Once is Enough

When the 46-foot Tzu Hang sailed from Australia into the vast Southern Ocean in December 1956,her crew of three couldn't know what terror awaited them. Six weeks later and several hundred miles west of Cape Horn,in the dead of night in a violent storm,they were somersaulted by a freak wave and nearly destroyed. When the boat righted itself,it was half full of water and dangerously close to sinking. Its masts had been snapped off and its deck partly ripped away. Miles Smeeton's wife,Beryl,had been flung overboard and injured but miraculously got back aboard. Somehow the crew saved the boat,survived the storm,and four weeks later reached Chile under jury rig.