ADVENTURE FOUR CONTINENTS AND A WEDDING

Dr Roger Geary shares the highs and lows of his nine year semi-circumnavigation from south Wales, UK, to New South Wales, Australia

- Dr Roger Geary

Tropical storm-force winds appeared to be building and there seemed little doubt that a full-on hurricane was going to hit us. The wind shrieking in the rigging, competing with the wind generator for maximum decibels, meant our approach to the pontoon berth didn’t go unnoticed, unlike our repeated VHF calls. Despite the unconscionably early hour and driving rain, fellow sailors appeared, and helped us berth. Suspecting worse was to come, we knitted the boat to the dock with every line we possessed. There was already far too much wind to take off the sails and canopies; any attempt at reducing windage would have resulted in shredded canvas. In driving rain, accompanied by thunder and lightning, we put extra lashings on the roller reefing headsail, stack pack and mainsheet traveller, passing lines from the bottom of the fenders under the boat to the opposite toe rail. By now the wind was gusting to hurricane force so we did the sensible thing; Liz cooked us a fry-up, we showered and went to bed in our cozy aft cabin, glad to be out of the storm.

It was early July 2014 and we were in Grand Bahama on passage north away from the Caribbean hurricane zone. We had left the UK three years previously on what became a leisurely nine-year semi-circumnavigation from Penarth in south Wales to the New South Wales estuary of Pittwater near Sydney, Australia. So far we had experienced a rather uneventful Atlantic crossing, having sailed south to the Cape Verde archipelago before crossing the Atlantic to Guadeloupe. Our Colvic Countess 37,