AN EERIE CALM seemed to fall upon us as the fog descended and the breeze dropped to a zephyr—not remotely what we’d expected sailing south-east from Cook Strait three days ago. After all, we were deep into the famed Roaring Forties, the storm-ridden latitudes so feared by early mariners. Remarkably, for the last 60 hours the wind had held to a steady north-east 15-20 knots, Mahalia furrowing her way with ease through the gently lapping wavelets in the company of innumerable petrels, albatross, dolphins, fur seals and even a basking shark. Clipping along at an average speed of 7.5 knots, or very nearly her maximum hull speed, our proud little sailing vessel had travelled an easy 450 nautical miles on a single tack, placing us roughly 220 miles east of Dunedin. Indeed, should she miss her target, there would be no further landfall before reaching the shores of Antarctica over 1500 miles distant, or if she veered slightly eastward, the South American continent more than 4000 miles away.

Groping ahead through a cool, damp cotton-wool world, the possibility of finding land seemed incredible, as indeed it must have been for Lieutenant William Bligh—captain of HMS Bounty of mutineering renown—who, en route from Tasmania to Tahiti, sighted “a cluster of small rocky islands” on September 19, 1788. His description expresses bafflement: “We had seen no birds, or anything to express the nearness of land... The weather was too thick to see distinctly: their extent was only 3 miles from east to west, and about half a league from north to south: their number, including the smaller ones, was thirteen. I have named them after the ship, the Bounty Isles.” He sailed on by, undoubtedly glad that he had not fallen upon them in the dark of night, and 16 more years would pass before they would be sighted again, though still never landed on.

ON 14 NOVEMBER, 2004—215 years, one month and 26 days after Bligh’s first sighting—we made our final approach by radar and depth sounder, a privilege many ships before us had not enjoyed. Less than two dozen landings have been recorded here in the last 80 years.
Suddenly land loomed ahead. Dark and solid and quite close, yet so unsubstantial in comparison to the vast, wild ocean, my first impression of the Bounty Islands was that they were an anachronism, a feeling that would only grow in the 10 extraordinary days we were about to spend there.

Never before had I felt farther removed from what we call terra firma, so isolated as we approached an almost forgotten world barely emerging from the hostile sea—a cluster of barren, plantless, wave-washed rocks, 135 ha all up. The backbone of an undersea ridge that was last connected to Gondwana some 80 million years ago, they could easily be a sort of Atlantis-in-waiting, the last of a great landmass where life clings ferociously, adapting, evolving and competing for ever shrinking space and harsh habitat. Some odd scientific discoveries of recent years seem to support the notion of relict islands. The coarse, ancient granite they are hewn from goes back 180 million years, with closer affinities to Antarctica than New Zealand, while a few hardy spiders and insects have relatives in distant South America and Australia.