WE DIDN'T MEAN TO GO TO ANTARCTICA...

Geoff Payne

(For four years running the Barton Cup has been awarded for a cruise which embraces the southern high latitudes. Each has been very different and each has richly merited the accolade, but none have taken in more territory.)

The last time my name popped up in Flying Fish would have been about 1986, soon after I had launched Skookum I. I had spent four years building her from scratch in the steel plant in British Columbia where I worked as a draftsman. That construction is as much a saga as Skookum's subsequent voyages. With fifty thousand miles of epic cruising in her wake now I feel the yacht has repaid me well for the massive effort put into the building. And she's only just run in, I reckon.

Alaska, Galapagos, the Antarctic -- I could launch into a multi-page article on any one destination. In fact I already have in some cases, with a series due to start in Cruising World in April. So I thought that for Flying Fish I would write between the lines a little.

The players in our tale are: Skookum I -- 40ft steel cutter, designed in Australia by Alan Payne; Geoff Payne -- Alan's nephew, I was brought up in and around Sydney Harbour; Margaret Hough -- a keen land traveller of Asia and the Islands, joining me on yacht deliveries and passages since 1980. Marg and I were married in 1990.

Margaret had been living in New South Wales, doing social work. By mid-1988 we had put away some savings, chucked in our jobs and set-to readying the yacht for A Big Trip -- from Vancouver around South America, up to Europe and on to Australia. In three years. Now we break into laughter recalling this plan! Four years voyaging and we were right back in Canada, having arrived in New Brunswick via the long, long way around the Americas. We had found so much to fascinate us along the way that if we ever did it again we could easily spend ten years.

We spent about a month in the Galapagos. Nine months previously I had applied for an extended cruising permit, and with great good fortune we received one. So we explored the whole archipelago under our own steam, but with one extra body aboard -- our own (compulsory) Ecuadorian National Parks Ranger whose salary we paid. An unusual way to cruise? ... it turned out to be really, really worth it. The natural history experience was all it was cracked up to be and a lot more.

The yacht proves to be truly seakindly

In order to ride the Roaring Forties with the wind well astern we made a wide arc south-west into the Pacific via Easter Island. We did manage a marvellous exploration of Easter Island, but Skookum was most ill at ease (let alone her crew) lying horribly exposed in mid-ocean, listening to huge swells thundering onto the rocks nearby. There is no harbour.

By heading south from the Galapagos we had parted company with the great majority of cruising yachts. Exploring off the beaten track is what Skookum was destined for, and this was kept in mind throughout design and construction. Whilst we did handsomely in the high southern latitudes I can now think of even more reasons why most yachts do not go there, indeed definitely should not go there. Our extended stay south of the Roaring Forties was only made possible because our yacht proved to be such an excellent vessel.

Skookum's steel plating is 5mm thick -- sounds a bit heavy for a 40 footer? Well there are no frames and the hull is low and fat, multi-chined and very curvy with the prettiest of sheerlines. Half-load displacement is about 12,000 kg or 27,000 lbs, which means we can carry a massive amount of supplies and equipment. Skookum gets along handily even with two tons of fuel, water, food and equipment aboard. If you've ever emptied a cruising yacht completely, onto the dock, you'll know what I mean. The dock sinks.

The hull has a full length integral keel, and were it not for that the voyage would have ended at the head of some uncharted fjord -- we smacked into sharp glacial rocks at 6 or 7 knots more than once. Metal hulls are the only ones to survive that kind of punishment. Skookum means `good and strong' and she sports mast, rigging, winches and anchors that would suit a 50 footer. We got flattened by williwaws in the Chilean channels yet never gave the rig a second thought. And after a day on deck in wind and spray, even in snow and ice, we could count on a refuge below decks with no leaks, all insulated, lined and diesel heated, enabling us to recuperate, gain confidence and carry on longer and further than we expected.

Back in the wide Pacific we really felt the bump as we sailed across the fat 40S line on the chart -- in roared the westerlies, but once we got all snugged down to deeply reefed main and tiny, poled-out jib, life became pleasant enough. The waves were well organised and well spaced, and the enormous height of swell running was only revealed to us on the occasions when we rose up for a momentary aerial view of the surrounding ocean, thirty miles of breaking wavetops in every direction. Skookum surfed and surfed and surfed, the Fleming wind vane handled things fine, and below decks bread was baking. Albatross patrols kept an eye on us daily -- it really is their domain.

Southern Chile is just that -- chilly

We entered the southern Chilean waterways well into autumn, and it was as pretty as a picture up around Isla Chiloe. Southern Chile and its folk were a delight to be amongst -- Margaret and I had both learned Spanish especially for the voyage. Thus relationships with the authorities always went smoothly (every craft underway in Chile is under strict Navy control). Fishermen to whom we chatted showed us where to anchor away from the wild williwaws and said, frankly, that they preferred to work the southern waters during winter when the winds were quieter.

By any standards other than those of eager adventurers the weather at first was appalling! Cloud, rain and wind in colossal quantities, turning to heavy snow by the time we reached the Magellan Strait. Temperatures down to minus 10C, icebreaking out of fjords that froze overnight, and falling flat on our faces on ice-covered rocks taking the dinghy painter ashore. Wrecks of ships spectacularly speared onto rock pinnacles in mid-stream were equally chilling. But the wind nearly always came from astern and down channel after channel we ran, wing and wing in flat water, stupendous scenery rising up either side of us and always finding a snug cove for the night. Occasionally the very top of the cordillera ridge was revealed -- we were right up beside the Andes. They towered above us. The setting sun once turned all the new snows to pink.

Just to be in the Magellan Strait was absolutely thrilling, let alone being amidst the scenery and coves of the Andean end of the passage. One more dose of hail and we snuck out to sea and back into the Beagle Channel. The Beagle was most kind to us and we even got in a couple of light spinnaker runs down the amazing route past glaciers, high forests and stark rocky shores until -- whammo! -- civilisation. Argentina's Ushuaia was a sea of lights, factories, fast food and 1-hour photos. Typical Argentina -- lively, bustling and currency in chaos. Four of us enjoyed the finest of meals in a restaurant and ran up a 200,000 peso bill -- about US $20 in those days. Diesel got down to 10 cents a litre.

It was the little Chilean Navy base of Puerto Williams that we most enjoyed. Only sixty miles north of Cape Horn where the wind screams out in the Beagle Channel, yet we lay secure in their little lagoon and had a very pleasant few weeks' break from adventure cruising. We have been back to Puerto Williams since and really treasure that first visit. Once there were over a dozen yachts rafted where we had lain, from 28 footers to monster ketches. Regardless of size, too many had only made it there after considerable misadventure (even rescue) and then expected major repairs from the base! The Chileans' patience must be wearing pretty thin.

We had reached The Uttermost Part of the Earth, the title of the book on early missionary work to Tierra del Fuego from the Falkland Islands. Three times we have run the Lemaire Strait -- two times, I should say, because we overstood it altogether one awful night (the barometer had been down to 957 millibars) and the Pacific meets the Atlantic in tidal turmoil. A tide-rip came upon us -- a breaking wave all along the horizon and we were close in on Staten Island. In this mass of white water birds plunged, fish jumped and even a whale spouted. Fascinating, were we not being pulled about all over the place. No wonder there have been four hundred recorded shipwrecks off Staten Island. With hatches closed and harnesses on we worked the sheets and with good windward ability and big diesel backup were soon back in the clear. Conventional wisdom says to stay well clear of exposed shores, but with experience, smart tacking and the echo sounder we learned to sneak inside the kelp line, behind reefs, holing up in tiny coves until the worst blew by. Sharing such a niche might be one of the incredibly rugged local crab fishermen, in a wooden craft so crude you wouldn't want to cross Sydney Harbour in it.

The Falklands lie surprisingly close to the toe of South America and it was always a blessed relief to get back into Port Stanley -- the passage might be short but was nearly always nasty. Mind you, it still blows up an absolute hoolie in Stanley Harbour, which offers no natural shelter to a yacht. Were the Falklands to be towed 20further north they would become a major resort -- there are harbours, beaches and wildlife to rival the Galapagos. In a sort of fortunate way though, the cold 50s latitude wind sweeps unobstructed across the treeless landscape and keeps the place rugged, wild and reserved only for the hardy. We had three great stays in the Falklands, joining in townlife, sneaking up on wildlife and helping out with farmlife. There are actually over a hundred little islands in the Falklands and moving about them required a real knack of timing tides and windshifts, and finding safe spots to hole up in. The weather is often atrocious but at least it moves through quickly, so you might get one day's rest before the next gale.

We didn't mean to go to Antarctica...

The Falklands became the hub of our cruising over a couple of years and we set out on three major voyages from there -- to the Antarctic Peninsula, south-eastern South America, and South Georgia and the Atlantic Ridge islands.

During the summer of 1989-90 we disappeared over the southern horizon, off to the bottom of the globe. Skookum was heavily laden -- fuel drums plus food that might have to tide us over for a full year should we get iced in. We'd be sailing under a new set of rules, but we didn't know them yet. Our stomachs were in knots. We had never intended to sail to Antarctica and only set off with the confidence of a sound yacht and the considered advice of folk who had already been there. We also knew in advance that ice conditions would be particularly mild as the sea ice had barely formed the previous winter. As a result we penetrated very nearly to the bottom of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Antarctic reality hit us ten miles out from shore. The sextant told us we ought to be seeing land, but there was only white cloud ahead. "That's not cloud..." said Marg. Ten thousand feet of snow, ice, glaciers, peaks and crevasses -- the land was utterly white. In no time loose ice in the water had sheared the paddle-wheel off our log and pilotage became a visual affair. Except there were islands, rocks, cliffs and capes all over the place that we couldn't pick out on the chart. It turned out that the `little island about a 1 1/2 miles away' was in fact a 5000 foot affair ten miles away. The air is so clear that, by climbing any hill, you can see a hundred miles at times. And there are no trees, no roads and no buildings, things which give one a clue as to scale.

The sea may not have frozen but, with much cracking and snapping, the glaciers were constantly calving off icebergs. Driven by wind and current these cathedral-sized monsters roam the coast like an army of science fiction creations determined to surround any precocious little yacht and crush it into the shore. Finding harbours free of the ice menace was the key to the success of our Antarctic summer. In 350 miles of icebound coast there are less than a dozen places to anchor, and few of them offer 360land bound, tucked in, shallow, very shallow, shelter from loose ice.

Piloting, icebergs, visibility, shovelling snow out of tied-in mainsail reefs -- we learned fast and made some wonderful stopovers in rocky harbours lashed in with five or six lines ashore and surrounded by porpoising penguins. To see their chicks grow to adult size so quickly, then moult their down and take their first flight -- I mean swim -- was part of the Antarctic wildlife treat. It was also good to see a handful of humpback and minke whales about.

Special too was our contact with the scientific bases, particularly the two British ones. The peninsula is well studded with international scientific efforts and we were thoroughly well received by Argentine, Chilean, Soviet, Chinese and US groups. However we had approached them as if they were wounded polar bears -- in the past they had repaired and resupplied poorly prepared craft, which is not their purpose, besides which the staff are extremely busy throughout the summer season. We enjoyed some fine evenings, Marg took her flute ashore, and our colour slides of the tropics, even trees, were enthusiastically received by our hosts.

We stayed a fortnight too long. Working our way back north things started to come adrift. Night began to fall again -- we had been spoilt by twenty-four hour daylight. Dealing with ice is one thing, but ice in the dark is terrifying. One horrendous night, with a gale tearing at our forward mooring line shackled to the steel pins I had driven into the ice ahead of us, we took turns on the stern with the boathook fending off surf-driven ice that incongruously was entering our harbour from behind. By the time we reached the South Shetlands the weather at such a `warm' latitude was disgusting. Slush, snow, fog and misery. The Chilean weather chart showed that our return route across the Drake Passage was a bowling alley of low pressure systems. On a day that dawned `less worse' we took the plunge.

What a struggle! Five days of westerly gales and how those little reefed sails took it so long I don't know. Thirteen tons of yacht clawing to windward at 2 1/2 knots with the sail area of a Jack Holt dinghy sheeted to 16mm lines, four turns around a Barlow 35 and looking ready to burst. Skookum lay about 60off the wind but we plotted our course made good less optimistically. Yet a sun sight or two showed us to be pretty much on course, whereupon the wind went to the south, we dragged genoas on deck and screamed and shouted as land came in sight, overjoyed to see dear old Cape Horn!

We anchored in Puerto Williams late that night. In dress jacket with gold stripes the Commander of the Navy Base congratulated Margaret and me on a successful voyage. Only then did we realise we had just done something very special.

Life in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil

After a spell back in the Falklands we headed off to Buenos Aires, ostensibly to haul Skookum out and clean the bottom. In turned out to be a year's outing. We took another beating in the 40s but arrived off the River Plate in a lovely force 4 sou'easter. Dragging the last chart from the pile I was most alarmed to see that it terminated sixty miles east of BA. On the VHF to a ship's pilot we were simply advised to read all the buoys and `turn left at kilometre so and so'. Left? Kilometre? `Tug crews are all landlubbers' explained the pilot.

Yachts are forbidden to use the dredged channel, so we ploughed on all day with the sounder flashing 2ft clearance under the keel. Surrounded by the looms of Montevideo, La Plata and Buenos Aires we were still taking star fixes to position ourselves -- the estuary is huge, wide and very low on either shore. Water colour is solid brown and the coast is a-buzz with mosquitoes. The locals are mad keen on yacht racing in the brown goo and all crews put in their share of time out on the boom trying to extract deep fin keels from the mud. The slipping facilities were excellent and we put in a good two months of maintenance work, regularly punctuated by frantically gregarious yacht club members laying on barbecues for us. On anyone else's scale of one to ten Argentine meat rates a twenty, but the quantities they serve ...

Across the River Plate in Uruguay we found a countryside so peaceful that we tied up to a riverbank by a dairy farm and stayed for months. Uruguay is a gem of a little land, simple, rural and content in comparison to the two huge, restless nations which sandwich it on either side.

Curious, we made our way up into southern Brazil. Hard work it was too as the prevailing wind was on the nose. Our painfully poor progress turned out to be due to the already huge build-up of growth on the new antifouling -- we'd have been better off leaving the old stuff! The inside route behind Ilha Santa Catarina was doubly challenging -- miles and miles of 2m soundings (Skookum draws 2 metres) leading to a bridge reputedly a metre higher than our mast, but off came the antenna and lights just in case. When pedestrians stop and gather on the span above you, you know it's going to be close.

Brazil must mean `full of life' -- they don't do things by halves. We found ourselves in a country so huge that it's a world unto itself. Models of cars that exist nowhere else, stylish architecture, roads slashed straight up and down the jumble of green hills, and colour galore -- fruit stands on street corners, fishing boats trimmed out in a rainbow of paints and even council workers sporting bright green or red overalls.

Rio de Janiero was as far north as we ventured. From offshore the rising sun lit up this metropolis built all around, over, and under pointy peaks of rock, most of which have been conquered by precipitous roadways, cable cars and statues. Run a brake and clutch shop in Rio and you'd be set for life. We should have just watched it all from the yacht.

Every yachtie we know who's been to Rio has been robbed. `Don't go to Rio', said they. Sure enough, within an hour of setting foot ashore I was pounced on by strong youths -- twice! Enough is enough, life amongst icebergs and gales is far safer, so we eased away to starboard around the Sugarloaf and headed back southward for a sub-Antarctic summer.

Whales -- from birth to slaughter

On our way south were the two large bays formed by Peninsula Valdes in Argentina where we thought we might be lucky enough to see a Southern Right whale. No luck needed -- the first morning we awoke to the noise of a whale scratching its tail up and down our anchor chain! Thereon followed a week of wonderful whale watching in a big bay they use as a nursery for their young. The area is subject to the most bitter of Patagonian winds but we chanced on sunshine and calm clear water which put us eye to eye with the whales.

From springtime in the nursery of whales, to mid-`summer' when we stood on the very planks that used to be soaked in the blood of thousands of whales. We had crossed the Antarctic convergence again to the remotest of islands, South Georgia, via the Falklands and a near miss with a 90 (that's nine-zero) mile long iceberg.

The whales used to feed along the cold water convergence line, where they were caught and towed back to half a dozen whaling factories set up on South Georgia. The last one only ceased operation in the 1950s, and left behind and blown to pieces by screeching winds are complete industrial townships of a strongly Norwegian flavour. Fascinating to explore, but at the risk of being guillotined by flying sheets of iron. Cast ashore are the most classic of square-rigger shipwrecks, bowsprits pointing skyward, home now to hundreds of shags.

The whaling ruins sit as a bit of a scar on an island that offers the best of high glacial scenery, all fringed in lower level green tussock grass and choked with wildlife on all its shores. On the good days we were out with daypacks on our backs and up in the hills, off to see albatross in their nests, elephant seals wallowing, or absolute cities of penguins.

Water temperature remained around the 1or 2C mark, and when the snow fell and stayed on the water's surface we knew it was time to leave. Once again, though, we paid our dues getting out of Antarctica's clutches. Half the distance to Tristan da Cunha was logged in fog -- and on the occasions when the fog lifted an iceberg was often sighted. The 90 miler was splitting off `little' city block sized chunks and they were finding their way well north.

The long way -- but with the wind astern

To go via the mid south Atlantic islands was a bold move. We were four months out from our last provisioning and had no charts of the islands (we'd intended to go due north around Brazil). Of food we still had plenty, though we'd eaten all the good stuff, and the pilot book descriptions combined with The Times atlas stood us in good stead. It turned out to be an excellent route north as each destination was fascinating (how many times have I used that word?). However, neither Tristan, nor St Helena, nor Ascension, nor even Fernando da Noronha has a harbour safe enough to feel you can leave your yacht unattended at anchor. Still, there we were, lucky enough to explore these places, some of which can really only be independently reached by cruising yacht. Yachties are the tourist industry in St Helena.

Another great bonus of our mid-Atlantic route was picking up the trade winds just north of Tristan and riding them all the way to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. To Marg and I this kind of sailing was utterly incredible -- no sailchanges twice a night? No heavy insulated clothing to climb into? No icebergs to look out for? We still kept on saying `when's the next gale? when's the next gale?', but it never came.