The yacht Yaghan with Helen and Arne, who left Puerto Williams before Christmas, was waiting for us with dinner ready. New Year evening hade passed during our passage, so we hade of course to start with some Champagne before the dinner. This was the perfect way, after four days of sailing, to enter a continent completely free of restaurants! The next day was a day of rest, with a lot of talk around Yaghans experience from their cruising in the ice. Then Yaghan left for South America and we where alone in this wonderfully quiet world. Talk about silence!
The silence was interrupted now and then by the thunder from the surrounding Glaciers when the ice crack and a lot ice and snow falling down. There was of course also some familiar sound from Gulls and Skuas, but that is almost increased the silence thanks to the calm wind condition. The sky was completely clear and blue and the sun was shining 22 hours a day.

We spend three days in Melchior. exploring the area by foot and by dingy, before we felt prepared to continue into the Antarctic Archipelago. We hade a fantastic sailing tour with a clear sky and with perfect wind conditions all the way over Gerlache Canal to the Antarctic Peninsula. We anchored close to the Penguin colony at Cuverville Island. Hundreds of Gentoo Penguins are nesting, and of course a lot of Skuas, which we always find where there is food. The food consists of Gentoo eggs and chickens! The parents protect their nests, but Skuas flies all the time very low above the colony and takes advantage of every unprotected opportunity.
Skip Nowak with his Pelacic Australis anchored in the bay late in the evening. We had two lines ashore and wondered whether this should work in respect of the drifting ice. We had some big ice blocks around us, but we thought we where somewhat out of the current so we should be clear. Especially since such an experienced guy had anchored, as we thought much more exposed. In the morning everything looked all right for both of us.

We went ashore and had a close look at the Gentoo colony before we left for Port Lockroy. Again, across the Gerlache Canal over to the Neumayer Canal. In Neumayer the wind died, lucky for us because the canal was full of ice and we had to go very slowly to find a way through the ice, not to damage the yacht. We had spent one winter living in the yacht in Gothenburg, so we where familiar with the loud sound of the ice despite there were not a scratch even in the paint. I’m not convinced that we had dared to continue along the canal without that experience. Port Lockroy, where we anchored over night, was the Brittish Base A during the years 1948 to 1962 investigating the effect of the sun on radio signals, trying to find frequencies without disturbance from the sun. The base was reopened as a museum 1996.

The area around the houses are crowded with nesting Gentoo Penguins who seems to accept the tourists climbing around among the nests on their way to the ”Historic Site and Monument”, which makes it protected according to the Antarctica Treatment . The museum is the southern most Post office, and the season 2003-04, 40-thousand postcard was bought and posted here. These, together with trade of expensive T-shirts are the economy platform for the museum, there are no Governmental money involved, and nothing is subsidized.
The next morning there was a fresh northerly who took us in full speed south through a relatively ice free Peltier Canal to the famous Lemaire Canal with it’s steep and narrow surrounding mountains. We had to reef the sails completely in the Canal because of the catabactic winds between the steep walls and motor down the Canal, where there were only a few icebergs this time. A week before it was impossible to get through the.

We turned right after Lemaire out in an area with a lot of small islands and hundreds of floating and stranded icebergs. A terrible area to navigate in. We knew there was several god and protected anchorages in the area if we could find them hidden behind the icebergs.

Finally we found a narrow canal leading to a protected bay where we anchored and put several lines ashore to windward. Due to the strong wind we decided to leave the dingy in the water behind the stern, protected from the wind.
The next morning this turned out to be a very foolish decision. Two out of three air sections had collapsed. What had happened? We examined the dingy and found nine holes from teeth. We know now that the Leopard seals are known to “eat” inflatable dingies. The climate was not quite the right one for the repair work, but with a heating gun, some fresh water and acetone for cleaning and a repair box for bicycles we manage to keep the air, although we didn’t dare to use the dingy without bringing the pump with us in the dingy. Due to this accident we spent another night in the anchorage. The second day the wind changed to southerly and the ice came into the bay. The depth around us was limited, so the size of possible ice blocks was thanks to that also very limited. But we where a little afraid that the small canal could get closed by ice. The next morning we had some trouble getting all our lines free from the surrounding ice, but the channel was easy to get through. Once again we navigated through the graveyard of icebergs to Hovgaard, a famous anchorage where we spent two days walking around on the surrounding islands.
We could almost not find any trace from human activities, a result of going out of the route of the charter yachts and the cruising ships. On the other hand you have to be self sufficient and take care of every failure (partly eaten dinghies as an example) It’s a fantastic feeling to have the whole nature to yourself and believe that you can take care of everything without any support.
We left this marvellous area and went north. This time we didn’t use the Lemaire Canal. We had been informed that it should be possible to navigate west of Booth Island, through the “graveyard” of icebergs. Our thought was that if we go relatively close to a big iceberg there must be water enough for us. That strategy together with our forward looking echo sounder took us safely through and once again we where on Gerlache Canal heading for Paradise Bay.
On the way we saw an iceberg turning 180 degrees. It was really a scary experience, the new size above water was in our direction much greater than before… After this experience we have more than doubled our security distance to these Giants.
We spent the night on anchor in a nice bay behind a not opened Argentinean bas. We where surprised to wake up at the sound of an helicopter almost at the top of our mast six o’clock the next morning. The Argentineans had obviously decided to open the bas just this Sunday morning and where now shuttling material by air to the bas from a Navy ship.
We left the bay and motored north along the Glaciers. Here in Paradise Bay all the Cruising ships just have to pay a visit, but they monitor there approaches very carefully by coordinate over VHF with their Cruising colleagues. Probably because the passenger should be able to feel something of the empty continent. When we saw the passengers from Marco Polo (300p) moving around the Penguin colony at the Chilean bas, we felt very happy to be allowed to slowly move around in this fantastic virgin world, only the two of us in our own yacht. On our two weeks in Antarctica we saw only Cruising ships three days, the rest of the weeks we where on our own. The feeling of an empty continent was close.
Our plan was to continue north to the South Shetlands, but a possible weather opening for the Drake Passage was coming up, so we changed the plans and sailed to Melchior to be ready to go to sea if the conditions proved to be right. We have too little space in the yacht to carry more than 500 l Diesel, and we didn’t want to wait another week for the weather not being able to heat the yacht.
We saw some Humpbacks whales in Gerlache on our way to Melchior, but whales have been rare on our trip, only three times have we spotted different whales.

We had to wait two days for the passage of a low, which gave us a lot of snow, but early on the 16th we left to match with the decreasing winds along the route to Cape Horn. The first 12 hours was very uncomfortable, no wind and high sea from different directions, but finally we got the wind from southwest that was predicted. The sea was still ruff, but only from the same direction as the wind, so the rest of the trip was quite good despite the sea was high and sometimes very steep. Only once we heeled much more than comfortable, but we never felt insecure. The last night we saw a giant comet south on the sky. Later we found out its name is McNaught and it’s on its way to go round the sun. Shortly after that the wind almost disappeared and we had to motor sail to the Horn. There where quite a surge around the horn so we didn’t dare to anchor, but Annika went ashore in our famous dingy.
When we where preparing to go ashore we where called on the VHF from another yacht. Who new where we where? It was Kicki and Ties on Wanderer III, and they had been waiting eleven days for the weather to change to be able to go to Antarctica. The can only receive at the SSB radio, so they wanted us to give them the latest weather forecast for the passage and to tell friends that they will go now and not a week ago! We promised them to send a new report late at night and then in the morning inform Bob on the Falklands about the new situation.

Annika came back after all her duties at the Horn, leaving our club flag, stamps in the passports, signing the Golden Book and of course a lot of photos. The buildings had been renewed, only the old chapel was the same. Of course the lighthouse was the same, but it had been built in together with the new house.
We motored in the not existing wind some miles to a very sheltered anchorage, Puerto Maxwell, nr 10.82 in the very good Italian Pilot covering Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.
It’s a pilot you can’t live without if you are navigating this area. We got a mild rain during the whole night, but in the morning we had clear sky and an excellent 80 nm sailing to Puerto Williams. There we once again met our friends in Yaghan, who now where ready to start west after refilling everything in Ushuaia. We had a long evening comparing our experience from the silent white continent. It was like a debriefing and made us have a good night sleep in spite of all strong impressions during the last three weeks.
This became a perfect ending of our Antarctic adventure that had, except for the Leopard seal, been totally without any problems.
The next morning we left for refuelling in Ushuaia and Yaghan left for the Chilean Canals and the Pacific.

We are already thinking about how we shall be able to have storage for a month in Antarctica and when we will be back down there!

January 29 2007
Annika & Björn
S/Y Lindisfarne

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