Roger Long wrote:
mr.b wrote:
On Sun, 07 Jan 2007 15:59:41 -0800, Razzbar wrote:

yo Razzbar... "Roaring 40's"... a fair day there is _not_ a good day
just about anywhere else!

Exactly, if you are going to sail down there, you should be prepared to
either sail (or die) in 60 - 80 knot winds while recognizing that 25 - 30
knots can produce seas of a size only seen in major Atlantic storms. You
need to be prepared to accept the conditions that sank Barnes as basically
routine. I'm not implying though that he was unprepared or deficient in
skills or equipment. Just about all days are dangerous in that part of the
world.

This is in fact not true. I have done many, many trips from Australia
to Antarctica over the last 10 years. The conditions can be extreme but
there are also plenty of times where the Southern Ocean can be a
millpond. We routinely deploy moored bouys into the ocean, leave them
down for 12 months or more and then recover them. Some of the
instrument strings are over 4 km in length and are in close to 5000m of
water. We can't recover them if the wind & waves are too great, and
every year we manage to get most of them back, service them and drop
them again.

You definitely need to be prepared for really, really foul conditions
but it is a gross exaggeration to say that just about all days are
dangerous. They're not. Probably less than 20% of the time, in fact.

PDW

- who lives at 43 S and sails a daysailer for light entertainment when
not at sea. A fair day here is a good day anywhere. In fact I'm going
sailing again this afternoon and next week am heading down to 55 S yet
again, on an oceanographic research vessel.