Chasing the Southern Cross 5 - Approaching Cape Horn

Chasing the Southern Cross 5 -

 December 23

 We were underway after dinner, after spending the day sailing in a very nice breeze while Franco was taking photographs from the dinghy.  While the photo session was going on, tack, and tack, and tack again, downwind, upwind, wide reach, and tack again, I kept on trying to prepare some things for our Christmas dinner. Quite a feat that my Bûche de Noël looked reasonably even!

 The sky has finally given way and has allowed me to see the Southern Cross tonight. I have discovered what everybody knows: the Southern Cross is not a star but a constellation.

Approaching Cape Horn - PENGUINS, SEA LIONS AND OTHER FAUNA...

Christmas Eve

 “Rolling in the dark night”: Romy’s log entry at 2 a.m. The weather became very rough soon after that and a few sail manoeuvres were needed.

 Morning finds us still underway and we finally anchor off Punta Tombo shortly before lunch. Captain Serge had promised me we would  not move, so we could cook our Christmas Dinner, but the weather decided not to go along with Serge. Strong winds and currents force us to look for another suitable and safe anchorage for the evening. My turkeys and piglet in the oven were very close to serious seasickness, but they survived.

 In the afternoon, we find ourselves surrounded by penguins sitting on the water, and we can see a guanaco standing proudly on top of a cliff. He seems to be alone watching the sea, maybe watching us? Even at that distance, the guanaco looks beautiful, long legs and long neck, thin head looking ahead, the body in tension, ready to jump or start running.

 Late in the evening, owner, guests and crew meet on deck for a glass of champagne. The sea looks very black. The glow of Shenandoah’s mast lights give a silver colour to the water around the boat,  and reflects on  the white bodies of the hundreds and seagulls, cormorants and penguins floating nearby.  The birds are in flocks, penguins to starboard, seagulls to port and cormorants right aft, closing in and all moving slowly towards our stern, as if coming to wish us happy Christmas. To the west, we can see the fiery reddish colours of yet another magnificent Patagonian sunset still lighting  the sky; to the east a very thin but very bright new moon is rising from the horizon, and some stars can be seen amongst some shiny grey clouds. Again, and not for the last time, I am impressed by the intensity and beauty of nature in here.

 Father Christmas, with a strangely familiar face — it reminds me of Nicolas, the mate — arrives with a big sack full of presents for everybody; the birds watch very closely while we all try our new pair of socks on, the moon continues to rise and the sky darkens up slowly in the west. For an instant, most of the crew is silent, or so it seems to me, as if all of us, at once, were thinking of the people we would really like to be with on such a day as today.

 The crew dinner starts very late, turkey and piglet are overcooked because of the very long delay, but champagne and wine cover up the dryness of the meats. By the time we reach dessert, several bottles have gone, carols have been sung slightly out of tune and good wishes have been exchanged again.

 My bunk receives a very tired and tipsy Rosa tonight, but I think I am not the only one in that state.

Christmas Day

 Happy Christmas to everybody! The whole crew and guests receive another unexpected Christmas present: as we sail in beautiful weather towards Punta Dos Bahias, many dolphins swim and play along with us for a very long time. Some of the crew and guests spend a good half hour or more, whistling, hand clapping and shouting “Jump! Jump!” The dolphins jump and swim and jump again and all cameras and video recorders are out for a long time.

 Twenty-five knots of steady wind the whole day take us to the planned anchorage in the evening. The crew seems a little bit tired today, it must be the champagne and the wine from last night.

 Boxing day

 After a very early rise again to bake my daily bread, some of the crew comes down at tea break announcing that they have seen a couple of white whales that came to look at the boat. Luc and Franco were chasing some wild ducks around with the dinghy, and Chris filmed from the boat a band of guanacos ashore. Galley and interior crew become slightly upset because nobody told us any of that. Missed the fun! Apologies from the boys and we carry on.

 After lunch, we are underway for a short time until we drop the anchor at Isla Leones. The seawater glitters under a very bright sun, and  the land, brown and dry, arid, with no greenery at all, seen stands out against a cloudless deep blue sky. This is the Patagonian steppe at its best, arid and hot, and very windy. We are motoring at slow speed and keep slaloming between and around some giant seaweed floating in the water.  We do not want them caught in the propeller; the water is far too cold to go diving. On deck, Seb and Chris are sewing sails.

 At the top of the hill, an old abandoned lighthouse dominates the island. We approach it on starboard, through a narrow passage, leaving a rock covered with seagulls, probably hatching, to port. As we advance very slowly into the shallow creek, the tender is detached forward to ensure that we do not run aground: we do not have the detailed chart of this particular passage. On deck, cameras and videos come out again. Cormorants with red beaks, penguins, sea lions and other fauna are all over the place. A bird, duck or cormorant, whatever it may be, flies past us at great speed scaring a flock of seagulls that takes off at once in a flurry of wings.

 After a short while, we drop the hooks, almost everyone goes ashore, walking shoes on and cameras in the pockets. The landing on the stony beach is tricky, the pebbles are very slippery and Anne Marie nearly falls. There is a penguin waiting for us in a welcoming gesture, and he seems to be smiling at our clumsiness. Civilisation signs show at the end of the creek: some plastic boxes, probably washed here by the sea, lay rotting away under the sun. Yet, this human litter does not seem disturb the thousands of penguin families living under the dry bushes. Under every one of those bushes, under every little cave, there is a nest with a mother penguin and one or two chicken. It is hard to see them, and a couple of times, inadvertently, we scare a male or two who run away from us and, we believe, from their nests as well. What a coward bird! However, when not in family but with the rest of the flock, sunbathing in the rocks, they let themselves be approached with no fear, at least to three or four meters; then they start shaking their tiny wings and running all together to the sea.

 Serge, Anne Marie, Luc and Coralie climb to the top of the hill where they visit the remains of the lighthouse. From the top, the view is magnificent: currents and reefs surround the island, creating whirlpools and waves that seem to be breaking nowhere; the bright blue of the water almost hurts the eyes, and the silhouettes of many fishing boats working in the area break the horizon line. I walk half way up and then climb down again to go back to the boat. Time is running for me, I need to cook dinner for the boss. It takes me a while to find the beach where Felix is supposed to pick me up: the tide has gone down very quickly and I cannot immediately recognise the landing spot. When I finally find it, boarding the tender is almost impossible, there is no water enough and the penguins and a couple of sea lions are too close to my taste, but after a few minutes and some dancing steps on the slippery rocks under the watchful eyes of penguins, cormorants and seagulls, and sea lions, we succeed to bring me back on board.

 The rest of the evening has been described by Serge on the log as “unforgettable afternoon”. The wind and currents intensify and the anchors start dragging. We really like this place and the owner wants to spend the night here, so a decision is made to take a line ashore to secure the boat and help the anchors. The shore is at quite a distance, but the boys tie two lines together and fasten them up on to a large solid rock. Then the current gets very strong and pushes Shenandoah away and sideways from the mooring rock, stretching the line at a 90º angle from its original position, same as the two anchors. Everyone  moves away very quickly from the overstretched line and ducks somewhere on deck, until the line finally snaps broken. Most of it twirls onto itself like a spring and flies back in coils to the rock without even falling in the water, the rest flies up before falling in the water near the boat. We retrieve all the lines, move anchorages and we spend the night in Caleta Hornos.

CHASING... 2 - Where is the wind?

November 30

After motoring all night, a sudden silence wakes me up. I fall asleep again only to be woken up by a voice asking for my passport; hiding under my pillow, the document is duly and sleepily handed to that voice, and I fall asleep again, to wake later to a bright display of sunlight coming through the porthole. A round display of greenery is what I can see as I look out.

We are in Ilhabela, an island off the city of Sao Sebastiao, where we have come to get the clearance out of the country.

Ilhabela, a small resort town, is at the bottom of some high hills, covered in a variety of shades of green, where palm and other trees offer some protection from the sun to the houses scattered in the hillsides. The effect is awkward: tropical trees in a landscape that resembles that of New Zealand, or Northern Spain, and a temperature that is neither tropical nor continental.

A Yacht Club looks after a number of small yachts anchored off the little pier. Looking at the little boatyard and yacht club workers one can trace the yachts that have recently been this way: Andromeda, Fair Lady, C'Est La Vie III and other T-shirts are worn by the staff. We shall leave no memories here as we will leave Ilhabela Yacht Club with no Shenandoah T-shirts left behind.

While Serge deals with the Brazilian authorities, the girls go shopping for fruits and vegetables to the little local supermarket. A man – or is it a woman? a teenager? or maybe an eunuch?, we cannot decide really what that is – deals most efficiently with the seemingly very complicated logistics of delivering all the supplies to the Yacht Club.

Underway again after lunch, we proceed through the straight between the island and the mainland; a lovely breeze keeps blowing, right on the nose, but as we clear the island and motor into the open ocean again, the breeze dies. So, we carry on motoring, hoping for some wind to show up before landing in Punta del Este.

After dinner and shower, I go up on deck to a bright moonlit night, with a few stars showing in the dark blue sky. Looking for the Southern Cross, I am unable to find it; not risen yet, apparently. A very nasty smell of dead fish keeps us company until the end of my watch . Later on, the next watch will see the corpse of a large sperm whale, rotting away floating in the water, about 15 meters from the boat.

During the night, very rough seas build up, and for a few hours we have a very bumpy and jerky ride. I wake up feeling like a daiquiri, and very close to serious seasickness: I never liked motoring in rough seas on a sailing boat! Does anyone? (Years before that - or was it years later? - I refused to go from Monaco to Mallorca on board Alejandra because the skipper refused systematically to hoist the sails, regardless of the weather: "too much work", he used to say. On that occasion, not hoisting the sails meant definitely trouble for that beautiful sailing submarine, so I took a plane). Finally the sea calms down, my guts as well, and I go back to sleep.

December 1

In the morning, quiet seas again and still not a drop of wind. Chris has spotted some morning dolphins and a very large oil spill, around one mile long.

Dead whales, probably hurt by some large ship, or maybe poisoned by swallowing much garbage along with their standard plankton diet, oil spills, brown water instead of blue or green, plastics floating... What a pleasure to go sailing in some waters those days! Is there any bit of ocean that is safe from the polluters?

At night, the moon is almost full, but still many stars can be seen. We can distinguish the lights of Florianopolis and Santa Catarina Island as we motor along; Anne Marie leads a dance on deck, with the music full blast to cover the noise of the engines (which by the way are not very noisy).

day 6

Sails up at last! Yes! A slight breeze allows us to hoist two gollys and a spinnaker. Waking up in silence, with only the sound of the hull breaking into the water, what a pleasure!. Until 9h30 that is, when Shenandoah is advancing at the pace of a snail. Sails down, motor on again. Boring! So I decide to bake some brownies for tea.

...And so it goes for two more days. In the morning of Friday December 4^th the sails went up for one and a half hour in the morning, the duration of the light morning breeze, but we had to finish as we started: motoring; landed in Punta del Este at 16h00.

The water, since we left Rio has always been of a dark brownish colour, but here, in Punta it is of a very thick brown, not very tempting to go swimming, in fact, not very tempting at all, period. A colony of seals has taken up residence inside the yacht harbour, maybe a dozen of them, scavengers feeding on the fish bones and heads thrown at them by the local fishmongers, who work right at the pier. They are the local tourist attraction, until Shenandoah docks at the end of the main jetty, that is.

The authorities here are quite friendly, and it only takes two and a half hours to clear in, and to do so, Serge needs an interpreter, me - who else?. A race to Buenos Aires is scheduled for 18h00 and the racing skippers are clearing out at the same time we try to clear in. By the time the starting gun goes, the spectators of the race are all watching Shenandoah, with all the crew shamying and tidying the deck, some of us answering the questions from the people on the quay. For a whole week, we will be watched and questioned by many Uruguayans and Argentineans that have come to see us. To most of them, we are the largest yacht or vessel of any kind besides the Buenos Aires ferries they have ever seen. They do not know that soon there will be another beautiful classic yacht at the same pier: we have heard that Kentra, the Fife gaff rigged ketch, has arrived in Salvador de Bahia and that she is coming down this way. Serge announces that she should be in Punta del Este on the 18th, a week after we leave.

Punta del Este used to be the first stop in the Whitbread race and is a good place for the crew to take a break and go partying. There are pubs and restaurants open till early morning hours and the place is safe, unlike Rio. Soon, Sébastien, Chris and Nicolas are surrounded by girls: after all, they are good looking and they have an exotic air here, with their French accent, British in Chris case, and European looks.

Shopping and provisioning is relatively easy thanks to the help of the local French restaurateur Jean Paul, the owner of "La Bourgogne", the top restaurant in the area, and some of the staff of the Hotel Conrad. I buy some fresh fish from the seller at the beginning of the quay, where the seals are waiting for their due. Two of them are having a fight, or so it seems to me since they keep trying to bite each other's jaw, never actually succeeding. Meanwhile, the rest of the seals, oblivious to their colleagues fight, carry on catching the fish and other foods thrown at them by the watchers and passers-by.

After a week of shopping, eating out, surfing and partying, the owner arrives with a guest and we set sail – literally, this time – bound to Buenos Aires. We were due to leave on Saturday afternoon, but we are delayed because the third guest we expect does not arrive until late in the evening, at dinner time. Shenandoah leaves the port of Punta del Este during the night, all sails up, to find very rough weather at the entrance of Rio de la Plata, but at least we are sailing on a wide reach towards the channel.

tbc/

From the galley of Shenandoah - A South American trip

Many years ago, in the winter 98-99, I took a trip to South America working aboard a beautiful and very old three-masted schooner. Some friends of mine asked if I could write something to print in a classic boat magazine they were publishing at that time, and so I did. But owner and captain of the boat would not let me send my writings arguing that they were preparing a book about Shenandoah, which was going to celebrate her centenary in 2002. Understandably, I was very disappointed, but I did comply.

Now, ten years have passed, and neither the owner of the boat nor the captain at that time have asked me to see my writings, or told me anything about their book, whether it has been published or not. My log has been missing all those years, half sunk under the digital waters, sailing from one computer to the next, almost unnoticed to me, until a few days ago I undertook a rescue and salvage operation, did a bit of a restoring job at the fileyard and refloated my log. The salvage operation has been almost miraculous. My logs, and my computers, have travelled with me, with boats sinking under my feet - well, almost, Shiralee sank barely 12 hours after I left her to go on sick leave - computers being stolen under my nose, and old programs and apps vanishing in the fog of the new technologies.

One usually writes for one's own pleasure, at least that's what I do, but the diary of the South American trip, good, bad or worse, was written to be read by others. And so, here it goes, a little at a time, because it's quite long, and because I do not want to bore the very few readers, if any, who might decide to have a look at it. And so, here is my South American trip.

It comes almost as it was written then, with a little updating and some corrections, but not many.

November 26

Seen from the plane portholes, Rio looked like a Christmas tree, street lights flashing all over the city. It was late at night and I could not see the bay, just its shape, and tried to guess where the Corcovado and the Sugar Loaf might be. After landing and what seemed to me a very long taxi ride, we arrived to the Iate Club de Rio de Janeiro, where the Shenandoah tender picked us up – Anne Marie had been waiting for me at the airport – to take us on board. There she was, a 96 years old beauty floating and shining in the darkness, anchored in between Corcovado, Sugar Loaf Hill and the city. It was very late, and I was very tired, but I did take a few minutes to have a look around the interior that I had not seen before. Although not the original 1902, the woodwork remains very classic, with a very interesting Asian touch, whatever that means – the words are not mine. I went to bed exhausted and jet lagged after fifteen hours travelling, with an excellent first impression, and very happy that I had been offered the position as chef on board and that I had accepted it. The prospect of the forthcoming cruise – Brazil, Argentina and Patagonia, Tierra de Fuego, and then across the Horn to Chilean Patagonia and the Northern Chile Islands, to continue afterwards to New Zealand and stay there until the America's Cup – was also very appealing.

November 27

Waking up in the morning on board a boat whose crew is totally unknown is a weird experience: as I walked in the galley, still sleepy, looking for a coffee, three unknown Filipino faces smiled at me "good morning". I find very difficult trying to be polite and meet new people before morning coffee, but at that moment, and knowing very well that first impressions are important, I made an effort, smiled back and introduced myself. I was still trying to have a coffee, and other crew members appeared, "Hello, I am Rosa!" Lost in the pantry, looking for cereal, milk and the other breakfast bits, and fighting my morning pre-coffee bad mood and my natural shyness, it was some kind of miracle that I appeared pleasant (or so I'd like to think) and smiling to my new crew mates.

Next came the captain, Serge, whom I had met in Cannes, during the Régates Royales, and his wife Anne Marie, who had come to meet me last night at the airport: "bonjour!" That was easy, I had managed to finish coffee and have some breakfast, I was almost my normal self again.

Shenandoah's welcome to their new chef, I, was very warm and pleasant. The day went by as a first day on a new boat usually does, and it finished with some of the crew in a Japanese restaurant, in nearby Ipanema beach, in front of an enormous sushi boat and in the company of an extremely good looking, very attractive, sexy and desirable tall and suntanned young Brazilian surfer and mountaineer, a distant cousin of the young stewardess.

FROM THE GALLEY OF SHENANDOAH - A SOUTH AMERICAN TRIP

November 28

Underway at midmorning, my hopes of a nice sail in the South Atlantic meet with disappointment. Not a drop of wind in sight, and the swell is high and Shenandoah is heavily rolling, although not for long. After lunch, the swell goes down a little and we arrive early in the evening, still with some daylight, to Ilha Grande. We anchor in a little bay where a couple of huts serve food and drinks on the beach. Some of the crew goes ashore before dinner and end up playing ping-pong on the beach.

November 29

Chris, Nicolas, Sébastien, Romy, Salvo and Félix go ashore at 7 am for surf and swim. The rest of the crew follows later. From the beach, we walk a path that crosses a small forest, ending at the other side of the hill, on a magnificent white beach, in the ocean side of the island. The walk is superb, but the parrots we saw last evening are nowhere to be seen now. I wonder if they show only at dusk? We spot some red ants and keep well away from them, some little birds do some singing in the trees, a lizard runs away from us, and at the beach, crabs crawl around sideways, as they usually do.

Some of the boys are still surfing, though with some difficulties: the waves are short and break very quickly, leaving little time to ride them. Soon, some local Sunday tourists arrive to the beach as well, stereos, volley balls and kids in hand. Time to go!

The place is a protected area, with signs that ask people not to litter, kill or take animals or plants home. The water is cold! One would think that at this latitude, at mid-spring and approaching summer and with the tropical looks of the place, the water would be warmer, but it is not. Serge reckons it must be around 20º or 22º only. Still very pleasant, though.

By mid morning we leave Ilha Grande without a drop of wind in sight, a recurrent situation in the days to come, and we motor to Paraty, a tourist resort on development, where we arrive early inthe evening, still with daylight.

The crew goes visiting ashore, where some of us stay for dinner. We leave Paraty after dinner, still no wind, still no clear skies. Since I landed in Rio, the weather has been cloudy, little sun has shown, rain has fallen and I have not yet managed to see the Southern Cross, nor any other Southern hemisphere stars for that matter. Be patient, Rosa!

tbc/