Back at the helm - sailing the Yaghan to Antarctica, Patagonia and the South Pacific

by Martensson, Helene

  When we set out on June 1, 2006, the figure was seventy thousand hits. Before that, a publisher had suggested that we should write a book about our circumnavigation. The number of hits on the home page proved that people were interested, and we decided to write this book.

  Because of all this interest in our voyage, we came into contact with a number of people who suggested improvements to our route. Those who turned out to be most helpful to us were Hasse Nilsson, former captain of the Lindblad Explorer, Lars Hässler, who had spent ten years circumnavigating the world and Per Tingbrand, originally from Piteå and an expert on Daniel Solander. Daniel Solander, also from Piteå, was a botanist and member of James Cook's first expedition, and thereby the first Swedish circumnavigator. We already knew of Lars Hässler since we had read the book he wrote about his circumnavigation many times. It is a real gem. Hasse Nilsson and Per Tingbrand, however, were unknown to us.

  Hasse Nilsson and the Explorer

  The Lindblad Explorer, or simply the Explorer as it was later named, was a small, red passenger ship built in 1969 with a capacity of about one hundred passengers. It was meant to reach places that could not be accessed by the large cruise liners. It was originally owned by Lars-Eric Lindblad, who was in the travel business; the Broström family later became joint owners. The Explorer became world famous when she sank after hitting an iceberg in the Antarctic in 2006.

  There were two captains who took turns. Hasse Nilsson was one of them for a period of twelve years, between 1972 and 1984, during which the Explorer covered some 700,000 nautical miles, the equivalent of sixteen circumnavigations like the one we were about to set out on.

  The Lindblad Explorer was the first tourist ship to arrive in the Pitcairn Islands, which it did on March 22, 1974, a date that is now a bank holiday there. In 1984, the Lindblad Explorer became the first commercial ship to pass through the North-West Passage.

  In 1966 – before the Explorer was built – Lars-Eric Lindblad was the first travel agent to organise holidays to Antarctica. They went there on a Chilean naval ship. The Lindblad Explorer sailed to Antarctica many times. In the beginning she was the only ship of her kind in the area, today thirty-five large cruise liners pass through on a more or less regular basis.

  Bengt Danielsson – a member of Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition and later the Swedish consul to Tahiti – joined many of the Pacific voyages on the “little red ship”. A well-known ethnographer and author of many books on the Pacific, he was a popular speaker on board. Bengt Danielsson has later said that he would never have known his subject as well as he did if he had not participated in these voyages.

  Imagine how thrilled we were when we received an e-mail from Hasse Nilsson, inviting us for dinner at his home on Gräsö during which we would discuss suitable stops. He must be the only Swede who has visited Antarctica thirty times! In his e-mail he also wrote that he had made his own measurements in a number of natural harbours there that might be of use to us – the official charts are not always accurate. Considering Hasse's many adventures he is surprisingly unknown in Sweden. We could hardly hope to find more reliable information than this.

  Per Tingbrand has written innumerable articles on Daniel Solander and the places he visited, which we were able to read before we left. This meant that Per greatly contributed to our knowledge about the places we were about to visit. He has written interesting articles on almost every single place we were going to visit, and his books became cornerstones of our onboard library.

  ≈

  Going with the Wind

  (Arne)

  The SPOS

  Access to weather information is vital when you are circumnavigating the world. High-quality weather forecasts contribute to the safety and, especially, to the comfort on board. This is why Yaghan’s communication equipment was a major investment. The Fleet 77 provided global internet access so we could receive weather reports at sea on a regular basis. Once this was in place we could install the same reliable SPOS forecasting software that is used by the merchant navy. SPOS is a weather forecasting software that Transas, who supplied our electronic chart software, started using in 2005. Before that they used their own Weather Wizard. It suited our needs at the time, but it was much less advanced than SPOS. For example, it could not plot an optimal route based on the vessel's speed profile, which made it unsuitable for the major shipping companies that Transas targets.

  By the time we got our SPOS program in the autumn of 2005, it had been used for ten years by some 650 commercial vessels. The software is owned and developed by the Dutch company Meteokonsult. The beauty of SPOS is that it makes route simulation easy and that the program can come up with the optimal route after you have entered the vessel's speed graph. It is also possible to add your own parameters. These advanced forecasting programs makes you much less dependent on weather routing, i.e. a land-based meteorologist with whom you communicate in order to find the best available route. Moreover, in 2006, the company started to provide daily nine-day instead of five-day forecasts.

  We decided only to use weather routing as an extra safety precaution for the most difficult and dangerous passages. Weather routing costs between seventy and two hundred dollars a day. We estimated the total cost of SPOS to over four thousand dollars a year plus the Internet provider's daily tariff. It was expensive, but vital to our chances of completing our circumnavigation in safety and comfort.

  Before we set off I had spent ten years trying to become a decent meteorologist. It is one thing just receiving weather maps, quite another to interpret them in the right way. A weather map tells you more than a thousand words, but it takes years to learn how to extract all the information. I spent all these years in active training. We never listened to the Swedish radio forecasts; we depended entirely on my own interpretations of our weather maps. I got better and better at it, and eventually Heléne had more faith in my forecasts than in the ones she listened to on the radio. Her desire to circumnavigate the globe depended on her faith in the onboard forecasting system.

  Trade Winds

  Ever since the 16th century people have known about trade winds, winds that blow relatively steadily from one direction. In short, these can be explained in the following way: easterly winds prevail in the intertropical convergence zone, which is a low pressure belt along the equator that is often referred to as “the doldrums” or equatorial calms. North of the doldrums winds are north-easterly and south of the doldrums they are south-easterly up to 20–25 degrees of latitude. The exact position of the doldrums varies according to season. They are rarely positioned right over the equator.

  The trade wind belt is followed by a belt of weak and varying winds along the “horse latitudes”, so called because as the water shortage was by then often acute, the horses on board had to be slaughtered. As you start to approach the poles – around latitude 40 north or south – the winds turn westerly. In the southern hemisphere the Roaring Forties are especially feared in autumn and winter.

  Naturally, when you are plotting your course, you try and take as much advantage of these winds as possible. Someone who failed to do this was Captain Bligh of the Bounty. He set out from England in December; that is to say when the winter storms were at their worst. Bligh arrived at Cape Horn and tried to round it in April when the autumn storms – which were then blowing head on – had just started forming in the southern hemisphere. But he had to give up and continued – after stopping off at Cape Town – with the wind behind him to Tahiti, which is in the Roaring Forties, in July and August. It means that it was winter in the southern hemisphere and the worst storms were raging. Even though this was not the only cause of the famous mutiny of 1789, it was probably a contributing reason for the low morale among the men. Personally, I think that the mutiny had more to do with that than with the seductive Tahitian girls.

  James Cook, on the other hand, used the global winds surprisingly well to his advantage, even though he can hardly have known as much about them as we do today. Up until
he got to Australia, Cook arrived at approximately the same location at the same time of year as we did. It means that he was always at the right place at the right time, even considering what we know today, which no doubt contributed to the success of his expedition. Due to a necessary service halt at Batavia (present-day Jakarta), however, he set off too late across the Indian Ocean, and crossed it during the hurricane season, but without encountering one single hurricane!

  Hurricanes and Global Warming

  Naturally, you should keep out of the hurricane zones during the hurricane season. We were going to pass hurricane zones in the south-west Pacific, including Australia, the south-west Indian Ocean and the West Indies. Roughly speaking you could say that the hurricane season occurs during summer and autumn, which means June to November in the northern hemisphere and December to April in the southern hemisphere. It does of course not start or end on a set date, the transition is gradual. In the West Indies, August, September and October are the worst months. In the south-west Pacific, including Australia and the south-west Indian Ocean, it is January, February and March. At other times of the year the activity gradually subsides.

  Hurricanes develop when the water temperature is no lower than 27ºC at the same time as the earth rotates at a certain speed. This is why hurricanes never develop within a distance of three degrees north and south of the equator; this area is not affected by the so-called Coriolis Effect. Hurricanes can occur between latitude 5 and 25, but they are most frequent at around 6 to 10 degrees.

  Hurricane zones across the globe.

  Global warming often plays tricks with us, however. As the water temperature rises in the oceans, hurricanes become more frequent and are more violent in the traditional hurricane zones. Moreover, hurricanes are formed in areas where they do not normally occur, or they appear out of season. The South Atlantic is not considered a hurricane zone, but the first hurricane ever hit the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina on March 28, 2004. The Canary Islands too are outside the hurricane belt, but hurricane Delta caused much damage in December 2005. The hurricane season on Vanuatu in the Pacific normally occurs between December and March, but cyclone Gina hit the area in June 2003. There is a hurricane season in the southern part of the Indian Ocean between December and March, but hurricane Phoebe stroke in July 2004. So, in the past few years, hurricane safe periods and zones have become less predictable.

  Hurricanes cannot be overcome by good seamanship and a sea-worthy boat. Hurricanes must be avoided at all cost, and the hurricane seasons are not written in stone. SPOS features a hurricane warning system. One good thing about these violent storms is that they move at a speed of 10 knots, which is roughly equivalent to Yaghan's top speed. It means that we can avoid a hurricane if we can spot it before it is too late and we have enough fuel.

  El Niño

  One factor that may change the weather situation in the Pacific is El Niño. El Niño means “Baby Jesus”. It is a phenomenon by which warm water is transported to the coast of Peru where the water is normally fairly cold. In a year when El Niño is strong in the Pacific, the trade winds become weakened; they may even change direction and start to blow from the west! Naturally, this is not helpful to circumnavigators who want the tail-wind to be coming from the east. The hurricane season is also prolonged, which means that the risk of sailing near the beginning and end of the normal season increases considerably. Since we were going to cross the Pacific in 2007, we very much hoped that 2006–2207 would not turn out to be a violent “Niño” year.

  This phenomenon was unusually violent in 1982–1983 and 1997–1998. It affected the global weather, causing major floods in South America and serious drought in Australia and India; just to mention a few of the effects. When we set off on June 1, 2006, there were no signs of a strong El Niño in 2006–2007, but it is hard to forecast more than three to six months ahead.

  Most people who circumnavigate the world keep to the tropics and, consequently, the east trade wind zone. This is achieved by passing through the Panama Canal and avoiding New Zealand. We wanted to round the South American continent to get to Antarctica, which meant we had to move outside of the trade wind belts and enter the zone of westerly winds that prevails near the poles. Even New Zealand is so far south that you need to pass through the west wind belts. Apart from that, we would keep to the easterly trade wind belts in order to sail around the world with the wind behind us.

  Westerly winds in the southern hemisphere have a worse reputation than they do in the northern hemisphere, even though they too can be tough. We had plenty of experience of the northern hemisphere west wind belt from our voyages to Iceland and the Faeroe Islands. In the southern hemisphere the wind and the waves are particularly hard to tackle since they may circle the earth without landfall. During our crossing from Mar del Plata to the Falklands we would encounter these west winds for the first time, and then we would have to live with them all the way to Antarctica and up along the west coast of Chile to Puerto Montt. Since this could be considered to be the most dangerous leg of our voyage, we conducted a thorough analysis of the weather conditions before setting out.

  Our Weather Criteria and Two Years of Analyzing the Southern Ocean

  We conducted our own analysis since we have learned not to trust any “truths” about weather zones. These are often influenced by an element of chance and depend on the type of boat that is used. Moreover, information offered by locals can often not be trusted. In most places the local population considers their own part of the world to be particularly fearsome and dangerous. We have often been forced to re-evaluate statements like, “you should never sail in the Aegean in the winter,” “Lake Vättern is one of the most dangerous waters on earth,” or “It's completely impossible to make forecasts for our area, the weather can change quickly and it's entirely unpredictable.” You can only trust your own statistics, tailor-made for a specific boat and its crew.

  Over a period of two years before we set off, we simulated weather conditions for Mar del Plata to the Falklands, the Falklands to Ushuaia, Patagonia to Antarctica and Antarctica to Patagonia every day from December 1 to January 15. We could do this from home in SPOS and real daily weather forecasts.

  The criteria we used were the same as the ones we would apply during our circumnavigation. In principle, we would not sail if the forecast predicted an average wind speed of over 24 knots, a significant wave height of over three metres or if Yaghan's average speed was estimated to be below 7 knots according to SPOS. An average wind speed of 24 knots means that the wind speed in the gusts will be fifty per cent greater, i.e. 36 knots. A significant wave height of three metres means that the average of the third of the waves that are the highest is three metres. Every two thousandth wave may be twice as big – six metres. Statistically, you may encounter one of these once every twenty-four hours, i.e. when the significant wave height is three metres there is a six-metre wave once every twenty-four hours.

  Naturally, these weather criteria are not hewn in stone. If there is a good reason we may compromise. When it comes to the fifty per cent added wind speed, for example, this is true, especially in the west wind belts. There is usually less variation in the trade wind belts, so in these areas we sometimes accept wind speeds over 24 knots on setting out.

  We are also less strict about our wave criteria from time to time. Waves are a combination of wind-generated waves – these are the difficult ones – and swell caused by winds that the waves have lost contact with. The significant wave height is therefore a combination of wind waves and swell. The combined wave height is calculated by means of the old Pythagoras’ theorem. Wind waves to the power of two plus the swell to the power of two equals the total wave height to the power of two! But if the total wave height is mainly caused by old swell and the wind waves are insignificant, we sometimes accept a total wave height of up to four metres. This requires a special analysis that we can do in SPOS.

  One good reason for not accepting a higher significant wave height is a phe
nomenon called monster waves. Monster waves exceed the significant wave height with over one hundred, sometimes three hundred, per cent. Until quite recently it was believed that these waves did not exist, contrary to the many stories that have been told by seafarers over the years about suddenly occurring, thirty-metre-high, sheer monster waves. We now know that they do exist and that they are the cause of the sudden disappearance of many large ships. In the past few years at least two cruise liners en route to Antarctica have encountered monster waves that were over thirty metres high, putting them in distress; but they managed to make their way back to port on their own in the end. The greater the significant wave height, the greater the likelihood of encountering monster waves.

  The speed criterion requires further explanation. We have a computerized speed graph for Yaghan, which includes parameters based on our own experience. SPOS then calculates the speed for the various legs using incoming weather information. Yaghan can normally do about 8 knots motoring or sailing. Maximum speed is around 10 knots, although, due to the high fuel consumption, we never travel under power at that speed. If the headwind is brisk, you need to beat to windward. If the wind is dead on, the distance increases by as much as fifty-six per cent, mathematically, assuming you have a course over ground of one hundred degrees between the beats – a common tacking angle for a modern boat at sea. Even though Yaghan in these circumstances is still travelling at 8 knots, the actual speed towards the destination is only 5 knots. In head sea you lose even more speed. If the head wind is weak, we do 8 knots under power.