Onwards to the Beagle
28/12
0500hrs
While at anchor in Punta Arenas, we had a change of watch; Mike flew home for Christmas and my good friend Ish (who is the reason I was brought in to this adventure as a crew member) took over a week later. In the interim I had an interesting week managing the boat and her crew as relief Captain. All the crew got a three-day break off the boat to discover the mountains of Patagonia. We staggered it so that there was only a pair off the boat at any given time, drawing out the breaks over a week. This was a welcomed respite in an unforgettable setting. Boxing Day was spent doing safety drills and allocating roles for any and all emergency situations.
The long-anticipated day that we depart our anchorage in the Magellan Straits to start our journey South is here, and we are rearing to go.
Ish and I woke this morning at 0300hrs to weigh anchor while the crew sleep on. Thankfully there is very little wind shifting the icy dawn air, but we still had to pile into our layers of thermals and oil skins. Over the next few days we will need to sample all the new polar gear that the boat is supplying us with, as we move further south the gear gets more extreme.
As I monitored the ingress of chain, a fin whale blasted a cloud of air and water into the sky, no more than five metres away from me; a good omen. One hundred metres of sixteen-millimetre chain came up without a snag, hydraulic arm in and hatch closed. We leave the bland view of Punta Arenas at our backs and venture into the ocean once again; both of us have been looking forward to this moment for a long time.
In this part of the world and at this time of year, the sun sets at 2210hrs and rises at 0500hrs, but the light persists. There are only four hours of full darkness so we did in fact leave in the light even though it was 0400hrs.
While a small pod of Commerson dolphins gave us a playful show of breaching and slapping their backs, we witnessed an incredible sunrise, a shared moment of serenity on this frigid December morning. The clouds were lined with orange flames, above our heads and beyond the sky retained a piercing ice blue colour. Both of us tried to take a photo with our phones, to no avail.
“Sometimes these are just to keep to yourself.”
“Absolutely.”
We unfurled the Blade sail and now push through the Magellan straits, we will be going into the Magdalena straits and carry on to the Cockburn straits. At some point we come out of the safety of the straits and are exposed to the ocean for a time before gunning for the Beagle channel. While under way, this small trip to Port Williams will have us seeing all manner of exciting things; namely glaciers, icebergs and our first taste of the Southern Ocean.
29/12
0450hrs
Going through these channels has been an eye-opening experience. Narrow passages are flanked by the most picturesque snow-capped mountains the whole way through. Yesterday the excitement was evidenced in the amount of photos taken by all. We could hardly help ourselves; looming glaciers, with their bright blue core bursting out at us from every other mountainside… whale spouts shooting water into the air no further than a boat length from us.. colonies of seals bobbing their curious heads out of the water to inspect the source of disturbance in this serene wonderland. All this surrounded by the immense landscape of Tierra del Fuego.
While navigating these waters, feeling a sense of adventure is inevitable, the charts are labelled in such a way that lends itself to a story. All around us are great names immortalised in time, ‘Cockburn straits’, ‘Scott Island’, ‘Mc Intyre pass’. Somehow one can extrapolate the names of the islands and passages to recreate the unfathomable feats of human strength that drove pioneers through this part of the world. It is an honour to be here, in the truest sense of the phrase. The landscape and unique wildlife inspire a feeling of the unknown, nothing is new, we are alien invaders in a land before time.
The weather was favourable for most of the morning but deteriorated to a gray rainy blanket for the rest of the day. We travelled through daylight hours and lay anchor tucked in to a bay in the Southern coastline of Burnt Island. The idea is to make the most out of this incredible passage while we can, only travelling with light. This morning Ish and I went through the same procedure, weighing anchor while the crew sleep on. We are planning to nose into a fjord and visit Ventisquero Guilcher today, weather will dictate our movements after that; either we stay at anchor somewhere nice again or carry on to Port Williams to arrive this evening. In the meantime, bring on the magic!
1130hrs
The early hours of the morning gifted us with a similar scene to yesterdays. The glassy water is only disturbed by the dog-like snouts of friendly seals and a gorgeous golden light bouncing off the mountainsides on our flanks. Flat water paired with no wind makes for an unbelievably picturesque setting. I have to pinch myself occasionally to realise that my path in life has brought me to this fairy-tale place on a salary, and this is barely the middle of a great adventure.
We took a detour this morning, hanging a left turn up Seno Pia to visit Ventisquero Romanche. It is a behemoth glacier that draws the attention of anyone travelling this way. While navigating through the narrow channel we had a spotter on the crew radio standing at the bow calling for icebergs, of which there were plenty. Each turn brought to face a dramatic mountainside that towered over our puny mast.
We have seen a few glaciers in our recent travels but this is the first one that we got so close to. The sight of it never lost its allure. The tantalising blue that almost hides inside the white ice makes the body of ice glow. After we all finished our trigger-happy Kodak moments we stood there to soak it in for a good fifteen minutes while floating no more than three hundred metres away. All of a sudden an almighty crack boomed across the bow as though Zeus himself landed on our foredeck; a large section of glacier slid off the face of the ice cliff into the water. How is a small clumsy animal supposed to react to such majesty? There was dead silence as the overwhelming force of nature quietened the excited mumbles of us all; the humans had nothing to add, for once.
1530hrs
Destination continues to plough through the rugged channels while her crew absorb all that this environment has to offer. The mountains are no further than five hundred metres from our decks at any given time in the narrow passage, and every ten minutes a new mind-boggling view comes into sight. Waterfalls cascade down every other mountain. Some trickle down beautiful lush valleys to create an almost tropical picture and some gush down from their host glacier with spectacular force and grandiosity. The water at the bottom of each of these is stained with a crystal blue tint where fresh glacier water meets the Southern Ocean’s salt. The sky changes from clear sunshine to grey rain cover throughout the day. Every turn of weather brings with it a new scene, each as impressive as the last.
We are due to arrive in Port Williams this evening at around 1900hrs, the southernmost town on the planet. We were and continue to be spoiled by the display of raw nature today, and though it is the first of many, I would be remiss not to express my appreciation for such fortunate circumstance.