The Roaring Forties

The Roaring Forties -- the latitudes between 40 and 50 degrees south -- got their name from this fact: If you start at the east coast of South America and head east, except for a little bit of New Zealand you will not hit land again until the west coast of South America.

This allows the westerly winds and waves to pick up speed freely:


It's hard to tell from the picture, but these were 20- to 25-foot waves that we churned through for two days between New Zealand and Australia.

Then the next day, "Land ho!":


And we were approaching Melbourne, which is at the north end of a huge, shoal-filled bay and so must be approached slowly and carefully. You can't really see all the way from one end of the bay to the other, so the city just magically appears out of the haze:


In my next post, I'll tell you about how we were welcomed to Australia.