‘The most inefficient way on the planet to go skiing’ so uttered what vaguely resembled Neil as we dropped off the thousandth green mountainous wave still 150 miles out from the South Shetlands. Three days earlier we had left Ushuaia eager and excited having spent four hours shuttling back and forth negotiating labyrinthine Argentine clearance bureaucracy.
The first 9 hours passed uneventfully enough as we motor sailed down the Beagle and headed out towards Cape Horn. Just south of Isla Nuevo the overfalls threw up a confused, steep sea which soon wiped the smiles off our faces. The banter of excited conversation dried to a trickle as each of us began to concentrate on keeping Magdalena’s delicious dinner where it belonged.
Sadly the next four days merged into a blur of unmitigated misery for most of the stalwart visitor crew. The Drake has a reputation to keep and whilst we dodged a major storm, we drove our way south through 5m swells and two days of 25 to 30 knot headwinds. Bruce, Darrell and Matt devoured Maggie’s amazingly created meals whilst the rest of us clung on through our 3 hour grim watch, only to crawl back to our bunks and try, desparately, to sleep.
To describe a watch will give you just a sense of what it is like to sail across the Drake in a well-found yacht. Our watch rotation was 3 hours on and 5 hours off. One person rotating on and off watch each hour. Let us start with one hour before you are on watch. You are lying in your sleeping bag, cold, miserable, with most of your internals in a washing machine as Spirit crashes through wave after wave. Each jarring crash as Spirit leaps over a wave further batters the last few vestiges of good spirit within. You glance furtively at the time, wishing that your watch would not come. 30 mins before you are on an ashen-faced colleague gently rouses you and you start the balancing act of getting your Weezle suit (well Louise and I), lifejacket, boots, gloves etc etc all whilst keeping two days ago meal in place. Note, ‘two days ago’, save for Bruce, the most any of us ate over four days were three meals! The next, and critical stage of watch change, is the transition – a 2 minute crawl from your bunk to the cockpit. You struggle past Maggie’s who is strapped into the galley creating some otherwise delicious concoction for Bruce, which to you smells like a friday night in the university rugby club lavatories after too much beer. Into the cockpit, your try to look cheery and utter a few pleasantries, but in truth, all you want is to be at home, in bed with a nice book. Three hours is made up of 180 minutes and you grow tired from looking at your watch every couple of minutes and realise that nothing you can do will hurray your return to the bunk.
Rinse, repeat.
Four days latter King George Island and Livingston Island came into view as did our first iceberg. Massive broad, low snow capped islands with huge glaciers calving into the now gentle sea. We headed through Nelson Straight and turned to starboard making forour anchorage on Half Moon Island just off the small Argentinian base Camarra.
With the anchor dropped, a celebratory evening was had by all.
The 23rd November started late. Not a movement until 9am. The rain fell, the wind blew and one felt quite at home. After a delicious porridge and a thorough clean up from the previous night’s celebrations, we commenced the retrieval of all our ski gear from the bowels of the yacht.
With the Zodiac inflated we offloaded to shore. Sadly Andy had to rest his twisted ankle for the day so the rest of us set off to summit the legendary 100m peak on Half Moon Island. It was so good to step foot on Antarctica. We were greeted by a gaggle of Gentoo penguins who waddled over to greet us. On with the skis Bruce, Mark C, John, Louise, Neil and I head off on a shake out mini-tour. For a few brief moments the clouds parted to reveal the astonishing sceneary of Livingston Island and its 1800m peaks. After a brief visit to the Camarra base we headed to the SE end of the island and the large Chinstrap penguin community. The cute little penguins seemed utterly oblivious to our presence. They busied themselves waddling to and from the sea, up to their hatchery at the top of the headland. Always waddling, sometimes tobogganing these little characters kept us engrossed for over an hour. In their midst was one imposter, a Macaroni penguin, some 500 miles too far south, but according to Darrell a well known resident on the island.
All in all a great visit and shakeout.
Back on board courtesy of Matt in charge of the Zodiac. A thorough disinfect getting on board to stop any risk of decontamination between penguin populations, and a magnificent diner courtesy of Maggie. The good news is that Andy’s ankle is making good progress after some intense cold water and massage treatment from Louise.
Mark B 23.11.16
As I sign off the clouds are lifting and the beauty of our surroundings is breathtaking. We are off tomorrow at 5am to sail for Deception Island some 45 miles to our south.
The adventure continues.