The final short trip was a motor from Puerto Eugenia back to Puerto Williams. The wind got up through the course of the morning until we were motoring into 25 knots or so, but we made Puerto Williams in good time – the end of the trip. Some of the …
After breakfast and picking up three of the crew who had slept on the beach, we headed off – under sail. Under main, staysail and mizzen we made a tight turn out of the anchorage and headed into the Beagle Channel. The border between Argentina and Chile runs through the …
The original plan had been to go and visit Cape Horn and the morning was spent waiting for the permit to do that. Once again, wheels needed to be turned and perhaps palms greased and that all takes time, so it was after midday before we were able to leave. …
We stayed a day at Waterboat Point, moving slightly further in and putting a second anchor down to weather the predicted storm. The long boat hook used for prodding the ice floes away was initially working overtime and even the Zodiac was used to do some ‘ice-nudging’ but very quickly …
Port Lockroy is one of the most visited sites on the peninsula, so early morning we radioed the base to ask whether they had a slot for us to land. They have a limit of 350 people per day and we were told that we could have a quick slot …
Today was a day of further visual overload punctuated by whales. We started after breakfast springing off the wreck of the Governoren. The main challenge with this was flicking the ropes off the various metal protrusions we had been attached to. Once again the crew embraced their inner cowboy and …
After a 2-3am ice watch, I went back to bed and was next woken up by the engine going on at 6am. However, as we had all done the ice watch, they had said that we could stay in bed and so I got up just before 8am to be …
A leisurely start after breakfast saw us motoring south once again towards Cape Herschel. Progress was quickly slowed though by a shout of ‘whales’ as a pod of humpbacks cruised languidly past. Then someone spotted a pod of orcas in the distance. The fin of the alpha male stood out …
An early start this morning – well for the crew anyway as they let us lie in and they left Deception about 4am. We got up and joined them at a more sociable time as we sailed south from Deception Island across the Bransfield Strait to the southern end of …
Early morning on the 31st we heard the engine go on, a lot earlier than expected. We all headed up on deck and it turned out that the wind change to the west had swung us round, meaning that we ended up much closer to the beach. That and the …
