When sailing through southern oceans

For offshore races, it is important to reference location… correctly. But when round the world races complete their South Atlantic descent, pass the tip of South Africa, and head east, references to the Southern Ocean begin. Really? This geographic faux pas could be Scuttlebutt’s greatest pet peeve, with Kai Yves joining the battle:

The Scuttlebutt editor often raises the completely valid point that many circumnavigation races marketed as including travel through the ‘Southern Ocean’ do not actually have courses that go far enough south to be within that ocean by the official oceanographic definition.

At the same time, the general public’s association with the names ‘South Atlantic Ocean’, ‘South Indian Ocean’, and ESPECIALLY ‘South Pacific Ocean’ is of regions much farther north than these race routes.

The ‘South Pacific’ in particular is likely to conjure up images of tropical Polynesian islands (and all of their associated cliches) for many Americans and Europeans — very different indeed from the conditions at Point Nemo or Cape Horn!

It is understandable that race organizers who want to emphasize that their courses take the competitors to extreme and remote seas would want to avoid this pop-cultural association with tranquil tropical islands! And, unfortunately, ‘South Seas’ is often used in English as a synonym for this region with the exact same connotations, so that term, although accurate, probably cannot provide an alternative.

What else could we call these remote waters? The Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties, latitudes where little land interrupts the racing winds and currents, but still north of the true Southern Ocean?

Derek Lundy’s “Godforsaken Sea”, still perhaps the best English-language book about the Vendée Globe, makes very memorable use of the common French phrase Le Grand Sud, or in his translation, The Great South. (Some English-language IMOCA publications in recent years have translated it as “Big South”, but “big” is a more ordinary word that seems to lack some of the… grandeur.)

If we need an alternative term that is more accurate than ‘Southern Ocean’, why not a formulation like “The Great South: the southernmost reaches of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans”?