David Lewis told me, after his Antarctic voyage in Icebird, that he had underestimated the power of the Southern Ocean. He had crossed the North Atlantic in autumn, from New York to England, aboard his Vertue, Cardinal Vertue, in 1960, surviving several serious gales, and thought he had seen some heavy weather.
My experience of the Southern Ocean in 1980 remains etched in my mind. We only had one serious storm, mostly it was just cold and rough, with a huge SW swell. One day, another swell began building from due South and got bigger all day. Just before sunset, the wind switched from SW Force 8 to S Force 10-12 (we had no instruments). The seas rapidly built to about 30 ft, which our 55ft schooner, Ishmael, handled without too much difficulty, running off under bare poles at about 7 knots, with the three of us taking turns at the helm of about an hour at a time. After an hour at the helm, I was unable to feel my hands or feet, due to the icy blast of that Antarctic wind. We had no proper cold weather clothing. A few hours later, sets of much larger waves began to come through, once every half an hour or so. These waves were about 50ft or so and breaking heavily. Ishmael began to struggle, and once, when I was on the helm, we came within a whisker of being pitch-poled. It would have been interesting to see some wave buoy data for that storm but I doubt if there is anything like that down there. It really is God-forsaken country.
The larger waves may have been caused by the remnants of the SW swell, which had been about 20 ft but very long. The big waves in the storm were quite steep, and breaking heavily, with crests of at least 4ft. I once saw two waves collide in another storm in the Tasman Sea in 1974. I was lying ahull in my 24ft ketch, Poeme, with seas about 20 ft or so, which were knocking the little old boat around a bit but we seemed to be ok. Then I saw, some distance off, one wave appear to climb up the back of another, until the combined height was almost double. The wave underneath then seemed to collapse and the whole lot came down in an avalanche of roaring white water that I could clearly hear above the scream of the wind. I scuttled below and hid in my bunk.
The height of waves is one thing, but their pitch and speed is something else again, as anyone who has ever been in a tidal race will remember.