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Chapter Twenty One Antarctica

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When most people turn 50, they get together with family and friends; eat, drink, tell lies, and wake up next morning wondering what happened. I decided to do something I was unlikely to forget. I decided to sail around Cape Horn!

I have never had any particular fascination with Cape Horn. It just seemed to be something not many people, including other sailors, had done.

Trying to find a boat that would take me was the first problem. Many old salts would say, “You haven’t really sailed around the Horn unless you came across the Southern Ocean”. I didn’t want to do that. Aeroplane over, quick sail round, aeroplane back. That was me.

A family of Americans were living aboard at MYC Marina when Eileen and I were Christmas - New Yearing there 2002 – 2003. They suggested I contact Skip Novak, an American with an extensive sailing record, who had a boat called Pelagic that he chartered around Tierra del Fuego.  I did this, but they did not offer individual berths. I would have to organise my own group of about 6 other people, and book the boat. Have you ever tried to get a group of people from the Sunshine Coast, in the Sunshine State, to pay money, to go sailing in the Southern Ocean? Even my own wife wouldn’t go.

Mike Job, a friend of mine who runs the Southern Cross Sailing School at Manly, gave me the name Gerry Fitzgerald. It seems Gerry was organising people for trips where I wanted to go, aboard a Lexcen 60 called “Spirit of Sydney”. Then, before anything really got anywhere, the owner sold the boat. However, the new owners were presently living in Brisbane, and were planning similar adventures.

The next step was a briefing at their house. That’s how I got to meet Cath Hew and Darrel Day, and be offered a berth on a trip to Antarctica!

To get there and back, we had to sail past Cape Horn. Twice! It wouldn’t exactly be my birthday, which was in early December 2003. In fact the boat was leaving Ushuaia, the most southerly city in the world at the bottom of Argentina, on January 2nd 2004. This was good enough for me.

After passing a full medical which involved an ECG, breathing tests, and blood tests looking for everything, it was time to book flights. I hadn’t realised how many people wanted to travel to Chile and Argentina at that time of year. My eventual flights were: Brisbane to Auckland, then Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and finally Ushuaia (Fin del Mundo – The end of the World).

Cloob Affasyn is the marina at Ushuaia. It has a timber jetty where about 6 boats can tie up, and as many as you please can then raft up. ’Spirit’ was against the jetty. Cutter rigged, she is now about 65 feet with the addition of a sugar scoop. Built of aluminium plate, about 11mm at the bow for pushing ice, she was sailed by Ian Kiernan in the around alone BOC race 1986-87. ‘Spirit’ has done some recent Sydney to Hobarts, Brisbane to Gladstones, and Hamilton Island Race Weeks. She is probably the fastest sail boat cruising the Drake Passage.

Within two hours of my stepping aboard we were making way. We had 30 miles to travel along the Beagle Channel to the Chilean town of Puerto Williams, our final stopping off point before crossing the Drake Passage. The jetty at Puerto Williams is a partially sunken ship. It has several pluses as a jetty. There are three hot showers, and toilets, and a bar, where they make the strongest Pisco Sours in the world. The fact that the ‘Mucalvi’ has a permanent list of about 8 degrees only adds to the atmosphere.

 What makes the Drake so dangerous is the continual stream of low pressure systems that squeeze west to east between the Antarctic Peninsula and South America. When heading south, the plan is to leave after a storm front has gone through, then make some easting until you can shelter among the South Shetland Islands about 500 miles away.

We sailed the 80 miles from Puerto Williams across to Caleta Martial. For the last 30 miles of this we had 30 knots true wind from a storm front on the nose of the boat. Caleta Martial is a sheltered bay amongst an archipelago of which Cabos de Hornos is the most southerly island, only about two miles north of 56 degrees south latitude. After this front had moved through, we set out across the Drake at 10pm…. motor sailing. We couldn’t believe it. There was so little breeze now that we motored past Cape Horn!

There were 10 POB on ‘Spirit’. The new owners, Cath and Darrel; a professional skipper, Karsten, on his 10th trip; and seven paying customers, including two professional photographers. As we were getting to know each other while motoring along the Beagle, and at a briefing before we left Puerto Williams, I was feeling pretty happy about things. There seemed to be about seven people aboard with more experience than me. Great. During the first night in the Drake I moved myself up to number three.

We divided into watches of three people each, with one person roving. Karsten was one watch leader. Cath, who has circumnavigated with her two young children, was another. I assumed leadership of the third watch. Several people succumbed to Mal-de-Mer. Others were unsure of helming with 40 knots true over the stern quarter. This is where WAGS and SAGS sailing experience came in useful. Usually skippers start helming the windward leg of a race, then hand over to a crew member for the usually easy downwind leg. I had been in this position for several years when I first began sailing, even when the breeze was up and it wasn’t so easy. I held the boat speed record for the entire trip with 15.4 knots on that first night.

Then we motorsailed again, almost all the way to the South Shetlands. About half way across the Drake is a convergence zone. This is where the relatively warm air and waters from the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans meet the much colder air and waters from the Antarctic. Air and water temperatures lower by about 5 to 10 degrees centigrade within a couple of miles. And the fog sets in. And the icebergs start. And we passed our first cruise ship. This is where I learnt how to use radar!

Each watch lasted four hours, day and night. One person driving, one observing, and one keeping the cabin heater company while checking the charts, GPS, and radar, and making hot drinks. During my 10 til 2 night shifts, this was my favourite spot. Waterproof gloves weren’t; and my seaboots had two pair of thermal inner soles, while I wore two pairs of thermal inner socks and a pair of thick thermal outer socks, but my feet still froze on the cockpit sole. In the cockpit I wore two pair of thermal underwear, heavy jeans and a warm shirt, a down jacket, and my Helly Hansen Trans Ocean (the best by popular vote) gear. At least my body was warm and dry, even if it was difficult to move.

Deception Island in the South Shetlands is a volcano. It was most recently active in 1991-92. It is horseshoe shaped, about 4 miles across, with a narrow entrance called Neptune’s Bellows. This makes it (eruptions aside) one of the safest natural harbours in the world. Inside the caldera there are small pools of thermal water where it is possible to bathe. The surrounding water is ice temperature. It was a whaling station, but is now home to about 180,000 Chinstrap Penguins. This was the first place we went ashore for a photographic shoot. It was also the first place I had ever seen snow before it had hit the ground.

We spent a week in the South Shetlands. Along with the Antarctic Peninsula it is known as the Banana Belt, because this is where the majority of Antarctic life is. There is very little plant life. Only some occasional low grasses, algae, and lichen. But hundreds of thousands of penguins, and many seals and whales live there. The penguins, whales, and most of the seals eat krill. The other seals, Leopard Seals, eat penguins. They are the Polar Bears of the south. They will only attack in the water. On the ice they are slothful. In the water they will catch a penguin in their teeth, flick it out of its skin, and then swallow the penguin while its skin flies away in the breeze.    

Normally the South Shetlands suffer atrocious weather. We had clear sunny days for most of the week. We saw Elephant Seals, Leopard Seals, Chinstrap Penguins, Gentoo Penguins, Adele Penguins, and Minke Whales. The birdlife consisted mainly of Petrels, Skuas, and Albatross.

To maintain a pristine environment, the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators continually monitors the activities of cruise and charter boats. We were required to advise of our methods to contain our own pollution. Everything we took with us that did not pass through the human body had to come back. Olive pips came back. Diesel spilt in the cockpit while topping tanks was wiped with a rag, the rag put in a plastic bag, and the plastic bag put in strong garbage bags tied in the transom. Grease and oil in the frying pan was mopped with paper towel and handled the same. Even this may not be enough. There is strong talk of severely limiting the future numbers of tourists and the locations to be visited.

Now, with no real night, we set out across the eighty miles of the Bransfield Strait to the Antarctic mainland, and the nearby islands on the western side of the peninsula which was our main destination. Here the icebergs increased in number, and the sizes and shapes were infinite. On our Sky-Eye satellite system we had seen one aground off South Georgia Island that was 29 miles long and 14 miles wide.

We had seen several abandoned research bases. It was not until we arrived at Waterboat Point that we went ashore to visit a working Chilean base. Most of the bases claim to be scientific. This is a myth. Most are political, but operate on a shoestring budget. Hence the souvenir sections to cater for the cruise-ship-a-day, as well as we yachties.

We then travelled through some of the most awesome scenery I have ever seen, in Paradise Bay. Icebergs that had calved off the huge glaciers reaching the edge of the land mass; nunataks protruding through the snow; avalanches waiting to happen as we moved beneath the cliffs while pushing through the brash ice. We continually heard the thunderous sounds of the ice moving, even though we usually saw nothing.

That night we tied to a partially sunken shipwreck at Enterprise Island. This was the first night we had not had one hour anchor watches. Usually our anchor was in rocks, and often we dragged after swinging with the tide or the wind gusts, so re-anchoring was common. More often we also used the four reels, each containing 100 metres of mooring line to tie us off to available rocks ashore.

The British base at Port Lockroy has a museum and a Post Office. Postcards etc leave by ship to England, and are distributed from there. Skip Novak’s Pelagic was at Port Lockroy, along with his new $US1.8M Pelagic Australis. They had Israeli and Palestinian mountain climbers together on a peace mission. The idea was that they should all climb one of the many un-named mountains, name it, and return. That night we all had a party ashore. As we left to go back to ‘Spirit’ it was snowing again, so we had a snow fight between the two zodiacs in the midnight twilight. I felt the cold weather more than anyone else aboard, but after a few rums this was just fun.

Two days later we motored through the Lemaire Channel. The scenery here is just as amazing as Paradise Bay, but for most of its length of only a couple of miles it is only a few hundred metres wide with sheer cliffs. Once again we motored around low flat icebergs with Weddell Seals and Leopard Seals lazing upon them. Humpback Whales swam around and under us.

Once leaving the Lemaire Channel we motored through what appeared to be an iceberg farm. Bergs of all shapes and sizes clustered together, or were pushed apart, depending on the most recent winds and tides.

That night we had seven lines ashore in a tiny inlet on Petermann Island. The wind was gusting 30knots, and we needed to hold our position. On Petermann we met Roy Naveen and his two companions. Roy is a noted author and conservationist specialising in penguin research. They were living in tents while they carried out studies over a three week period. This encouraged several of our people to sleep ashore for a night in sleeping bags. For me, the heated cabin aboard ‘Spirit’ was much more attractive.

After two days we moved on again. Then we tied off in a channel beside the Ukranian base of Vernadsky, which they bought from Great Britain about thirty years ago for one pound. This is as far south as we went. 65degrees 14.9 minutes. The Ukranians actually do scientific research. They monitor weather, film beneath the ice, and count penguins. Their main feature for us was their bar. Playing pool and drinking vodka shooters is just a little different when you look out the window and see your dinghy filling with snow.                              

To leave our anchorage we had to wait while two French yachts untied their leeward shore lines to let us out of the channel. This is as normal as rafting up, so it is all done with cheer and salutations.

We went back to Port Lockroy to prepare for the return across the Drake Passage. Because it is wiser to put in westings to give a better wind angle if we encounter a low pressure system, we left the peninsula from further south (and west) than our arrival. Because of the distance, timing the lows at Cape Horn is more difficult from the peninsula, and we could expect the winds to be more on the nose on the way back. What makes Cape Horn so dangerous is the water depth. The average depths of the Drake Passage are 2500 to 4000 metres, until you get within 100 miles of the Cape. Then it comes up sharply to a shelf of less than 100 metres deep. Waves crossing the Southern Ocean have nothing to affect their path as they surge relentlessly around the earth until they squeeze around Tasmania, or squeeze through the Drake Passage. When the underwater mass of a wave hits this shelf near Cape Horn it causes the waves to steepen, and shorten the gaps between them. You can feel the change in wave action miles out from the shelf.

At one anchorage we had been invited aboard a Peregrine Cruises ship for a BBQ. This ship was one of the converted Russian icebreakers (read ex spy ship). They travel to a strict airline timetable, not the weather. Off Cape Horn they had encountered 80knot winds, 20metre seas, and were forced to heave to for 12 hours. Many of the passengers were heaving too.

The two Pelagics were back at Port Lockroy, also ready to leave. Karsten had weather fax from the Chilean Navy (their actuals are fine but their forecasts are very doubtful), and GRIB files from GMN. Steve, the Aussie skipper of Pelagic Australis, had weather faxes from NOAA, and Richard, the skipper of Pelagic, had been talking by Iridium telephone to a weather advisory service in Seattle. Between them they decided we had a window. Not a great one, but enough, and aeroplane flights awaited. Pelagic Australis left that night. Pelagic and Spirit left next morning.

Once again we motorsailed. For most of the next three days. Pelagic Australis, twelve hours ahead of us, had gone through the centre of a small low, and was sailing away from us. As Skip was aboard, we decided they did that just to see how his new boat would handle a bit of rough weather. Then on our 9pm radio sked they announced they were at Cape Horn with 50knot winds, 12metre seas, and had watched a third of their rudder float away. They were ok, although I’m not sure about their passengers.

Finally, during the night, we got some sailing wind. At about 6am we had Cape Horn abeam with about 25knots reaching breeze, spray, cloud, and drizzle. It was just perfect. It wasn’t even my watch, but as it was my dream, I took the helm. I had done what I had set out to do.

John and Eileen are members of Mooloolaba Yacht Club and Moreton Bay Boat Club. They keep their Lexcen 40 ‘Mieke’ at MBBC.

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