Date of Entry: February 6th-9th 2016
Date of Writing: December 13th 2016, Hostel 53 Sur, Punta Arenas, Chile.
I don’t think I realized entirely what I’d gotten into booking passage on a 55 foot sailing yacht to Antartica until an old coworker and friend who spent a long chunk of his life on the ocean messaged me some cautions about the reputation of the southern seas. The drake passage is unpredictable, wild and often provides an adventure for those brave enough to cross it, especially in a small boat. Our crossing was slower than average and ended up taking almost 5 days. According to the seasoned and expert captain of the Spirit of Sydney, Darrel Day, we got very lucky with copa de leche seas and mostly experienced the Drake Lake rather than the Drake Passage but to me, whose never spent any time on a sailboat in the open ocean, 2 to 3 meter swells doesn’t feel like any lake I ever knew. But as you’ve probably figured out from the fact that I’m writing this blog, we survived, without any major incidents.
But let’s go back to the beginning. After bidding goodbye to the awesome David and Henrike who have helped me enjoy my last few days leading up to Antartica I head to the spirit of Sydney, which is docked at the Sailboat port in Ushuaia along the road to the airport. The skies blaze a brilliant blue as I walk, sad from the goodbyes but excited about the adventure to come. the city of Ushuaia glimmers under the stunning mountains and clear skies, the water of the beagle channel quite calm and reflecting the mountains beautifully.
I’m welcomed warmly by Darrel, Josh, Tash and Enora as I climb down off the dock and onto my home for the next month and I guess now is as good a time as any to give you a quick rundown of the people I’m going to share the next month trapped on this boat with for the next month.
First you have the captain, Darrel, an Australian man who worked in industrial construction before coming to Antarctica as a tourist 15 years ago, an event that he says destroyed and saved his life. Now he’s a captain leading a great variety of people through journeys to Antarctica, The Falkland Islands, and South Georgia. On his boat he’s hosted the Crocodile Hunter, the crew that filmed the HBO VICE special, and countless more important and interesting people. So yes, I was very lucky to get on to this boat.
Next you have the single crew member, Josh, a Trinidadian man who has lived in Australia most of his life. He has his own sailboat and recently completed a year long journey sailing across the pacific from Panama to New Zealand. He also has an awesome blog which I highly recommend you follow, and is just an all around cool guy. He’s worked as a commercial diver, a pearl diver, and lots of other things which comes up later in the Antarctica blog series and his accent is a strange blend.
The rest of us are tourists and I’ll keep the descriptions a bit shorter. First we have Ulises and Mariana, a lovely couple from mexico city who have come to do some sea kayaking and explore a climate very different to their own. Next there is Tash, a backpacker from Australia who has been living on the boat with Enora a one time world BMX champion in her age class from France, helping Darrel and Josh prepare the boat for the month long journey. rounding out the group you have James from Lousiana, a lawyer, slash entrepeneur, slash videographer, slash man who can “do a lot of things” and Mathieu, a fellow Canadian who has spent the last few years working as a geologist in Western Africa and seems normal but is actually delightfully strange. And of course who could forget me, an annoying and hopefully occasionally charming Canadian backpacker who writes way too much and includes too many photos in most of his blog. So that’s the crew.
As we ready the boat and arrange our bunks preparing to leave behind the pleasures of the harbour each person arrives to join the preparations, the sun seeming like it’s saying goodbye to us with it’s stunning warmth this far south. Soon enough I have my upper left bunk in the forward cabin all set up and we switch to some last minute boat things. Once the group is complete we head back into the city of Ushuaia on Darrel’s truck to immigration where we fill out some forms and are stamped out of Argentina before buying lots of fresh bread and heading back to the boat. Soon enough we untie from the dock and head out into the beagle canal beginning what I feel certain will be an incredible journey. As we go we all hang out up on deck splitting time between fairly in depth safety briefings and marvelling at the beautiful day south america has provided to see us off.
The giant cruise ships seem like spaceships as we motor past them, the winds in the beagle to ever changing and unpredictable to do much sailing at first. the cleaning crews wave to us from the upper decks just little specks in our vision as we sail out further from town and pass a magnificent square rigger ship anchored out in harbour.
As we progress out into the channel we start to hear the radio calls from random Chilean and Argentinean people keeping records of who leaves and asking for all sorts of information. It seems odd and Darrel’s spanish accent is pretty funny over the radio’s. We also pass lots more sail boats and as we make it further out start to see some magellenic penguins swimming in the sapphire blue waters all around us. Our captain is not particularly interested, but I certainly am, watching carefully for these adorable little birds, though Darrel swears that by the end of our trip we won’t care when we pass a few penguins in the water. (For me at least not true.)
The safety briefings cover a lot of information in a short time and quickly enough we’re all made aware of our individual jobs should we hear the abandon ship call (oh goodness I hope not as I’m responsible for getting enough fresh water into the life raft) as well as getting a live demo of how to put on a survival suit from the lovely Enora who is affectionately known as both Shaza and Merial for reasons to strange to explain. Obviously survival is no laughing matter, but it’s a pretty damn funny suit.
As we continue out having enjoyed a delicious lunch of incredibly tasty sandwiches prepared by Tash the seas start to get a little choppier and we switch on to our watch schedule. Part of going to Antarctica on a small boat like this is that everyone works. You’re not just a tourist, you’re responsible for sailing, cleaning, cooking and doing a share of all the work on board. I know nothing about sailing, but by the end of this trip I quickly figure out that I’ll know a lot more than I did. Our watch schedule for crossing the drake is reasonable, but still a little gruelling by the end. Everyone has 3 hours on watch followed by 6 hours off, 24/7 until we get to Antarctica. Three people are on watch at all times and with only two crew it means 3 of every 9 hours will have no experience sailor on watch, though of course both Darrel and Josh can be woken up quickly should anything happen.
As we head out further into the beagle towards the mythical cape horn some Albatross’ soar around as and the sun starts to sink lower in the sky. In antarctica were looking forward to about 20 hours with some form of natural light at first though we’ll lose about 5 minutes of that with each day that passes as February/march is the end of the summer at this southern edge of the world. Fittingly the sunset is stunningly beautiful.
The next three and a half days are a bit of a muddy blur in my mind as we all try to adjust to life on the high seas. We catch brief glimpses of Cape horn in the distance as the serenity of the beagle leaves us behind and all of the 7 tourists not experienced to boat travel fight our personal wars against the monster known as seasickness trying to snatch our stomachs from it’s neon claws. (Simpsons) In the end I end up quite lucky in the bigger picture, for about ten hours I feel awful, and I end up throwing up over the side 4 times.It hits me fast and I lose out on the first to throw up crown by just 5 minutes or so to Enora but luckily after my fourth tethered to the boat lean over the deck spewing water and not much else, my stomach miraculously settles and my system returns to some semblance of normalcy. Others are not so lucky. Ulises, Mariana and James seem to have the toughest trip in, all looking half dead on arrival after spending 4.5 five days eating nothing, drinking minimal amounts, and keeping less of it down. We do our best to cover some hours of their watches to let them rest more but they do an admirable job of continuing on as best they can on the way down. Seasickness is no fun folks, and meds are far from fool proof. People i know recommend a patch treatment but said patch is illegal in Argentina and can have some serious side effects, I went drug free on the way down trusting my body and believing i’d get better and luckily enough it worked. Darrel swears seasickness is almost entirely mental, and while I do believe him to an extent I think I saw definite evidence that there is a physical side to it too.
The hours on watch are sometimes fun, sometimes long and sometimes quite hard work. Lots of winching ropes and unfurling sails. Putting reefs in the main, adjusting the amount of the genoe and stay sail we have out, changing tacks and so much more, often in rough conditioned to an unseasoned seaman like myself. On the second day though there are lots of albatross and other birds zipping low over the waves in incredible displays of gliding. they are beautiful out in these vast surging seas and the feeling of being so far from any land mass so far south is an impressive one that carries me through. Even though I’m not really sea sick no one is feeling great and the key to maintaining your balance is to minimize time spent inside not lying down for me. When I’m not on watch the group spots 3 orcas in the distance, and I’m lucky enough to be out there as a small pod of dolphins joins our boat and swims along with us for a while as the winds start to pick up and the drake starts to worry me a little more.
Evidently there aren’t many photos taken during the next two days as the seas grow a bit rougher, though Darrel still insists our passage was entirely “copa de leche” (cup of milk), these roughly two days as we crossed the 60th parallel south and watched the impressive changes in the ocean colours as so much water is forced through the narrow drake passage. (Compared to the rest of the worlds oceans.). the blue the ocean takes on is unlike anything I’ve ever seen, bright and beautiful especially just below the tips of white caps on the big swells. It intoxicates me in the brief moments of tranquility on watch between sailing and a new tsk that grows more serious as we head further south: watching for icebergs. Trust me when I say that’s an incredibly stressful thing to do, in the middle of the night, with low visibility and near total cloud cover. Not fun.
We do manage a few shots from around the boat and a few brief go pro videos of the swell not at it’s peak but not exactly calm. Please believe when I say that when you’re in the middle of it, not using a wide angle lens and shifting violently in the boat under the impressive waves, it seems a lot more serious than it appears in the below video.
So there it is, crossing the Drake Passage on a roughly 55 foot sailboat with no sailing experience to begin with, and surviving it. It was a ridiculous experience, sometimes fun, sometimes terrifying and often awe inspiring. The feeling of being out in the middle of the sea with nothing but a few lone seabirds around you, moving without the motor for long section, makes you appreciate the vastness of this world, not to mention the incredible raw power of nature. And here’s the best part, these four days were what most people would call a necessary evil, the supposedly fun part? Well that’s just about to begin. but our Arrival to Deception Island just north of the Antarctic peninsula is a story for another day. Coming soon on the blog along with so many other southern adventures and lots of advice columns on how to get the most out of a last minute trip to the Great White South. Stay tuned for so many more thrilling Antarctic adventures.
