The Sailor"s Classics library introduces a new generation of readers to the best books ever written about small boats under sail Below the Cape of Good Hope and south of Australia lie the feared latitudes of the "Roaring Forties," where nonstop westerly gales push huge seas, unimpeded, around and around the bottom of the world. It was into this watery hell that, in 1942, Vito Dumas set sail in a 31-foot ketch.