Day 45. A stormy week in the Southern Ocean

This week will be difficult and stressful.  The weather in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean has sharply deteriorated.  Right now the entire area from Australia’s island state of Tasmania to Cape Horn is beset by three cyclones.  I am wedged between them.  There is a cyclone ahead of me and South of me, of which I caught the tail end last night, with winds rising up to 30 knots.  To the West is also a very powerful cyclone, which has been forecast to see winds of up to 50 knots (90kms per hour).  In the middle of the week they will join together, and my boat and I will have to survive these conditions.  I ask for your prayers.

Right now, I am trying to escape the approaching foul weather by moving northeast while the wind permits. But on Monday it will reverse to a north-westerly and I will be pushed toward the centre of the cyclone.  In a rowboat it will be difficult to escape it.  You can travel 300 miles in a day on a sailing yacht, and only 50 miles with a tail wind in a rowboat.  So I won’t be able to escape the storm.  All that is left is to hope that it will only brush me with its Northerly wing.  Such is the middle of my Summer in the Southern Ocean.  It is 2,860 miles to Cape Horn.  Although I have not yet reached the oceanic pole of inaccessibility – the point in the ocean that is farthest away from any land, also known as “Point Nemo,” – I am close to it.

Regards to all,

Fedor Konyukhov

48’09 South

148’27 West