My timing for crossing the Drake Passage northbound hasn’t worked out very well. A weather system with high winds was forecast to move through the northern part of the passage on Friday, abating on Saturday. With that in mind, I left Deception Island on Monday thinking I would sail slow, north and west, and come in behind it and sail north on Saturday with forecast better weather.

Well, the weather system slowed down and doesn’t peak until Saturday. In addition, I neglected to take into account the wave forecast which has ocean swell heights peaking above 5 meters on Saturday afternoon. All this means I can’t really continue north until late Saturday. It also means I should have left Deception Island several days later, like Thursday or Friday.

So what I’m doing now is a sailing technique called “heaving-to”. Basically, I’ve stopped the boat by a reefed configuration of sails and locking the helm hard to port so the boat wants to turn, but it can’t, so it stops moving forward. It lies with the bow about 50 degrees off the wind and just drifts at 1 to 2 knots to the northeast.  If you’ve looked at the tracking map for the past several hours, that’s what you’ll see. Heaving-to is an old, time-tested technique for safely riding out high winds and seas.

Part of the reason for heaving-to is that I really have no useful direction to sail. Going south gets me further from the bad weather but further from my destination. Going north me gets closer to my destination but closer to the worst of the weather. Going east or west doesn’t improve my situation. So, to paraphrase from a famous movie, sometimes doing nothing is a cool hand.  I’ll see how well it works out over the next 48 hours.

230123.2100z

I’ve made it across the notorious Drake Passage from Tierra del Fuego to Antarctica in a little over 4 days. I’m now anchored in  place called Stancomb Cove in the northwest corner of the water-filled caldera that is Deception Island. It feels great to have gotten here, definitely the “Mt. Everest” of my project to sail solo to all 7 continents. Of course, I still have to “climb back down” by crossing the Drake Passage northward back to Puerto Williams and civilization. The northbound voyage is actuallly harder than southbound for a bunch of weather/sailing reasons.

The crossing was a mixed bag with a slow start in light and variable winds using the engine to assist at times so I could make tangible progress. That was followed by 20-25 knot winds in a perfect direction to get the boat up to 6-7 knots. I’m usually satisfied if I can averaged 5 knots. The last 24+ hours were a stay-awake marathon on ice watch using the radar and my eyes  as I got closer to Antarctica (I couldn’t stay awake – ha!) I was determined to arrive at Deception Island and anchor during daylight hours meaning I had to keep my speed up.  As the wind faded and crazy undocumented currents both assisted and retarded my progress, I made heavy use of the engine to maintain the pace.

Every sailor thinks about the glorious first landfall at a new island or continent, the first glimpses of the highest peaks, the mountain slopes, the coastlines and the towns. I’ve experienced that a few times on this 6 month voyage. BTW, landfall to a sailor is when land is first sighted, not when first going ashore.  When you think about sailors centuries ago navigating with the crudest instruments, sighting land was the big deal, not wading up onto the beach.

Alas, I was denied my big landfall moment arriving in Antarctica. The relatively warm north winds pushing over the cold water created fog. Even 100 miles out visibilty was less than 2 nm.  I had huge cruise ships pass me within a few miles and never saw them. I sailed passed Smith Island and Snow Island, easily close enough to see them but saw nothing, just fog. Getting close to Deception Island the visibilty collapsed to less than 1/2 nm. Another cruise ship passed me that far away going the opposite direction but I couldn’t see even an outline in the mist. Really spooky.

The entrance to the Deception Island caldera is a very narrow passage known as Neptune’s Bellows. Are my e-charts accurate enough, will I be able to find this thing in the fog? Well, I found it, and as I approached a cruise ship called the Fram was also just starting through so I had only to follow them (coordinated on the radio).  Right at Neptunes Bellows,  and inside the caldera, visibility improved considerably so I was finally motivated to grap my camera and take photos. It is a spectacular place.

I have a cake mix on board I thought I would use to celebrate this arrival but now I think it’s premature. I wouldn’t want to tempt Neptune’s ill will with such a presumptive gesture. I’ll wait until I return to Puerto Williams, when I have again escaped, have transcended, the icy grip of these winds, these waters, and my own mistakes and failings.

First, a correction to my last post. I left Mar del Plata on December 20, not December 22.

After leaving the anchorage at Bahia Oso Marino I thought I had a weather window to make it to Bahia Thetis straight south across Bahia Grande before west gale force winds moved in.  That weather window closed down so I sought an intermediate point to anchor while I waited 3+ days for the gale to blow through. Even a marginal anchorage would be better than 3 days hove-to at sea in gale force winds.  Unfortunately, there are no harbors, bays or coves suitable for small yachts, or easily accessible ports, along this part of the Argentine coast.

One of my cruising guidebooks is “Patagonia & Tierra del Fuego” by Mariolina Rolfo and Giorgio Ardrizzi, commonly known among cruisers as the “Italian book” and regarded as the bible for sailing these waters. They had a brief reference to a charted anchorage a yacht had previously used situated 2 nm north of Cabo Virgenes at the east entrance to the Strait of Magellan. That yacht had anchored there for similar reasons, to avoid the worst of a westerly gale because the anchorage is immediately to the east (in the lee of) of a very tall cliff (coastal escarpment) which serves to block the worst of the gale winds from the west leaving the water mostly flat and relatively calm.  I decided to make for that anchorage, arriving Sunday around 1900z. I set the anchor and put out 55 meters of chain expecting it to still be windy. It has been, but not nearly as bad as being on the open ocean. The holding ground here for the anchor is very good. The winds are typically 10-20 kts, but I’ve had gusts of 30+ kts. No waves here but I can look east to the open ocean only a mile or so away and see much more turbulent waters.

The gale will end this evening (Wednesday) so I plan to leave here Thursday at 0900z and sail 180 nm directly to Bahia Thetis, ETA Friday evening. At this point the forecast shows a north wind for Saturday so I’m going to try to make the passage south through the notorious Le Maire Strait when the south-setting ebb tide begins at HW slack at 0906z. Timing is everything here. You definitely do not want to make this passage with wind opposing tidal current. It can create huge waves. If the wind forecast holds I should be able to make it into the Beagle Channel to a protected anchorage called Puerto Espanol in Bahia Aguirre. From there it’s only 1.5- 2 more days along the Beagle Channel to Puerto Williams assuming no strong contrary winds. I expect to motor most of the way west along the Beagle Channel unless I get a realatively rare easterly following wind.

Life swinging around an anchor in gusty winds is not much fun. Every creak and groan of the anchor chain during a strong gust is unnerving, wondering if something will fail or the anchor will drag. I use a so-called bridle on the anchor chain consisting of a chain hook the hooks on a link in the anchor chain and a heavy 3/4” line.  The line is secured to a bow cleat.  Once the chain hook is set I let out a few more feet of chain so the hook and heavy line are now taking the load of the pulling chain instead of the windlass. The windlass has no load because the part of the chain out to the hook is slack. This is a common technique for anchoring which should always be used (but most don’t) especially if high loads on the chain are expected.

I haven’t mention much about wildlife in this blog, partly because I don’t know much about the birds and other wildlife I’ve seen. Of course, the albatross is the most common bird hanging around the boat while at sea. There are a few different varieties. For a time a couple elected to use my bowsprit as a perch.  An albatross following your boat is generally considered a good omen but beware treating them with disrespect as Coleridges’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” warns.

New to me are the Commerson’s dolphins. They are unmistakably, being almost all white with black dorsal fin and head. I first encountered them after leaving Mar del Plata. Like other dolphins,  they will swim alongside the boat, even under it, experiencing the bow wake as something different for them in the ocean. I was able to get some short videos of them in action. As I was coming into Bahia Oso Marino there must have been a hundred or more playing around with 50 meters of the boat. Truly a rare sight.

I left Mar del Plata on Decenber 22, about noon, local time. For the first few days I had great following winds and made good progress but eventually the wind shifted to the south and I was sailing into a headwind trying to tack back and forth across it.  This process was aggravated by a strong counter current it took me a more than a day to figure out. At first it showed up as a north-setting current so I thought it might be an offshoot of the well-known Falklands current, although I was really too far west to encounter that.  When I would try a port tack, sailing to the southwest the current would push me north so my actual course over the ground was almost due west – almost no progress south. I tried to make the best of this but it was very frustrating. Some hours later I noticed the current rotating to an east set, then south set, then start rotating bach to north set. Very weird. After watching this happen over 24 hours I concluded the current was following the tide changes, north set on ebb tide. It never occurred to me that tidal currents flowing away from the land would turn and flow north and south along the coast. That said, I started this voyage not knowing much about how currents work so I’m getting a live fire education. I’m surprised the 2 guidebooks I have for sailing this coast, although discussing currents, don’t mention this phenomenon.

Headwinds and currents continued to impede my progress south over the next several days. Watching the weather forecasts for the crossing frim Puerto Deseado to Bahia Thetis on the eastern tip of the island of Tierra del Fuego, I decided to anchor for a day so I could make the crossing in a little better weather window. I anchored in Bahia Oso Marino, about 10 nm south of Puerto Deseado.  The port itself, located near the mouth of a river, has a complicated entry with high tidal currents and really no good facilities to accommodate visiting yachts. At Oso Marino I had the entire bay to myself.  The holding in sand for the anchor was great, it needed to be, because I had 20-30 kt winds blowing through from nearly all directions. I’m glad I have an anchor that’s good at resetting itself.

While anchored, I poured the remaining diesel from my jerry cans into the main tank, something that’s almost impossible to do while at sea unless the water is dead calm.

Leaving Oso Marino at around 10 in the morning local time, I was contacted by the Prefectura Naval in Puerto Deseado who wanted to know my intentions, where I was going , etc. I gave him the details he asked for, and at his request, agreed to add his email address to the daily position report emails I have been sending to the Prefectura in Mar del Plata. All yachts transiting Argentine waters are required to do this. A good thing, I think, that they’re keeping track of where these boats are in case of a problem.

Since leaving Oso Marino I continue to work my way south into light and sometimes contrary winds. The forecasts have not been particularly accurate.  I’m very much trying to avoid the very strong westerly wind storms that are common in this part of Argentina, the Patagonian coast. For seversl days now I have been sailing across the infamous “Roaring 40’s”, 40-50 degrees south latitude. Tomorrow, likely, I pass south of 50 degrees south latitude, into the “Furious 50’s”. They have these descriptive names for a reason. I’m trying to avoid experiencing the reason first hand. I may chose to anchor again around the east entrance to the Magellan Strait to wait for more moderate winds and seas to cross to Bahia Thetis.

I have had more equipment issues since leaving Mar del Plata. One of the deck-mounted blocks (pulleys) that controls the sheet(control line) for the mainsail failed. I had one spare so I was able to get going again, but it was my only spare. My brother Jim, who is coming to Puerto Williams in January to join an Antarctica cruise, will bring me a couple of spare blocks and the replacement u-bolt for the boom.

More seriously, I suppose, is that I lost 4 of my diesel jerry cans overboard in what was a really freak episode.  I was tacking the boat, moving the genoa from port to starboard. During this process for a time the sail and sheets a violently flapping in the wind as the bow of the boat turns through the wind and before I can winch in the sheet. While the sheet was flying it caught under the end of 2×6” board where the jerry cans were attached. The board itself was attached to stanchions with heavy duty cable ties that had held fine during this voyage, included through some very rough seas. Before I could even react, the flying sheet, with the genoa pulling on it, caught under the end of the board and quickly yanked it right off the stanchion, breaking the cable ties, leaving that end of the board hanging over the side. The seas were rough but I went forward to try to grab the board, with the sheet still yanking on it, to try to pull it back on board. It was no use. The forces from sheet and the weight of the board with 3 full 20 liter jerry cans attached was too much for me to drag back aboard. I had to let it fall over the side where in a half a minute the weight and heavy seas broke the cable ties holding the other end of the board and it fell away, certain to sink. I didn’t think that if I turned the boat around I had a realistic chance to recover them, especially with the rough seas. Surprisingly, one of the 3 full jerry cans somehow detached itself from the board and stayed on deck. I was able to grab that one and bring it into the cockpit so the total loss was 4 jerry cans and the mounting board. I’ll have 6 jerry cans for extra diesel going forward, instead of 10, unless I can find some more jerry cans in Puerto Williams.

While at anchor in Oso Marino, inspecting the boat, I discovered the furling line for the genoa had chafed almost all the way through. If it had broken while at sea the genoa would have unfurled with no way to bring it back other than release the halyard and try to lower the sail to the deck which would have been extremely difficult at sea. I replaced the furling line with about the same diameter which should be adequate.

The boat is as ready as I can make it for the crossing to Bahia Thetis which I think will be the roughest passage so far.