The roar increased to a thunder. Then a tremendous explosion shook the deck. A torrent of green sea water broke over the ship. The narrator’s head smashed into the wheel and he started losing consciousness. He accepted his approaching death.
It was a mighty and huge wave. It appeared perfectly vertical. It was almost twice the height of the other waves. It had a very unpleasant breaking crest. The narrator had never seen such an enormous wave, so he was filled with horror.
The first indication of the impending disaster was the ominous silence. The sky grew dark. A huge cloud appeared over the ship. But it was not a cloud. It was a wave. It appeared vertically over the boat. It was almost twice the height of the other waves.
On the second day they faced strong gales. For the next few weeks they blew continuously. What worried the narrator was the size of the waves. They rose alarmingly up to 15 meters, as high as their main mast.
At dawn on January 2nd, the waves were very huge. As their ship rose on the top of each wave, they saw huge seas rolling towards them. The waves screamed and sprayed water. The narrator dropped the storm jib to slow the boat down and lashed heavy mooring rope across the stern. Then they double…
They celebrated their Christmas 3,500 km east of Cape Town on 25th December. The weather was very bad. Still they had a wonderful holiday, complete with a Christmas tree. New Year’s Day saw no improvement in weather.
The narrator set sail from Plymouth, England in July 1976 with his wife Mary, son Jonathan 6, daughter Suzanne 7. The voyage passed pleasantly from the west coast of Africa to Cape Town.
The narrator’s boat was called ‘wave-walker’. It was a beautiful 23 meter long, 30 ton wooden hulled ship. It had been professionally built. They had spent months fitting it out and testing in the roughest weather they could find.
The narrator planned to go on a round-the-world sea voyage on the same pattern as Captain James Cook had done 200 years earlier. For the past 16 years, he and his wife had spent all their leisure time developing and improving their skills with work related to travel on the sea. They had tested their…