order to be competitive, they were ­also constructed to be very light, with hollow-­core carbon-composite material.

Anasazi Girl was a slightly different beast. She has a solid, or monocoque, carbon hull with a carbon-fiber and Nomex composite deck and cabin top. She is a strong, proven, bulletproof boat, built specifically to sail in these conditions. Once I relaxed, I gained renewed confidence in the boat in which my family had crossed both the North and South Atlantic. My fears eased, and I surrendered to the simple act of being at sea.

Offshore sailing is an incredible thing. It’s surreal to be so completely surrounded by water for such a long period of time. The GPS and electronic navigation software tell you where you are, but when you see nothing — no person nor boat for thousands of miles — you settle into a completely different reality. I found that when the kids were asleep and everything was quiet, my mind opened deeply into the recesses of old, long-lost memories. There were people, places, things and experiences that I had not thought about in many years. I was reminded of who I was, and it filled me with very strong emotions, especially now, with my perspective as a parent.

Being at sea also reminded me of how beautiful the natural world is in its complexity and simplicity. All the subtle changes of the environment — sea state, wind, air, sun, sky — become so monumental with the excess noise and drama of the land taken away. With the connectivity of the Web and modern technology, the world sometimes feels so small. Out there, I was reminded of what a small part of the universe we really occupy, and I felt so grateful for my life in it. One dark night, James made the only mistake of the trip. Tormentina fell asleep on his lap at the navigation station. He picked her up and swiveled around to set her in the quarter berth. A rogue wave knocked us just at that moment, and his knee hit the main battery switch.

All the power went out, which stopped the autopilot. The boat rounded up and lay on her side. The Espar heater decided to rebel too, and filled the cabin with smoke. This was not the first time Anasazi Girl was on her beam at night in the Southern Ocean, going backward with 1,700 liters of water ballast on the wrong side. But it was the first time with the family aboard.

“Is everyone all right?” James asked.

Fortunately, Tormentina and the rest of us were safe in the berths before we laid over. Everything was in place; nothing flew anywhere. James had quickly flipped the switch to turn all the electronics back on.

I looked at him and said, with a wink, “Yes. We trust you.”

We couldn’t fully open the companionway hatch, but James cracked it a few inches and turned on the fans. Then he got on his foulies, boots, headlamp and harness and re-entered the world in which he feels most comfortable.

After 30 days at sea, we arrived ­safely in Fremantle, Western Australia. Looking back, I see the voyage was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done — a huge test of physical and mental endurance. It’s like being in labor, but as a sustained effort for 30 days straight. I gained huge respect for anyone who has sailed down south — solo, shorthanded or fully crewed. It’s an intense place to be, with an immense amount of pressure for perfect performance.

I’m typically seasick the first three days of our voyages, but throughout this trip, I was unusually nauseous even when conditions were smooth. I thought that perhaps I wasn’t cut out for this type of extreme sailing. Then I found out, a month after arriving in Fremantle, that I was pregnant during the passage.

James was a pillar of strength during the journey — never complacent, always up and out in the elements and dealing with whatever variables came our way. No matter how tired he was, sail changes had to be made, water ballast adjusted, batteries charged, water made, all systems maintained and, most important, love and ­attention given to the kids.

Our children adapted to all the conditions we experienced. In our one-month passage, the kids and I were on deck literally four times — for a sum total of about an hour. When seas were smooth, they were allowed to go on deck wearing a full body harness, tethered to the boat. Down below, we did art projects and puzzles, made blanket forts, blasted music from the iPod, sang, danced and played games. They watched for dolphins, whales, albatross and other marine life. They fought and had tantrums and timeouts, just like they did on land.

Raivo was just starting to talk, and his favorite phrases throughout the trip were “treats,” “boat,” “loud” and “Wow, big kaboom!” accompanied by a clap of his hands. Tormentina got over her seasickness once we were out of the Agulhas Current. She kept busy constantly drawing, filling an entire sketchbook with her artwork. She searched every night for the first star. When she found it, she would make a secret wish, and afterward she was allowed to watch movies. After a big wave washed over us, she would climb up the companionway steps to see if any squid came aboard.

When the seas were very aggressive, everyone was berth-bound, sometimes for two to three days at a time. The kids both had a good sense of the changes in the boat while underway and were instinctively mellow when they needed to be.

The most amazing thing is that the kids never once asked, “When are we going to get there?” Nor were they ­ever scared. They felt safe because Anasazi Girl is home to them, and we were with them full time.

Voyaging is like a time capsule for our family. It is a very special period, when ­everyone is completely together and completely present. Life is simple. We sail from point A to point B. Everything we need to live is essentially in one space. We don’t think about money or work. We have no meetings, schedules or other people to interact with besides our kids. Our children receive our undivided attention.

In the Southern Ocean, the water was clean, the air fresh and the rainwater tasty. No sunrise or sunset went unnoticed. Every morsel of food we ate and every drop of water we drank was valued. Every second we were together was priceless.

This sailing life has been such a gift for us and for our children.

Somira Sao, James Burwick and their children are currently living on Navarino Island, Chile, where they are working on replacing Anasazi Girl’s rig. Follow along on their adventures at the family’s website anasaziracing.blogspot.com.

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