Our boat Wavewalker, a 23 metre, 30-ton wooden-hulledbeauty, had been professionally built, and we had spent months fitting it out and testing it in the roughest weather we could find.
Liuku: 2
The Start of the Journey
In July 1976, the author, his wife Mary, son Jonathan, 6 and daughter Suzanne,7, set sail from Plymouth, England, to duplicate the round-the-world voyage made 200 years earlier by Captain James Cook.
Liuku: 3
The Shipwreck
“Take the wheel”, I shouted as I scrambled for the hatch.Larry and Herb were pumping like madmen. Broken timbershung at crazy angles, the whole starboard side bulged inwards;clothes, crockery, charts, tins and toys sloshed about in deep water.
Liuku: 4
Dawn of January 2nd
The wind has dropped tremendously
Oh look there's a huge cloud towered aft of the ship!
At dawn on January 2, the waves were gigantic.Despite atrocious weather, we had a wonderful holiday complete with a Christmas tree. New Year’s Day saw no improvement in the weather, but we reasoned that it had to change soon. And it did change — for the worse.
Liuku: 5
January 3rd - 4p.m
“we aren’t afraid of dying if we can all be together
funny people
I checked our charts and calculated that there weretwo small islands a few hundred kilometres to the east. One ofthem, Ile Amsterdam, was a French scientific base. Our onlyhope was to reach these pinpricks in the vast ocean. But unlessthe wind and seas abated so we could hoist sail, our chanceswould be slim indeed.
Liuku: 6
Ile Amsterdam
I rushed on deck and gazed with relief at the stark outline ofIle Amsterdam. It was only a bleak piece of volcanic rock, withlittle vegetation — the most beautiful island in the world!