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

by Martensson, Helene

  On long hauls we keep watch according to Lord Nelson's system. We divide the day and night into four-hour watches, except between 1600 hours and 2000 hours when we are on two-hour watches. We normally have dinner together between 1800 hours and 2000 hours.

  On the day of our departure, en route to Visby, I went straight to bed after our luxury dinner and fell asleep immediately. When I got up around eleven the wind had picked up and we were doing about 9 knots towards Visby.

  Sailing the Yaghan with our new sails is more fun and feels a lot better and faster. The sails are tailor-made by Hamel and were delivered to the boat in time for Easter. We tried them during our Easter crossing to Visby. The new genoa design definitely makes sailing safer. There is a slit in the foot of the genoa, which means that you see better underneath it. The new texture, especially the pale yellow colour, adds the feel and look of a really cool racing set.

  It is hard to explain why, but lonely night watches can be very relaxing and pleasant, they are the ones I look forward to most. A steady wind, good speed, little traffic, some music, and all kind of thoughts come into your head; I enjoy every minute of it. There is a flip side too: poor visibility, pouring rain, hail, snow and the sea full of uncontrolled fishing boats; I do not enjoy that. The night watches I like best are the ones that are demanding and strenuous; a lot of work handling the sails, but things I can do on my own without having to wake up the sleeping captain. I also like watches when there is a lot of traffic that is hard to negotiate, but that I feel I can handle at the same time as I make sure that Yaghan is making good speed towards our next destination. These watches really make me feel good. When I go to bed with a happy smile on my face, feeling that I have dealt with the sails, traffic and everything else on board, I have had a great watch, and it does not matter a bit if I cannot go to sleep straight away, but lie there thinking about everything that has happened.

  During my last watch at four or five in the morning, with Gotland and Visby ahead of us and the sun in the east, I picked up the square parcel I got from Sören. I got tears in my eyes when I ripped off the paper and found sixteen CDs with music by Wagner, Satie, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Swedish songs of spring. What a delightful gift! There was music I loved already, music that I had not yet learned to appreciate (perhaps I never will; Wagner, for example) but that I will have the time and opportunity to learn to like during our circumnavigation. A better gift is hard to find! I felt privileged to be able to listen to the music that Sören had so carefully selected for me during my night watches.

  It was then I realised how many unique opportunities there would be for us to experience new things, so far unfamiliar countries and waters, and, not least, the new experiences we would have. Arne and I would be making a new and different life for ourselves on board the Yaghan. During the course of three years we would not be able to live as if we were out sailing for the weekend. Nor could we live the daily life we did at home. We would be together every day and every hour of the day and night, apart from when we were sleeping. The fact that we would be together all the time, in such close proximity, living closer to one another than we had ever done before, would probably require a new approach towards one another and ourselves. I felt exhilarated, unusually fortunate and immensely grateful as these thoughts were going through my mind so early in the day; grateful that life had offered us this opportunity.

  The few days we spent at Visby were very pleasant. Yaghan was moored in our favourite place, right in front of the harbour office. The weather was sunny and lovely and ideal for our daily jogging circuit. We normally run north along the beach to Snäck resort and back, a total of eight or nine kilometres.

  The rest of the day was spent reorganising our gear. Everything should be easily accessible, preferably at the top, when you need it. This is impossible to achieve in a crammed boat. Moreover, all the gear needs to be stowed in such a way that you can open the cupboards without everything falling out and without the contents of the cupboards pressing against the doors so you cannot slide them apart. We had made lists of all our spare parts, tools, batteries, lamps et cetera, so we could always tell what could be found where, except for the freezer, which was filled with mostly unknown content. My shopping lists and the original inventories for the fridge and freezer disappeared when the burglars took my PC.

  I had planned to make a complete back-up of all my documents after our departure, while we were moored at Visby, but the documents were gone. I was most upset about losing my running journal. In it I had registered the date, distance, time, pulse and calorie consumption of all the runs I had made since 1998. These statistics were now gone. All I had left was a piece of paper with my best times, i.e. my best results for our two regular circuits: the eight-kilometre circuit in Altorp woods and our eleven-kilometre circuit around Djursholm and Stocksund.

  We enjoyed some local specialities at our favourite restaurant, Donners Brunn. We had lamb, asparagus and other delicacies, and we did it two nights in a row. Later that evening the chef admitted that the lamb was not from Gotland, but from Uruguay. We compensated for our coming absence by dining at Donners Brunn two nights in a row. We would not be passing Visby again until July 2009, for a lovely dinner together under the dark vaults. The owner, Bosse, and his son came to say farewell on Sunday afternoon. They gave us a couple of packets of tea and some other nice things to eat such as saffron rusks and jam. Arne ate all the nice rusks during his first night watch en route to Ronneby a few hours later.

  We were both relieved that Bosse had not turned up one hour earlier. If he had, he would have found us enjoying a takeaway from the grill in the town square. Grilled chorizos with fries for Arne, and mashed potatoes with ketchup for me. It would have ruined the image of us that he would have received over the years: our appreciation of good food and the ability to tell a good restaurant from an inferior one.

  After leaving Visby there were a few hours of brisk wind, but after a dinner consisting of chicken curry, which we ate in the cockpit so we could catch the heat from the evening sun, we furled the sails and turned on the engine. There was too little wind, a following wind, which is not an ideal wind direction for Yaghan. She needs at least 12–14 knots to pick up enough speed. We did not want to arrive too late, so we continued to motor through the night.

  I had been really cold for some time before I went down into the aft cabin to put on my fleece underwear and the thermal underwear I bought many years ago in Aspen during an unusually cold skiing holiday. I was away from the cockpit for a few minutes at the most, certainly not longer. When I came back up again and sat down to check the radar screen I thought I could feel a new vibration. I was not completely sure, but certain enough to go down into the engine room and take a look. I could see nothing out of order down there. Our faithful Volvo Penta both looked and sounded normal, and there were no vibrations. I tried to tell myself that it was just my imagination. Experience has taught me that one of the most dangerous things you can do is to hope and believe that you hear, feel or see nothing.

  Over the years we have got caught in fishing equipment and the odd small container, but that has always been accompanied by a loud bang. We, or more correctly I, once sailed into a floating salmon net one early morning before reaching Svenska Högarna on the way home from spending Whitsun at Kökar off the coast of Finland. I had noticed tiny echoes on the radar, and there was a slight wind and waves. The signals came and went, and never stayed on the screen for long; I thought they were caused by waves. Shortly afterwards a loud bang was heard from the stern, and we discovered that we had a net trailing behind the boat. A few hours after calling Westerberg, Handelsbanken Liv came and towed us to Möja. We were worried that the net had got caught in the propeller, so we did not dare to go under power, and it was dead calm. Westerberg found a diver who went down and cut off the net, which had wound itself round the keel, not the propeller.

  After this incident we went off salmon for a while. But we learned to look out for floating salmon
nets, a phenomenon we did not even know existed. We realised that we must have been lucky never to have encountered one of these treacherous hazards before. It was not the first time we sailed near Kökar. We have not encountered one again, but we later noticed that there are many floating salmon nets around the island of Bornholm, especially in the spring.

  The first time we hit something was during a crossing from Iceland to the Orkneys, a distance of 688 nautical miles. We had just passed Surtsey, the island that was created immediately south of the Westman Islands during an eruption in the seventies. The wind had dropped and we were under power. A damp and chilly fog had settled over our part of the Atlantic. There was a heavy thud, the engine suddenly stopped, and everything went quiet. The silence was a little frightening; all I could hear was my own heartbeat. It felt as if my heart was caught in my throat. We were right in the middle of the Atlantic, between Iceland and the Orkneys, with engine failure, no wind and zero visibility. Arne kept trying to start the engine, but failed. In the end he got it going. He put it in reverse to try and get rid of whatever might be stuck in the propeller, then he went full steam ahead, and we were on our way. I went down into the cabin, crawled into bed, pulled the cover over my head and tried to continue sleeping. We did not get much sleep that night, but no matter. The engine was working, the propeller was back to normal and we were able to continue to Kirkwall in the Orkneys.

  The second time we hit something was in the summer of 2005 in the English Channel, going from Brunsbüttel at the North Sea exit of the Kiel Canal to Saint Malo in Brittany. The scenario was roughly the same as in the Atlantic, but this time we discovered the problem when we took the boat out of the water in the autumn, the keel was rather badly damaged. We had probably hit a container or some other hard object. We did not think that it was caused by fishing equipment.

  What was it this time? There was no bang, no thud and it did not feel as if we had hit anything. Yet I had a very unpleasant feeling at the same time as I was convinced that these were not normal vibrations, which indicated that something was stuck in the propeller. I just could not understand what it was. Arne, who hears all, feels all and smells all, was to be woken in only ten minutes time, so I decided to wait and see if he noticed anything. Said and done. I woke him up a little later, informed him about the state of the wind and weather, traffic situation, speed and estimated time of arrival at Ronneby. Arne did not mention any vibrations, and I could hardly feel them myself anymore. So I went to bed. An hour later I woke up when the motor went quiet, stopped and then went into reverse. I went up on deck and asked what had happened, and Arne told me he had noticed the same as I.

  “There are strange vibrations!”

  To begin with we could not put the boat in reverse. We were convinced that something was stuck in the propeller. After a few attempts it got going again, and we were able to travel forward, although a little slower than before, about half a knot slower, but we decided to continue towards Ronneby. It was a simple, but not necessarily the right, choice.

  I am always filled with a sense of joy and expectation when I approach the coast of Blekinge on the south-east coast of Sweden. It feels like home, even though I have lived in Stockholm since 1973. I was born and bred in Karlshamn. At the end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties we lived at Tullingeberg near Stockholm. In 1963 we moved back to Ronneby in Blekinge where my father had bought a bookshop. I went to school there and my parents have lived in this charming little town, a popular summer destination, ever since. My parents have spent almost six months of the year in their holiday home at Vägga, near Karlshamn, ever since my father bought the house in spring 1963.

  This spring I had been down there to help arrange the sale of their beloved holiday home. My parents had not been well lately; they were getting older and were not as strong anymore, so we decided that the house had to be sold. All the papers were signed on May 16, and “Vägga” was gone forever. I think they were relieved when it was all over. All the memories remain, but someone else has taken over the responsibility of oiling the timbered walls, painting the shutters, weeding the flower beds, raking leaves, cleaning the drains and everything else that needs to be done. Now my mother and father do not have to worry about it anymore.

  We will not be returning to Sweden until the autumn of 2007 – while Yaghan is moored at Auckland over the South Pacific hurricane season. Even though I would go down to Ronneby as soon as I could, there would not be much I could do. Selling was the only alternative.

  When my father and I emptied the house we threw away a lot: old clothes, shoes, kitchen utensils, chipped china, old tools and gardening tools. But we kept his old 1950s blue and black striped terry cloth bathrobe. Even though the sleeves were worn and full of holes, we brought it back to their house in Vallgatan, Ronneby. When I was just about to put it into the black bin liner I could smell the salt water; it reminded me of summer, a happy childhood and safety – smells of a long gone past. I simply had to keep his bathrobe, which brings back so many memories and feelings.

  This time we were heading for Ronneby harbour and Karön bay. Leisure boats are not permitted in the main harbour, and Yaghan is too long and has too large a draft for the leisure boat harbour, but swing anchoring in this lovely, lush bay is something that we can do. After sailing through the night we always lie down and rest as soon as we arrive at our destination, but not this time, we were more concerned about the propeller. Arne put on his diving gear to go down and take a look.

  It was with this kind of situation in mind that we decided to learn to scuba dive in 2001. It was only afterwards that we discovered the joys of diving. Watching the wonderful ocean wildlife was a pure added bonus: fantastically colourful striped and spotted fish, tortoises, rays, little sharks, vegetation that inspires the imagination – and the peace. Experiencing the peace and quiet under water is an incredible feeling. But the ten minutes that Arne spent underneath the boat offered no peace of mind. I was enormously worried and anxious.

  Imagine if there was a serious problem with the propeller, which meant that we would have to lift Yaghan to have her serviced. I could not stop thinking about it. It might mean that we would have to sail up to Hallberg-Rassy's boatyard on Orust on the west coast. That is to say all the way round the south of Sweden, through the Sound and all the way up to Ellös. Bearing in mind that we were going round the world, it did not seem a very long detour, but it felt tedious, frustrating and boring. Arne came up after a while and told me that we had a sail storage sack firmly stuck in the propeller. It was difficult to remove, and he was not sure he would be able to. He went down again, and I continued to stare towards land, lost in gloomy thought.

  Suddenly my diver, our saviour, surfaced again and proudly announced that he had removed most of it. He had managed to cut it off with the help of a pair of scissors and a titanium knife. All that remained to be done was to make sure there was nothing left. After a while the job was completed; the propeller was undamaged, at least we hoped it was.

  We inflated and launched the dinghy, motored ashore and cycled home to my parents who were anxiously waiting. We had called them when we arrived to tell them about our problem, so they had worried about us.

  The time we spent in Ronneby passed far too quickly. One day my mother, Arne and I went to see my aunt Eja and her husband Ingvar in Karlshamn. It was a wonderful summer day. There was a smell of spring flowers coming from the garden and, as always at my dear aunt's, the smell of freshly made buns and cookies. Aunt Eja served at least seven different kinds, not forgetting my favourite: chocolate Swiss roll. We ate as if we would not see another cookie during our entire voyage, which was rather likely. The customary jars of Eja's home-made blackberry jam found their way to the boot of the car together with a turbot that Ingvar had caught. We told them that our first long stop would be the Canary Islands where Eja and Ingvar had been more than fifty times!

  The remaining days were spent shopping in bulk for my parents, and I cooked dinner fo
r the four of us. I froze the remains in portions large enough for two, which my parents could eat when we were far away. We celebrated my father's birthday a few days early since we would be passing through the Kiel Canal on June 13. We hade brought a bottle of Haut-Briand 1975 from home, and we toasted my father who was seventy-six. They would be celebrating the next three birthdays on their own.

  The following day I drove my mother into town to go shopping for clothes. She had lost several kilos after spending a week in hospital. Both my father and I were tired of seeing her in sagging trousers several sizes too large and held up with a belt. My mother enjoyed shopping, almost like in the old days. We bought her the first pair of jeans of her life, two even, linen trousers, matching blouses, cardigans and a knitted vest. She looked and behaved like a young girl, and my father was a few thousand kronor poorer. Both pleased him greatly.

  We left Ronneby on Friday June 9. I was both sad and anxious, I was very unhappy and I wept. It was difficult for me to leave my father, whose foot has not quite recovered after a major vascular operation last year, and my mother, who has suffered from Alzheimer's for a number of years – or, as she tends to put it, “I've got a touch of Alzheimer's.”