Voyage to South Georgia

A spur-of-the-moment plan made at a wedding reception leads to a journey by sail through iceberg-flled seas, to an Antarctic island rich in wildlife

- Kerry Lorimer

OUR ADVENTURE HAD BEGUN AS most such expeditions do: with a surfeit of alcohol. At a wedding banquet in South Africa, I’d waxed lyrical about the wonders of South Georgia to Bernardo, owner of the aptly named Beagle IV, an 18-metre sailing ketch, who’d long dreamed of sailing there. After downing his 117th cocktail, he turned and slurred, ‘Let’s do it.’

And so we found ourselves – along with John and Rachel (whose wedding it was) and two of Bernardo’s friends – plotting our course: we would set sail down the Beagle Channel and turn left at the southern tip of South America, then head deep into the wilds of the Southern Ocean, south of the Roaring Forties, into the Furious Fifties and skimming gut-clenchingly close to the Screaming Sixties.

More than a few seasoned yachties suggested we were off our chumps: sailing a smallish, unreinforced fibreglass yacht to one of the planet’s most isolated outposts in a heavy ice year.

WE SET SAIL AND QUICKLY SETTLED into a routine of sleep, eat, stand watch, sleep, eat. The lethargic funk and mushy brain feeling of the first few days at sea – and my unvoiced fear of our foolhardiness – finally lifted on our third day out. Dragging myself from my bunk after three hours’ damp, cold sleep and swathing myself in enough thermals and foul-weather gear to out-frump an elephant seal, I poked my head out of the companionway to see a wandering albatross soaring in a rare blue sky. For two chilly hours – until my fingers

felt like they were welded to the wheel and my toes had become frosty pebbles – I steered the boat alone, down the face of cresting rollers across an endless blue disc, while 10 wanderers and a host of smaller albatrosses wheeled about me.