Trevor Robertson and Annie Hill

Trevor Robertson and Annie Hill
Aboard Iron Bark

About Me

In 1975 I made my first Atlantic passage in 'Stormalong', a 28ft James Wharram-designed, 'Tane' catamaran. Then Pete and I had an ex 6-metre racing yacht, 'Sheila', for about 4 years. But we wanted to do more, go further and have a boat that we could completely trust, so we built 'Badger' - the best boat in the world - and sailed her for 110,000 miles, up into the Arctic, down into the Antarctic, around the Atlantics North and South and into the Baltic. She had junk rig - the only rig for cruising, as far as I am concerned. Then Pete wanted something new, so we built a 38 ft junk-rigged catamaran, 'China Moon', which Pete designed. But before the project was quite finished, he and I went our separate ways. A year later Trevor Robertson came into my life and seduced me with promises of more ocean wanderings in his beautiful steel 'Iron Bark'. In this boat we spent a winter in Greenland, crossed the Pacific, visited Australia and explored New Zealand. I fell in love with NZ and decided I'd like to base myself there for a while. Trevor wanted to carry on cruising, so I bought a Raven 26 to live on, promising to join him for a couple of months every year in exciting places.

Friday, 27 March 2009

GOUGH ISLAND
40°21'S 9°52'W
Chart 1769: Gough Island
H M Admiralty Pilot, Africa Vol ii

Gough Island lies just in the Roaring Forties and is 230 miles SSE of Tristan de Cunha. It is a dependency of St Helena. The South African Government lease the island for use as a weather station, which is situated at Transvaal Bay on the SE end of the island. Visitors are not permitted ashore unless they have a medical emergency– such as a loose filling. There is a paramedic on the island, who was very obliging about Badger’s emergency.

Gough Island is well watered and covered in luxurious vegetation. There are several mountains, the highest being Edinburgh Peak at 910m.


Transvaal Bay

Anchorage

We anchored in Transvaal Bay, nearly 1 cable N of Standoff Rock and a little S of the gorge, S of the met. station, in a depth of 13m, rocky bottom. This gives good protection from the W’ly quadrant, but is otherwise exposed. There is no easy landing ashore, but it might be possible to do so at the gorge (the cliffs are very steep, but a rope on the N side of the gorge, is rigged to assist access).

Remarks

On the cliff by the met. station is a crane, which is used to offload the stores. Contact with the station personnel will probably be made via this, as they have no boat of their own: a small platform is lowered, which can take several people.

Badger sailed up the coast to The Glen anchorage and it appears to offer reasonable shelter from the SW quarter. When visited, there was only a slight swell running and it appeared possible to land on the beach.

The Island is quite beautiful; many yellow-nosed albatross were nesting when visited. However, there is a good chance that weather conditions might prevent a stop being possible.





Transvaal Bay, looking SW from the crane
Posted by at 12:44 PM
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