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

by Martensson, Helene

  The Last Tango for Argentina

  We had estimated that provisioning and maintenance would take us a week this time too. We had learned where to find everything in Ushuaia by now, and we were stocking up for a longer period – two months. It was nearly 1,500 nautical miles from Ushuaia to Puerto Montt, and since we would be sailing among islands all the way, we would only be moving around during the day. We estimated that this leg would take forty to fifty days. You need to get supplies for at least two months to be on the safe side. We had never provisioned for such a long period before. We would refuel and go shopping at Puerto Natales. Apart from that, there were few places where we could buy provisions. The Chilean islands are unique in that they are virtually unpopulated. In the Norwegian archipelago – even in the far north – you encounter the odd farm now and again. This is not the case here.

  Moreover, we needed to repair our Fleet 77 at Ushuaia. It had been out of order since we were down in the Antarctic. We had been forced to sail the most dangerous stretch of our circumnavigation without reliable weather information. We contacted Thrane & Thrane in Denmark while we were in the Antarctic in order to prepare for the repairs that would be carried out in South America. It turned out that there was not a single repairman on the entire continent that was qualified to mend our Fleet. The nearest country with a competent repair service was Panama; maritime services are good there due to the great number of ships that pass through the Panama Canal. There was no way around it. Thrane & Thrane promised to send a repairman from Panama to Ushuaia to mend our Fleet 77. Since we now knew how dangerous the “harbour” at Ushuaia was, we expected to quickly stock up on supplies, mend the Fleet, move away from the jetty and anchor further out from the shore.

  We were rather fed up with Argentina by now, and we wanted to leave as soon as possible. Spending time in countries where nothing works becomes a strain in the long run. It is almost impossible to get anything passed through the “nightmarish Buenos Aires customs” according to a leading cruising guide for Patagonia, so we were not the only ones who had experienced problems. Practically everyone has a tough time. If you read Milo Dahlmann's book, you soon realise that it was the Buenos Aires customs that were mostly to blame for the delays that prevented her from reaching the Antarctic. People who live near the Beagle Channel solve this problem by sending items destined for Ushuaia in Argentina to Puerto Williams in Chile. An agent then travels across to pick them up!

  Other things that you may want to do are difficult too in Argentina. You need an “agent” even for the smallest errands. The quality of goods and services is low, and in their culture no one ever arrives on time. We had booked ten meetings and no one came on time – eight did not even arrive on the day of the meeting. Moreover, you have to carry around 200-litre barrels when you are fuelling. This gives you a good idea of what it is like there. You can only feel sorry for Argentina. It could have been a great country. When you are there, realising that nothing works, you can appreciate why there is no economic progress. Pompous bureaucrats have never been very popular export items.

  Carlos from Thrane & Thrane in Panama arrived according to plan and fixed the Fleet 77 in fifteen minutes. He looked like a young rapper, but he was clearly competent, even though this was one of his first jobs away. The invoice arrived a few days later. It was for just over 12,000 dollars! The next version, the Broadband 250, which we installed in New Zealand a year later cost 12,500 to buy new. It was five times faster and only weighed a fifth of the Fleet 77. If you double all important equipment you never end up in an emergency that forces you to repair a piece of equipment at an unsuitable location. You can choose where you want to do it. This is usually more cost-efficient. The same goes for large diesel tanks. There are places where you would rather not have to refuel.

  We were done on Sunday January 19, and we went back to Puerto Williams in Chile. We liked Ushuaia and the people there. As long as you do not have to do anything else than go shopping and visiting restaurants there is no problem. The problems begin when you need to do something a little more complicated or contact the authorities.

  Charts and Cruising Guides

  All we were doing at Puerto Williams was to pick up a zarpe – a plan of the route you intend to follow in Chilean territorial waters – from the authorities. In principle, you need to supply the authorities with a list of the waterways you are planning to use around the islands and the natural harbours you will be visiting. We had planned our route around the archipelago back in Sweden. We wanted to make about twenty stopovers. We planned on staying a minimum of two days in each place. Executing a proper “Patagonia mooring” is very labour-intensive. There are many ropes that need to be fastened, so it is preferable not to have to moor the boat one day and then leave the following morning. It was better to go a bit further while you were out and spend the next day looking around. Consequently, we counted on travelling seventy-five nautical miles a day, or up to ten hours on the days we were travelling. Should we end up in a particularly attractive place, we could of course imagine staying for several days. We estimated that the whole 1,500 mile leg to Puerto Montt would take forty to fifty days.

  The charts for this leg were problematic. Just as for the Antarctic, we noted that neither Transas nor C-map covered the islands in a satisfactory way. Back home we had found that the Chilean maritime authorities sold electronic charts of the area, which we bought. They could be entered in Transas and would then work like a normal Transas chart. This was a positive surprise. But during our preparations at home we discovered that these electronic charts did not cover the entire distance from Puerto Williams to Puerto Montt after all. You would suddenly encounter distances where we would not be able to use any of our three electronic systems, so we had to carry printed charts covering some shorter distances.

  The guide we used most frequently for finding natural harbours along the channels of Chile was the leading Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego Nautical Guide, written by Italians Mariolana Rolfo and Giorgio Ardrizzi. We bumped into them several times at Ushuaia and Puerto Williams where they were sailing their 41 foot Amel Saudade III. There is no direct translation for the word saudade in English. It has to do with a vague, sentimental yearning for home or for something that does not exist. The couple has spent eight years in the area researching the book, which was financed by a wealthy European who owns the yacht Plum. At the time of our circumnavigation there were two other cruising guides, but they were not in the same league. They were useful complements. It is interesting to note that the guides for Patagonia are better than the ones for Brazil and Argentina. This is entirely due to the Italian couple. The route we had plotted back home, using their book and our charts, was complemented by discussions with people who had sailed in the area – especially Rolf and Deborah. They provided information that improved some aspects of our route.

  The guide describes 423 anchorages in Patagonia, and it is so good that some of the people who run charters from Ushuaia take exception. They are not happy to see more private boats arriving. The charter fleet at Ushuaia is very primitive compared to the Hallberg-Rassys, Oysters, Swans et cetera that are being built today. I know many passengers who have been shocked by the standard of these boats. I was shocked myself when we sailed on board one in these waters in 1994–1995. The charter companies try to run a business by insisting that you need a steel hull in the Antarctic. In my view, this is only done as an attempt to protect their operations. There is no problem sailing to Antarctica in a fibreglass boat. When you hit an iceberg it is irrelevant whether you are travelling in a steel-hulled boat or a fibreglass boat, which can be proved by the Explorer's shipwreck. Unfortunately, Rolfo and Ardrizzi have not yet sailed their own boat to Antarctica, so there is no corresponding guide for this area.

  We got our zarpe on Saturday, January 20, and we set off along the Chilean Channels the following day. You need to report your co-ordinates to the Armada de Chile twice a day for as long as you are in the area. The authorities claim
that the reason is safety at sea, but we doubt it. We have never heard of any other country in the world with the same system. Nor did we get a feeling that anything happens with these reports, but that they are filed away like all other official paperwork in South America. One alternative explanation is that the Chilean armed forces since the time of Pinochet are over-dimensioned and that no one has dared to do anything about it. It means that the military are inventing tasks in order to motivate their raison d’être. All the Armada offices we visited seemed enormously over-dimensioned. It is possible to supply the information by e-mail, which we did twice a day, so it was not very onerous after all.

  Summer Temperatures around the Glaciers

  There were less than sixty nautical miles to our first stop, Caleta Olla (54°56.4 S and 069°09.3 W) (caleta means bay). We motored up the Beagle Channel and passed Ushuaia halfway. It was the fifth time we travelled the distance between Puerto Williams and Ushuaia, so we thought we knew it reasonably well. We had no idea what it was like west of Ushuaia. When I was there in 1994–1995, we did not go west of Ushuaia either. Therefore, it felt as we were beginning a new phase of our voyage. We had done the wonderful Antarctic phase; now we were going to spend almost two months sailing around the islands. It was the windiest and most inhospitable archipelago in the world, but still – no sailing at night and no monster waves.

  The Beagle Channel was just as beautiful west of Ushuaia as east of it. We arrived at Caleta Olla in the afternoon. A couple of other boats were anchored in the caleta. We anchored at a tall rock as close to the shore as we dared and moored to land with two long ropes. This done, we were going below to read our e-mails, which we do at least once a day, but then we noticed that the Fleet 77 was out of order. We were a little taken aback at first, it had only just been fixed, but then we realized that the rock blocked out the signal. The Inmarsats are geostationary around the equator, so in high latitudes a mountain or hill may block out the signal, although it is unusual. This meant that we had to move away from the rock to another part of the caleta.

  After we had moored again, we had a nice dinner and went to bed. The following morning the sun shone from a clear sky and we had our breakfast in the cockpit. The temperature was 20°C. It felt wonderful to be looking forward to a long period of sailing around the islands. We were busy enjoying the heat of the sun and the snowy peaks in the distance when a dinghy from one of the other boats approached. Since you seldom see other boats in the Chilean archipelago, you often socialize with other crews. The couple in the other boat invited us over, and we spent a pleasant coffee break on board their boat. It was an English couple, both retired, who enjoyed life on the ocean. They had kept their boat in Patagonia for many years, but they had never sailed to Antarctica.

  We spent the afternoon in the dinghy, polishing Yaghan's hull in the sun. We wanted it to be spick and span when we were passing through the channels. In the evening the Norwegian boat Empire arrived at Caleta Olla, and we spent some time with them too. Heidi and Eivind were probably the Scandinavians we saw most of during the first half of our circumnavigation.

  The Empire and we left the following day for Seno Pia (54°47.6 S and 069°37.7 W). Seno means fjord. It was only twenty-five nautical miles away. We sailed along the fjords propelled by a hot tailwind. We were in the middle of a warm period; daytime temperatures were between 20° and 25°C. We were beginning to wonder what Patagonia's bad reputation was all about. Sailing around the islands felt just like it does on a normal summer holiday in Sweden.

  It was Rolf and Deborah who had recommended Seno Pia. We would never have gone there if it had not been for them. Seno Pia is a fjord that cuts a long way into mainland Chile. A little further up the fjord is a nice anchorage called Caleta Beaulieu. Because the glacier comes all the way down to the water's edge there, small ice floes were drifting around in the fjord. We dropped anchor and secured our boat with two ropes to shore as usual.

  We brought out our sun chairs for the first time since leaving Brazil and sat on deck in the afternoon sun, enjoying the gorgeous landscape. Eivind and Heidi kept pointing out how similar it was to the Norwegian fjords. We agreed, but we had to say that it was even more beautiful than the scenery we had seen in Norway. Here, the glacier came all the way down to the shore, which is unusual in Norway. The water, the high mountains and the white snow made for a wondrous landscape. Towards the evening there were four boats in Caleta Beaulieu. Apart from the Empire and us, there were an Australian and a British boat. Patagonia is becoming increasingly popular with cruise sailors. We think that in ten years time Patagonia and Antarctica will be two highly popular sailing destinations. People will become tired of sailing around the world via the Panama and Suez canals. It is a hot weather route that offers few challenges. You need to go to Antarctica and Patagonia for a more varied and interesting voyage.

  We spent two nights in Seno Pia, enjoying the lovely scenery. The Empire left on the second day. Its motor speed is only 5 knots, compared to Yaghan's 8 knots, so they needed a little more time. Maybe we would meet up again further north.

  After leaving Seno Pia, we were looking for a natural harbour around Caleta Brecknock (54°32.8 S and 071°55.4 W). What we had in mind was Caleta Yaghan, which was of course irresistible because of the name. The Yaghan was a native tribe that lived on the islands nearest to Cape Horn. Yaghan is rather a common name locally. Our boats have been named after this tribe too.

  It was about one hundred nautical miles there, so in the morning we set off full speed ahead. We would have to run the engines at economy speed, 8.3 knots, for approximately twelve hours. When in Patagonia you should try and make sure that you get to your destination at around four in the afternoon. You need to secure your moorings to shore before dark, so we left at dawn. As so often before, we were grateful for Yaghan’s large engine – a six-litre, six-cylinder, 237 HP motor from Volvo's professional range. It is not tuned-up to the same degree as ordinary leisure boats motors, which means it has a life span of 20,000 instead of 2,000 hours. The tuned-up version of the same Volvo model is 400 HP. It is practically impossible to run our motor too hard, it can run at full speed day after day without problems. The reason why we normally run it at 1,500 rpm and 8.3 knots is fuel economy. At this rate, Yaghan consumes about eleven litres per hour, or 1.3 litres per nautical mile. But this time we went a little faster and did 9 knots. It was only five hundred miles from Puerto Williams to the fuelling station at Puerto Natales, so we were not likely to run out of diesel even if we accelerated. It would be more difficult during the second half of the leg.

  Just slowly motoring through a beautiful archipelago can be just as wonderful as sailing, provided the engine is silent and smooth running. It is of course less strenuous to motor. One of us needs to keep a lookout in the bow; the other can read, sleep or just enjoy the ride.

  This is an ideal way of seeing the Chilean islands. We were not the least interested in sailing. During this time of year, the wind is usually head on and spins around the mountainous islands, so it is not ideal for sailing – especially if you are travelling north.

  Constant Reports to the Armada de Chile

  Every now and then we heard that the Empire was tuned in on the VHF. They had left one day ahead of us. Not only do you need to report twice a day to the Armada, you also need to report every time you sail past an Armada base. If you fail to do so, you are called in and asked to confirm your identity and destination. They did it to us, even though we have onboard AIS. The authorities receive reports on who you are and where you are going via AIS. That is the whole point of the system. Both Argentina and Chile monitored sea traffic via AIS down in the Beagle Channel. It appeared as if the Armada de Chile could not afford to equip all their stations in the more remote parts of the archipelago with AIS receivers. You enter your details, destination and estimated time of arrival. A boat equipped with AIS must be ideal for the Armada, since they like to keep track of all vessels that are travelling through the archipelago. You c
an never hide from them. In one of my e-mail reports I asked them why we keep being called in even though we have AIS on board and everyone can see us at all times. Did we get a reply? Of course not. We are not even sure that anybody ever reads the e-mails that are supplied by boats on a daily basis.

  In the afternoon we were getting closer to the place where we would be spending the night. We first tried Caleta Yaghan. It looked neither promising nor very hospitable, so we decided to continue another couple of miles to Caleta Brecknock, which, according to our cruising guide, was one of the best anchorages there. Caleta Brecknock is a well sheltered inlet where you moor to shore with ropes in all directions in the true Patagonian manner. When we were almost there, we spotted a mast inside. These islands are so deserted that you tend to react when you see another boat. We had not seen one all day. Minutes later we realised that it was the Empire. The world is a small place! Eivind and Heidi let us moor alongside. We also dropped anchor and attached several ropes to shore. We dined together in the evening.

  As usual, we stayed put the following day. We went for a walk around the hills. There was not a human being as far as you could see in this magnificent archipelago. The sense of solitude made it different from anything we had ever seen before. Caleta Brecknock is well sheltered from all winds, and the scenery is beautiful, but it cannot compete with Seno Pia.