Port Williams to Puerto Montt
No rest for the wicked, a saying quite apt for this part of our journey. As soon as we arrived in Port Williams we set anchor and began to put the boat back together. She took a good beating, and her crew along with her, however we arrived in good spirits and with only aesthetic damage. After a long day of feverish work, we lay our heads for a few hours before weighing anchor at 0400hrs to begin our journey North; we will easily catch up on lost sleep while the mountains of Patagonia protect us from the wrath of the South Pacific. This leg will take us approximately one week of navigating through the canals of Patagonia, weaving our way through more glaciers and jaw-dropping rugged mountain scenery to reach our destination of Puerto Montt where we will remain for four days, a welcomed dose of civilisation after months of being sea-bound.
The atmosphere on board has improved drastically, not to say that morale has not been high (there has been little to no confrontation on this boat at any point in this journey), but with Drake behind us and no other guests due to arrive on board, the beginning of our trip north to Puerto Montt kicked of with a wave of fresh energy. Destination quietly cut through the glass-like morning water of the Beagle channel, her crew are reaping their much-needed and well-deserved reward of unencumbered sleep, this was something of a luxury after three weeks of such fractured living. The last few days of battling Drake’s Passage made this morning of gliding through calm water feel quite surreal; it was a change of the guard, the next chapter. Now reminiscing on our polar adventure, it feels complete by the fight with the Drake, a tale told and sealed, ahead there are more adventures to come; navigating the fjords of Patagonia begs its own recognition as a unique voyage.
Much of the snow on the caps of the mountain ranges that we admired on our way down South has now thawed out, a bit like Destination and her crew with every degree North made good. Now we are flanked by cascading waterfalls that animate every fissure between the towering peaks. Seals are still abundant on this passage and the scenery has come to life with the warmer temperature; a toasty five degrees Celsius. Each waterfall has its own microenvironment; dense jungle-like trees following the stream to the water, flocks of birds buzzing in the spray and a host of seals bringing the join of fresh water and sea water to life feeding on whatever nutritious treat thrives at the bottom. In one of Eddie Izzard’s clever skits on Americanising the English language, he touches on the use of the word awesome and how Americans have turned it into a descriptive for the most mundane of things, far from its original definition; “This hot dog is awesome..”. To bring the word back to its roots, this part of the world is truly awesome. Just when one feels the coiffeurs filled to an overwhelming extent from Antarctica, we are back in the land before time which has its own magic to offer. We need to remind ourselves to carry on soaking up what the canals present us, many travellers spend their valuable time and money just to come and get a taste of what we are enjoying. This beauty remains untouched by humans, something of a self-fulfilling prophecy; as long as it is, it will remain so.
Most of the passage north had us squashed in between mountain peaks, protecting us from any sea bar the odd chop from katabatic winds that flow freely down the mountainsides. There were, however, two openings that exposed us to the full brunt of the Southern Pacific. This coastline is known to be the windiest in the world; constantly battered by the low pressure systems that develop here and eventually push down to Drakes passage, notoriously aggressive cold wind and copious amounts of sea to animate. Coming out of the protection of our rugged giants meant battling against seas and sustained fifty-knot winds that one could equate to the severity of Drakes passage, if not worse at times. There were moments where we were pushing up wind at an excruciating five knots to save the boat from any damage. In fact, I must make note of an observation that the entire trip North from Port Williams had us motoring directly into a head wind, mostly in the twenties, often more. This is a known wind pattern in this part of the world and was no issue for us as Destination is primarily a motor-sailor and there was little chop in the canals, however I can’t imagine doing this leg in anything much smaller, it would be an arduous fight against the wind gods. A nod of respect is due to the adventurers that did not even give it a second thought, spending months fighting in the name of discovery and recognition.
Much of what we navigated through remains unsurveyed, which means that we need to be wary of some patches of the canals considering our substantial draft, an interesting topic that takes us back to the 1800s.There is a fantastic book called This thing of darkness that bring to life the journeys of a young admiral by the name of Fitzroy who was mandated, at just twenty three years of age, to survey the wilds of Tierra del Fuego. When Fitzroy first came down to Patagonia he believed that he was not in adequately appreciative company, the kind of discoveries he was making in this land of giants needed someone who could appreciate the anthropological and scientific gravity of the findings. After his first trip there and back, he returned with a young gentleman by the name of Charles Darwin, much to the dismay of his father. The book is an excellent piece, clearly appropriate reading for me considering I am living where it was all staged, however it is a book I would recommend to all.
The last few days of our journey were relatively easy-going. We all harboured a desire to have a cold beer and sit in the sun on Terra Firma after spending all this time at sea on a dry boat working hard to give the guests the best experience possible on the trip to Antarctica. We still have a long list of jobs to complete while docked in Puerto Montt, but the one day off given to us will be a welcomed respite. Though it was only a week of travelling, this day that we arrive in Montt sees the first day that we are going to be docked to land since our berth in Tenerife, back in November. This made the already beautiful approach into Puerto Montt that much sweeter. Here we will remain for four days, repairing the reacher sail and knocking off our jobs while getting some sleep on a boat that is not moving; bliss. The first leg of the second chapter in our story has come to a close. Our departure will see us sailing due West to cross the Pacific and make land at Tahiti, the stories of the Bounty and Robinson Crusoe echo along our rhumbline; there may be a few pit stops on the way.