Chasing Shackleton

by Tim Jarvis

  When 3:30 P.M. finally came around (noon GMT for our approximate position), banks of clouds had settled over us and only a pale disc of the sun was visible high above. Larso steadied himself on deck and began measuring the angle to it with the sextant at two- or three-minute intervals prior to and after 3:30 P.M. He needed to make sure we got the sun at its highest point, shouting “Mark!” each time. Never one to miss a chance to joke, Baz quipped, “I’m happy to be timekeeper but can you stop calling me Mark,” as he recorded the precise time of Larso’s pronouncements. Seb’s job was to offer a corrected time based on how many seconds we knew the chronometer was losing each day—about four seconds, enough to leave us way off target by the end of the voyage. Satisfied, Larso joined Nick below to create some navigational alchemy as the rest of us looked on expectantly, awaiting their verdict on how far we’d come. “Four hundred fifty miles, give or take,” announced Nick, “. . . to go, that is.” We were ecstatic: it meant we’d covered 300 nautical miles in only four days, which had included periods of very light winds as well as stormy periods when we’d been forced to trim all of our sails.

  There were many reasons to be happy with our position. Not only were we successfully keeping north of a direct bearing to South Georgia, giving us more leeway later should we be pushed east by the westerlies that prevailed here, but we were also making good progress toward the 54˚S line of latitude at which point we could turn east and head in to South Georgia. Furthermore, we were safely away from the pack ice and the danger of being drawn toward the South Orkneys. Last but not least, we were well ahead—perhaps 100 nautical miles—of Shackleton at the same point in his voyage.

  Celebrating our first sight of the noonday sun with a few drams of Mackinlay’s.

  Courtesy of Paul Larsen

  Frustratingly, however, on day six strong northerly winds took the place of the stormy southwesterlies we’d had, making it hard for us to consolidate our northward position. And the awkward, mixed sea state resulting from this change of wind created big waves that struck us side-on. Combined with incessant rain and bitter cold, these meant we reached a new level of soaked-to-the-bone misery. It was ironic that the southerly winds that blew directly from the Antarctic were not as cold as the northerlies we were now experiencing.

  Northerly winds don’t, of course, mean you can’t gain ground to the north, particularly in modern sailing boats that can travel at a forty-five-degree angle into the wind, their keel preventing them from yawing sideways or backward as they do so. The absence of a keel on the Alexandra Shackleton, however, meant we could only manage just fractionally to the north of due east in northerly winds.

  A soaking wet Ed at the helm forces a smile.

  Courtesy of Tim Jarvis

  Nick and Larso shared between them the darkest hours, in great feats of focus, while the rest of us did the dawn, dusk, and daylight watches as they slept. Several of us noticed that, with a bit of effort and concentration, we could steer the boat in a more northerly direction into the wind, almost to east northeast. While we were pleased with our achievements, Larso explained in no uncertain terms that this was a false economy and we needed to stick to our instructions. He explained that the slower speed meant what we thought was better progress to northward in fact resulted in us being pushed further sideways—in this case to the southeast—by the wind and current. Initiative was to be encouraged, but not if it got the wrong result!

  Little escaped Nick and Larso. Even when Larso was meant to be fast asleep below deck, any erring too far north that caused the sail to flap or, God forbid, to jibe, would elicit a frustrated cry of “Jibe!” On one or two occasions, he appeared back on deck to provide some friendly advice to the helmsman as to what it was we were actually trying to accomplish and the importance of not deviating too far from it. Larso, in his typically understated fashion, later recorded our efforts in the northerly winds in his log: “Sailed with full sail and could steer North of East using only leeward steering line to steer with. The luffing mainsail was our reference to steer to. Wind built through night with snow and rain. As seas built some water coming over deck. A couple of random gybes but generally everyone steered the course well.”

  Advice on what to do on board—and when and how to best achieve it—was normally met with good humor by the nonsailors, although some terse exchanges did occasionally occur. More than once I had to tell everyone to calm down and focus on our goal, but really it was just a matter of getting used to one another’s ways and nothing more.

  In reality we were a team of people who were used to being in charge. But we each brought a unique skill set to the table without which the expedition wouldn’t be possible. Certainly with every passing day on board the Alexandra Shackleton, I realized it was Nick and Larso’s wealth of sailing experience that were edging this little boat toward its target and in a way that was making a very dangerous and challenging journey seem manageable. And not to do the rest of the crew a disservice, I was also impressed with how instructions were taken in the spirit in which they were intended and the focus given to the task of helming accurately on what was a very steep learning curve. Before the voyage Seb had placed a plaque in the boat that quoted Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar: “England expects that every man will do his duty.” Without doubt, our small crew was living up to this in every respect, and I was proud just to be part of this great team of men.

  The problem with the easterly direction we’d been forced to travel in for the day of northerlies was that it made us far less confident of what bearing we’d managed to keep. We hoped it was a bit north of east but, with the current causing us to drift inexorably east at half a knot an hour and the wind pushing us south, we really weren’t sure. Now, just as we had learned to resist the Alexandra Shackleton’s desire to jibe, the wind blew in strongly from the south southwest. It was a better wind direction for traveling north but again resulted in confused seas as waves created by northerly winds were pushed upright into menacing gray walls by winds now blowing from the opposite direction. Although the Alexandra Shackleton continued to bob like a cork over much of what, at the beginning of our journey, I would have assumed would sink us, the confused seas still periodically sent great slugs of water into the cockpit and over the helmsman. In seconds such an inundation undid five hours of painstaking drying of your clothes using your body heat down below.

  A sudden change of wind direction suggested something big had arm-wrestled the northerlies into submission and was ominously coming up behind us from the southwest. A towering turquoise iceberg—the first ice we’d seen for five days—added to the sense of disquiet on board and did nothing to allay our fears that we might have drifted a lot farther to the east toward the pack than we’d hoped. That night Larso’s log recorded: “Sailing downwind again therefore heavy and difficult steering. Compass light kept failing so ended up going ‘old school’ and just using rear masthead streamer to steer by. Downstairs very uncomfortable.” He went on to say, “A gray day. The large swell that was rolling through—something in the Drake Passage was causing this.” It was certainly impressive to see the awesome power of nature at work with these massive rollers coming through. We just hoped they didn’t herald something too sinister heading our way.

  In terms of life on board, we’d adjusted as well as we could to six men sharing a double bed. Ed and Seb had moved their sleeping positions and now lay on top of the food provisions, cordage, and spares at the front of the boat. As Seb was at pains to tell me, none of this equipment was lashed down—had the boat rolled over, he and Ed would have been pinned by it against the boat’s ceiling. It would have been a hell of a way to go—smothered by safety gear that was designed to save life, not shorten it—but their repositioning made things more bearable for the rest of us.

  As far as toilet duties went, we urinated into a bottle below deck and it was very poor form to use it and not dispose of your contribution immediately lest another man find himself presented with a full bottle. Sometimes
, of course, it was impossible to extricate oneself from the tangle of bodies below deck to do this—at least that was each perpetrator’s defense. Bowel movements were conducted perched over the metal bucket in the cockpit by the outgoing helmsman’s feet or, if you were feeling adventurous, alone while gripping the two steering ropes with one hand. To ensure a degree of privacy and to save the film editor some nasty shocks we would hang our beanies over the 360-degree infrared camera in the cockpit that otherwise captured everything.

  Shouts of “Berg!” woke Ed from his slumber to get some footage. A gifted cameraman and one of the hardest working around, like an old gunslinger he seemed to sleep with one eye open, ready to spring into action if there was something worth filming. Getting him on deck from his new forward position, however, was an awkward proposition. He and Seb lay side by side like Tokyo businessmen in a rent-by-the-hour pigeonhole hotel, the ceiling thirty centimeters from their faces. In a bid to get footage of the iceberg, Ed had to be posted out horizontally on a sea of hands like a crowd surfer. Near the hatch he placed his knees to his chest in a tuck position before standing up and poking his head out.

  Close encounters: Ed and Nick down below. From this position, Ed would have to be posted toward the hatch horizontally, on a sea of hands.

  Courtesy of Tim Jarvis

  There certainly were some magical moments on the high sea. That night I became conscious of shapes all around me as I helmed alone by the light of the moon. With stars visible for virtually the first time during the voyage, black-and-white shapes flashed below the boat from one side to the other. They were hourglass dolphins and were clearly curious to see anyone else out here. Nick’s watch followed mine on what was becoming a very cold night. The south south-westerly winds again required navigating by the wind in the sails in the darkest parts of the night with occasional checks via candlelight. Nick recorded the ominous words “Toes still numb” in the log, having lost sensation in them since day three—something that would come back to haunt him later.

  Never wanting to release its grip on us too easily, the Southern Ocean gave with one hand and took with the other, the clear night being replaced by dense fog and rain that, combined with a fickle following wind, made for depressing and difficult travel. The sail always threatened to jibe if anyone other than Nick or Larso was at the helm and momentarily lost concentration. Each helmsman was wet through again and again with rain and wave action, and we had long since given up any hope of drying out. Abandoning the thought seemed to help psychologically.

  Perpetually wet, each man chose his own regimen for managing his boots and clothing. Seb, Larso, and Nick wore long leather jackboots, Ed and Baz old leather ankle-high boots, and I the old military hobnails I had worn on my Mawson expedition in 2006. While Nick and Ed were suffering worst from numb feet, the rest of us were not far behind. My boots were well and truly broken in but the predrilled hobnail holes provided a route to let water deep into the fabric of the boots, turning the leather into pulp. As a result and through habit from years of polar expeditioning, I removed them at the end of most of my sessions at the helm to allow my feet to breath and warm up. Baz religiously did the same from the outset, putting on his one pair of dry socks as he slept and advising others to follow the same regimen.

  The sun made a brief appearance the following day but not at noon, so it was difficult to calculate our exact position. Nevertheless, in a rocking boat and with the wind again having changed direction, this time to northwesterly, Larso took several sights in big, confused seas. He and Nick calculated that we had 126 miles to run. They weren’t at all confident of these non-noon sights taken in rolling seas, but at least they seemed to tally with our dead reckoning that suggested we had less than 150 miles to go.

  This dense pea-souper fog made us wonder, however, what it would be like if we had similar conditions in a few days just off South Georgia and the mood on board became strangely subdued at the prospect. Up until now, all of our energy and focus had been on trying to reach South Georgia. Now we began to consider how we might avoid it if visibility was zero and a wind was blowing us toward the rocks.

  Visibility was now only a few hundred meters and, although it was obviously an optical illusion, I was convinced we were heading steeply downhill toward the edge of some gray abyss for the whole two hours of my watch. We’d only been out here for ten days but we were desperately looking forward to terra firma to escape the wet discomfort and uncertainty of life on board. I felt as if I’d been out here for months.

  Larso was on watch that night and, although the winds were not big by the standards we’d become accustomed to, the changed direction from which they now came was producing some big waves in a mixed-sea state. Without warning, a huge wave hit us, causing the boat to lift violently and shudder as an overwhelming wall of water crashed its full weight into the cockpit. “What was that?!” Larso shouted as Ed on backup below began bailing strenuously. It wasn’t a wave of the caliber of the rogue that Shackleton experienced and described so powerfully in South, but it was menacing nevertheless:

  It was a mighty upheaval of the ocean, a thing quite apart from the big white-capped seas that had been our tireless enemies for many days. I shouted “For God’s sake, hold on! It’s got us.”Then came a moment of suspense that seemed drawn out into hours. White surged the foam of the breaking sea around us. We felt our boat lifted and flung forward like a cork in breaking surf. We were in a seething chaos of tortured water; but somehow the boat lived through it, half full of water, sagging to the dead weight and shuddering under the blow. We baled [sic] with the energy of men fighting for life, flinging the water over the sides with every receptacle that came to our hands, and after ten minutes of uncertainty we felt the boat renew her life beneath us.

  Thankfully we weren’t visited by a wave of that size again, although several threatened, only to pass harmlessly beneath us. Meanwhile the northwest wind of the past twenty-four hours had pushed us toward South Georgia at a good clip—perhaps three to three and a half knots—meaning we were likely within fifty miles of South Georgia if our previous position was at all accurate. Finally, in an act of charity the following day, the gods granted us clear weather and we were able to get a noon sight, only the second of the voyage. It seemed to indicate we were fractionally to the north of the latitude of King Haakon Bay, out some forty-three or forty-four miles to the west. If this were right, it meant that a northwest wind represented a good angle of approach for us. If it held, it would allow us to bear away and head back out to sea if we got our approach angle for King Haakon Bay wrong, something that a wind directly from the west or south would not allow us to do as we would find ourselves in a lee shore situation, particularly given the shape of South Georgia’s west coast. Like a crescent moon orientated diagonally from northwest to southeast, its ends curved inward in a 145-kilometer-long line of treacherous rocks, cliffs, and glaciers, with bays offering some shelter. It was a big target to aim at now we were approaching from the west, and the prospect of finally seeing our goal for the first time was exciting. We expectantly waited for it to emerge out of the mist like a lost world.

  Paul running the numbers from our sun sighting.

  Courtesy of Tim Jarvis

  Shackleton’s route, where we thought we were, and our actual route.

  The gray descended immediately after our noon sightings had been taken, taunting us by showing us how close we were but refusing to reveal our prize. Shackleton had known land was close by when he saw kelp and birds like shags and terns, which never venture far from land. Regardless of how much we willed the albatrosses and skuas that had accompanied us for much of our journey to morph into their less graceful cousins and prove our proximity to land, they did not. All we got was a Chinstrap penguin noisily and repeatedly cawing to Larso, “Nor Nor,” to which Larso responded, “South South.” “I don’t care what he says,” said Larso under his breath, “I’m heading southeast.” It was definitely time to get off this boat.

&nb
sp; That night we decided to take the mizzen down and sail with just the jib and main, shaving perhaps half a knot of boat speed in a bid to reduce the chances of smashing straight into our target in the darkness and mist. We could be as little as five miles away or as much as twenty-five, yet still South Georgia refused to reveal herself. Somewhere in the mist was our curious combination of savior and nemesis, rendered all the more tantalizing by our disbelief that we could have possibly made it using only dead reckoning and two sets of noon sights.

  The radio crackled to life in an unscheduled contact from Australis. “How much longer are you intending to go for tonight?” Ben asked innocently. We replied that we were intending to go for another hour and a half, up until 11:30 P.M. or so. Then we’d put out our sea anchor and sit off what we hoped would be a mountainous island somewhere in the fog bank. There was a pause at his end. “I suggest you do this now,” he said, giving no more information. Not wanting to ask him questions to which we didn’t want, nor could he give, an answer, we did so immediately. Immobilized by the sea anchor, we discussed what his comment might mean. We had briefed Ben beforehand that we only wanted to hear from him if an unavoidable danger lurked that we were sailing into blind, or if we had gone beyond South Georgia with little chance of sailing back upwind. Could we have gone past the point of no return past South Georgia, or were we about to sail right into the island? If the former were the case, then the experiment of doing things unsupported was likely over unless northeasterly or easterly winds blew us back to the island from our position beyond it out in the open Atlantic. This was highly improbable—more likely we were closer than we thought and were heading into it.