Worse things happen at sea ...

Worse things happen at sea, they say, and the plants and trees in the communal garden, struggling under the frosty blanket of snow and ice, all but mock the notion.

However, I know it's true, especially in the mighty Southern Ocean, well sou'-south west of South

Africa, where an icy current streams up from Antarctica, shoving its way through the never-ending current from the west, circling the globe.

In this part of the vast expanse of the ocean, should you be sailing there, you have to fight to keep your course against these mighty elements.

Very often a third great force joins the battle, which seems all part of the great, well, washing machine that keeps the world and its inhabitants healthy.

Cape Doctor

The Cape Doctor is a mighty wind which blows from the heights of Table Mountain, in Cape Town, down the foot of South Africa and thrusts far south into the Southern Ocean.

This tormented region lay on the path of the final oceanic voyage of my really satisfying years as a DoT Commercial Yachtsman. I tell of it in Sailing to Purgatory – chapter 41 …

Sal and I cross the icy current pushing up from Antarctica. It's freezing out here … and down in the cabin. A new urgency, a fresh challenge, enters the navigation. We need to tread carefully with the heading as there's a very real risk of being swept to the west of Cape Town, far offshore.

Find yourself out there, pushed away from the peninsula, and a sailor will need more than prayers to reach the Cape. Favourable breezes for that course are almost unknown. It is vital that we stick to this painful beat…

Discomfort and bruising and the intense cold have to be endured. This is the notorious south-easterly which we know of old. It's the long arm of the infamous Cape Doctor, a doctor who storms in uninvited bringing his own worrying conditions. He doesn't know when to go. ...Continues on SailingToPurgatory.com