beyond infinity
AN 8,300-MILE TRIP DEEP INTO THE SOUTHERN OCEAN PROVED TO BE
60 DAYS OF PURE ADVENTURE FOR ANDY JAMIESONhen I say ‘Jump!’ y’all say ‘How high?’. If y’all
don’t want to say ‘How high?’ you can pack
your bags,” demanded the owner of the
superyacht I was aboard. The captain and I
looked at each other and, without
exchanging a word, answered in unison that we would be
packing our bags. Just like that, my plans of spending the
winter drenched in sun and rum in the Caribbean were
over. It’s not easy working for billionaires.
But word spreads fast and just a few days later another
voyage came my way. My friend Clemens Oestreich, a
long-haired, chain-smoking, philosophic German hippie
phoned and wanted to know if I could join his expedition
to Antarctica on his 120ft, handmade ferrocement ketch,
Infinity. The next day I was on a flight to Auckland.
Five years previously, whilst failing to concentrate on
revising for my university finals, I’d stumbled across a
listing on the findacrew website. Infinity was looking for
crew for an exploratory diving and surfing expedition in
Micronesia, so I spent the next few months visiting barely
chartered atolls, meeting tribal communities, sailing in
some of the least spoiled waters on the planet and diving
on World War II wrecks.
The good memories flooded back on that long flight to
Auckland. Then I started to get nervous. Infinity is pretty
rough around the edges. I had spent the previous few
years sailing on superyachts with unlimited budgets.
Infinity was moored in Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour andW
i Photos: Ayack Wanderer
December 2017 59