BEYOND NEPTUNE'S BELLOWS

Willy Ker

When Laurence Ormerod and I first discussed the possibility of sailing to the Antarctic Peninsula, we were not sure how much we could achieve. Fortunately Warren Brown, hearing of our plans, invited me to join him and John Gore-Grimes aboard War Baby for a delivery trip from Crosshaven to Lymington, giving me a chance to pick their brains. Warren had taken War Baby to the South Shetlands and the Antarctic Peninsula in 1987 and was a mine of information, and generously offered to lend me all his charts covering the Falklands and Chile as well. Their enthusiasms was infectious!

So it was that in September 1991 Assent migrated south with the Arctic terns to spend the southern summer with the penguins. If, like me, you cannot bear to sail past interesting places without having a look-see, it takes a little longer in a Contessa 32, but we planned to arrive in Stanley in the Falklands by early January. Most of the sea ice has usually cleared from the Antarctic Peninsula by this time, although of course there are always plenty of icebergs, but we should have a month to go on south and explore this wonderful area before the nights drew in and temperatures plummeted. As it was, when we started to come north again in mid-February the spray was freezing on the rigging and on our way back to Stanley from Deception Island we logged 452 miles in three days under triple-reefed main and storm-sized jib - but more of this later.

A neighbour of mine, Hugh de Fonblanque, was coming with me on the first leg and we finally got away from Plymouth on 10th September. The weather was balmy and still and we had to motor most of the way to La Coruna, where Hugh left and Veronica flew out to Santiago de Compostela to join me. We had not explored the rias of Galicia before, and we had a delightful fortnight. The winds were light and the seafood delicious. Veronica left by air in the nick of time before a brief F10 struck Bayona. My 35 lb CQR held well, unlike some, and when the gale had blown itself out Assent took me singlehanded to Lisbon where Jason, a keen racing helmsman, joined me in the excellent yacht harbour at Trigo.

We had a day or two to enjoy the little restaurants in the maze of steep alleys below the Castel de Sao Jorge, while we organised our visas for Guinea Bissau and Jason had his yellow fever jab, and then we were off to rendezvous with Ann Fraser in the Canaries. Ann joined us at Mogan, and after a couple of days stocking up we were off on 23rd October before a gentle north-east breeze and the helpful Canaries current.

Ann and I were very keen to revisit the Bijagos Islands which we had seen briefly when I sailed with Gollywobbler two years earlier and which are still virtually untouched by tourism, thank heavens (see A Voyage to the Bijagos - and Westward..., Flying Fish 1990/2). As usual, Ann had done her homework and made useful new contacts, but it was nice to see Jan van Maanen again. Jan, though Dutch, is the British Consul in Bissau. He runs a successful import business and was as friendly and helpful as ever.

Like much of Africa, Bissau has problems - theirs is a subsistence agriculture, they have very little to export and their rice crops are failing for lack of water and a build-up of salt in the low lying areas. It was therefore most interesting to be taken upcountry by Michael Tinee, the World Bank representative who `holds the purse strings' as it were. Michael was incredibly hospitable and helpful in practical ways like lending us his vehicle and driver to get stores, which in a country where it could take all day to find 10 gallons of diesel was an absolute godsend. (Incidentally, US dollars or CFA, the French West African francs, are the best currencies to have with you). We also had time to sail south to look (unsuccessfully) for pigmy hippos and bathe off deserted golden beaches in water a very pleasant 85°F.

Why sail on? All good things come to an end however, Ann flew home, and Jason and I had a pretty gentle sail across the Doldrums to Rio, enlivened on occasion by catching dorado and the odd thunder storm. Entering the Baia de Guanabara it is best to make straight for the Marina da Gloria, which is half a mile south-west of the city airport. The staff are very helpful and will guide you through the incredibly tedious entry formalities. We thoroughly enjoyed the lively atmosphere of Rio and the excellent restaurants, but like seasoned cariocas we did not wear our watches and carried very little money on us, and I suppose it was comforting in a way that the marina had two armed guards on the gate!

Jason left me in Rio to fly home, and I pressed on to Montevideo where I have cousins who had invited me to stay with them for Christmas. I stopped briefly at Punta del Este, but decided to go the eighty or so miles up the Plate to Montevideo. Puerto Buceo lies just to the east of the main harbour, and is a pleasant enough marina and conveniently near my relations. This was a very welcome break and included a couple of days on a cousin's estancia where we had, of course, the obligatory and delicious asado.

For six weeks Assent had been sailing in tropical waters, but the temperature had gradually dropped to 75F in the tail end of the Brazil current. Now, suddenly, as I left the Plate, I met the cold north-going Falklands current. There is a dramatic change at the sub-tropical convergence and the sea was alive with albatrosses, great shearwaters and petrels, and little groups of seals basking on the surface. Then fog, and for the first time I got out of my tattered bathing trunks and into the old familiar sailing gear. Assent was reefed down and on the wind and life was getting serious.

Entering Stanley harbour in a very fresh northerly, I was greeted by a school of Peale's dolphins joyfully leaping and breaching in the surf. What a welcome! We were there and on schedule. It was all terribly efficient and British and within five minutes Robert King, the smart young customs officer, was aboard with a smile. One could easily be in Orkney or Shetland and in no time at all I felt very much at home, although I must say I had not expected to have to pay £40 harbour dues!

There are three mooring buoys for visiting yachts in Stanley harbour but they can get pretty uncomfortable. It is better to lie alongside in the lee of the ex-military floating port (FIPASS) and that, incidentally, is where I have left Assent for the last six months. By good fortune, a day or two after I arrived the two British Antarctic Survey vessels Bransfield and James Clark Ross came in and docked at FIPASS and I was able to go aboard and meet the skippers, John Cole and Chris Elliott, who were both very encouraging. Chris sailed a yacht to the Antarctic Peninsula in 1989/90 and was able to show me on the chart a number of anchorages suitable for small boats, which was an enormous help.

A week later, after Laurence Ormerod had flown out in an RAF Tri-Star to join me, we reluctantly said goodbye to all our new-found friends and were off.

Our shakedown cruise took us 150 miles around to East Fox Bay on West Falkland. It was interesting to visit a sheep farming settlement in the `camp' and we were able to stock up with diesel, eggs and fresh vegetables (grown inside palisades of wind-break) as well as a haunch of excellent mutton. The weather here belied the island's reputation, with the temperature over 80°F and everyone stripped down to the waist. Around our anchorage flightless steamer ducks dabbled for all the world like ducks on the Serpentine and on an island in the sound covered with tussock-grass we could just hear the braying of thousands of Jackass penguins. A different and attractive world which was hard to leave.

Our plan now was to make for the South Shetlands and the Antarctic Peninsula, but the advice was to make as much westing as possible before heading south. Our route would take us close to Staten Island off Tierra del Fuego and it therefore seemed sensible to go on up the Beagle Channel to Puerto Williams in Chile before heading south past Cape Horn. This would give us another chance to check everything on board and top up with fuel.

Once we left Chile we would have to be totally self-sufficient, as although there are a number of bases in the area it had been impressed on us that except in a real emergency we should not expect any help from them. With extra cans we had something like 400 miles of diesel, enough to see us through the calms which alternate with gales down on the Peninsula. We also carried enough food for two months, but had been told that in extremis a penguin can be caught with a rugger tackle and an ice-axe will put paid to a seal, although we had no intention of putting this to the test if we could help it.

Our next hurdle was the Le Maire Strait between Staten Island and Tierra del Fuego 200 miles south-west of the Falklands, which has a bad reputation for strong tides and very confused seas. Sure enough we found a gale on the nose and put into Puerto Cook on the north-west side of Staten Island for the night, a beautiful, remote and deserted anchorage amongst 2,000ft mountains clad with beach scrub. Next morning with a fair stream and lighter winds we got through the Strait, only to be met with a dead noser and the 2 knot Cape Horn current. In twelve hours we made only eight miles - wonder the square-riggers had a problem.

Once into the Beagle Channel the wind freed and we had a very pleasant sail. The Chilean Navy maintain look-outs on the islands where they face Argentina to the north and soon our VHF was crackling with `Velero - Velero! Qu' bandera?' Laurence, with two years in the oil industry in Colombia, was able to reassure them in fluent, if slightly rusty, Spanish and get permission to anchor overnight in Caleta Banner on Isla Picton (an historic place - see The Uttermost Part of the Earth) before going on up to Puerto Williams to clear in.

As we sailed up the channel next morning in a light but invigorating breeze, the sun came out and the snow glistened on the Cordillera Darwin - a magnificent backdrop to the tiny Chilean Navy base at Puerto Williams. This little frontier village has the distinction of having a Club de Yates, a very secure mooring alongside the sunken coaster Micalvi. Almost uniquely in Patagonia, one could leave a yacht here quite safely for a time and the Chileans are very friendly to the British.

Having completed all our paperwork (interminable), filled up with diesel and bought an enormous hunk of excellent beefsteak, we `filed our flight plan' past Cabo de Hornos towards what they regard as Chilean Antarctica. We were on our way at last.

We cannot really claim to have `rounded the Horn', for when we got there the wind came in with a bang from the west and we were forced to square away under trysail and a scrap of the roller jib before a rather too boisterous F9 (I recorded F10 in the log - perhaps it was).

Perhaps the best landfall in the South Shetlands, 400 miles across Drake Passage, is the impressive snow-covered bulk of Smith Island which rises straight out of the sea to 7,000ft. Visibility was poor and overcast, so we were glad of our GPS and soon, reassuringly, picked up Smith Island on our radar as well as a number of big icebergs grounded on the bank to the north.

We were aiming for Deception Island whose volcanic crater forms an excellent natural harbour. The harbour entrance is a crack in the rim known as `Neptune's Bellows' with a navigable channel a little over a cable wide, but we felt fairly confident since we knew that the Royal Yacht Britannia had passed through when the Duke of Edinburgh visited the British base there in 1957. Eruptions in the 1960s forced the abandonment of the British and Chilean bases, but things seem fairly quiet at the moment and we were glad to get our 20 kg Bruce well dug into the volcanic ash off the old whaling station before another gale hit us with horizontal driving snow.

Next day was calm and sunny. Steam was rising from the beach where hot springs well out of the ash, and we were able to have a splendid bath under a bank of snow and scoop out little shelves for our soap and shaving cream. A large flock of young Antarctic skuas seemed to like it too, together with a few friendly Gentoo and Ad'lie penguins.

Apart from Deception, which is rather black and gloomy, the rest of the South Shetlands and the Antarctic Peninsula are covered with vast snow fields and heavily crevassed glaciers which end abruptly in 100ft ice cliffs. The effect is stunningly beautiful on a sunny day. There are few good anchorages, often between islands with every bare piece of rock covered with penguin rookeries, noisy, smelly but endlessly amusing. Holding is usually not good and it is as well to put lines ashore `four square' whenever possible, but drifting ice can soon change a snug anchorage into a trap when the wind changes, so one needs to be on the ball. By contrast with northern Baffin Bay where we had to wear dark glasses at midnight, here in lower latitudes we had three to four hours' darkness in February when it was as well not to be on the move.

It was a longish hop of sixty miles from Deception to the entrance to the Gerlache Strait, but we had a soldiers breeze and were happy enough to find a rather precarious anchorage for a few hours behind a reef off Macleod Point (6405'S, 6156'W) on LiŠge Island where there were some rather large hunks of ice which appeared to be moving.

On the mainland side of the Strait the weather seemed always to be more stable and we found perfect calm in Foyne Harbour (6433'S, 62°00'W). This was an old harbour used by the whalers and we could have taken lines to bolts set in the rock if we had had to. Around the corner on Enterprise Island we found the rusting hulk shown in that wonderful book Northern Light with, surprisingly, the ketch Merivuokko from Finland tucked in behind. They had broken their propeller on the ice further south and were working out a way of fitting their spare. We could not really help them, so left them in what must be the snuggest little harbour `south of 60'.

Next night at Waterboat Point (64°49'S, 62°52'W) at the entrance to Paradise Harbour, we found a Chilean Air Force working party clearing up the mess around their unoccupied base - something which all nations are now tackling, and not before time. When the young officer came aboard for a drink he said that he had heard of my father-in-law, a Major in the Royal Flying Corps, who had trained their first pilots after the First War, which was rather nice.

Paradise Harbour is reputed to be the most beautiful in Antarctica. It is a deep bay surrounded by 2,000ft peaks and spectacular glaciers, and certainly lived up to its reputation next morning as we motored through fields of brash ice. As we made our way south we met Kotick, a French charter yacht, so I called out to the skipper, Alain Caradec, and asked him to pass a message to Veronica on the ham net. This got to her within hours via Jaques Rial, the Swiss Ambassador in Montevideo who was running the net, who passed it on to the British Naval Attach', Captain Andy Highton. They had kindly agreed to do this when I met them both in Montevideo. Miraculous!

The route south takes one through the Lemaire Channel, a narrow cleft between the mainland and the equally mountainous Booth Island, which narrows down to only two cables and is often blocked with pack ice and large bergs. The entrance is guarded by the dramatic sheer rock face of Cape Renard rising straight up to 2,600ft. Unfortunately as we entered the channel the wind piped up, and the furious gusts soon had us down to bare poles with the engine running to get us through the lulls. It must have been cold as I remember the snow blowing off the tops, more reminiscent of skiing in the Alps than sailing at sea level!

Once we had wriggled through the icebergs, which as we approached had appeared to block the channel, we were out into the calm of the Penola Strait. There was really quite a lot of ice, a mix of bergy bits and old pack, but we were enjoying ourselves weaving through like a slalom course and got a bit too cocky. At one point Laurence hopped onto a large flow for a `photo call' and it looked as though we might get to `Faraday', the BAS base which is reputed to have the best pub in Antarctica. It was not to be.

With less than a mile to go and the radio aerials in sight, we came to a grinding stop between a small berg and a floe in the entrance to the Meek Channel which leads into the base. We had reached 64°15'S - it was time to get out. The glass was dropping like a stone and there were only a couple of hours of daylight left. Looking back it seemed that the leads we had cheerfully motored through only a few minutes before were rapidly closing. A bad moment.

With Laurence on the bow giving me directions we shunted our way back towards the still open leads and in the gathering dusk made our way back to a rather restless anchorage off Petermann Island close to where Charcot wintered in Pourquoi Pas? in 1909 and incidentally close to where Northern Light had just spent the winter. We were not, I may say, intending to do the same if we could help it.

As soon as it was light enough to see, we wove our way back through the Lemaire Channel, if anything more choked than before, to be met with the full force of a near gale from the north-east. With the temperature dropping, spray started to freeze on the guardrails and all over the perspex hood, and it was as well we had both brought skiing goggles for without them it would have been almost impossible to look forward into the stinging spray and there were still plenty of bergy bits and brash to dodge. Fifteen minutes on the helm were quite enough, with the time below spent brewing up hot soup and trying to bang some life back into our fingers.

It seemed an interminable beat up the mile wide Butler Passage between low islands looking like buns that someone had put too much icing on. We were thankful when we at last began to get a bit of a lee from the mountains on Wienke Island and soon we were able to lay the Neumayer Channel to the north and around into the quiet of Port Lockroy (64°49'S, 63°29'W). When we dropped the hook I had to bash the ice off the halliard with a winch handle before we could lower the main, which came clattering down showering the deck with ice.

It had been a long hard day and I felt we had earned the giant hot rum toddy we had been promising ourselves.

Port Lockroy is a little group of rocky islets in a sheltering bay on which is an abandoned British base, which frankly looks a bit of a mess and has now been taken over by several hundred Gentoo penguins. Once we had warmed up a bit we took Assent into a shallow gut between the islands and moored her `four square'. One of the lines passed close to a sleeping Weddel seal, but apart from casting a bleary at us it did not seem a bit disturbed and the penguins went on with their busy round of feeding their dumpy and voracious chicks. The evening sun lit up the glaciers with a rosy glow, we fixed ourselves another toddy and life was good.

Next day as we were going up the Neumayer Channel I recorded the sounds down below as Laurence motored through some ice. The noise was horrifying and I thought Laurence was overdoing it a bit, but the GRP hull of a Contessa 32 is fairly hefty and seemed not to have taken any harm.

We were making for the unoccupied Argentine base in the Melchior Islands (64°20'S, 63°00'W) in Ballmann Bay, and as we went up the Schollaert Channel we were treated to a close-up of two Humpback whales. It was good to see them and we were sorry not to see more whales during our cruise. The base is up a narrow gut between two fingers of rock. There is a colony of fur seals on one of them and as they can be rather aggressive and we had to be away at the crack of dawn, we did not venture ashore and just took our lines to the concrete jetties.

We had eighty miles to go to Deception and it would be a long day, so we were underway at 0430 and had a delightful sail with a F3/4 following breeze up past Brabant Island which looked a picture in the early morning sun. Very cold and clear. When we got to Deception it was after midnight and quite dark, but Neptune's Bellows came up on the radar as clear as daylight and posed no problems. We found Kotick already at anchor in Whalers Bay and it was interesting to meet the crew in the morning.

Kotick is one of three or four charter yachts doing the trip to the Antarctic Peninsula and South Georgia from Ushuaia. She is built in steel to the same design as Damien II and ideally suited to the job, having a massive drop keel, and can take the ground if need be. I believe the charter for a month in US$28,000, which I suppose is not bad!

After another hot bath we sailed across Port Foster to the new craters formed during the 1969 eruptions, and spoke on the VHF with some Spanish vulcanologists at the Argentine base. They pooh-poohed the idea that another eruption was imminent, of which we had been warned.

As we left Deception we were passed by an Argentine cruise ship and shortly after that saw the Society Explorer, better known as the Lindblad Explorer, a regular visitor to Arctic waters. She was obviously `whale watching' and we soon saw some Humpbacks performing on schedule. I get the feeling that it's becoming a little crowded down south.

Our last anchorage was to be Yankee Harbour on Grenwich Island, and we had saved up the best for last. A lovely landlocked bay protected by a long gravel spit, the old terminal moraine, encircled by vast snow fields ending abruptly in vertical ice cliffs. In the morning there had obviously been a massive fall and the whole bay was solid with brash ice glinting in the sun. An unforgettable sight.

We had decided to try the Nelson Channel as a short cut rather than sail around the eastern end of King George Island, even though it is a bit iffy for a small boat with strong tides and overfalls. It was probably a mistake, but the fresh breeze was just free enough to lay the end of the Channel and we got out by the skin of our teeth and squared away on course for the Falklands.

We passed the last of some very big bergy bits aground in 55 fathoms (100m) as we crossed Latitude 62°S and the good old B&G had just clocked another 10,000 miles. In the next three days we covered 450 miles under triple-reefed main, but then the wind eased a bit and Laurence noted in the log `Risk of things becoming too pleasant!'. I added `Yes! I could even sit on the heads without taking a gasping breath and I miss the cold shower in the morning' (caused by a leaking ventilator which I intend to fix). About this time the toggle at the bottom of the roller jib suddenly went with a bang, and I thanked my lucky stars that earlier on Laurence had remembered to go forward and set up the inner forestay which we had detached while we were beating out. It was soon tamed and lashed down and the No 4 set on the inner stay. Assent is much better balanced under this rig in a blow, but one gets lazy with a rolling jib.

It was just like coming home to enter Port Stanley and see all our good friends again. As we had a day or two before Laurence was booked to fly home, we had time to have a beer or two in the Upland Goose and a chance to sail around to Volunteer Point to see the colony of King penguins. A nice way to round off a superb cruise.

After Laurence left I had a week to take the electronics and most of my stuff off and put it into dry storage, and was lucky enough to meet Sally Poncet. Sally and her husband J'r"me are the `gurus' of Antarctic sailing, having spent practically every season there for fifteen years.

Assent has been left afloat alongside FIPASS being well looked after and ready for the Chilean Channels, where Laurence and Gill will join me for Christmas.

Sources of information:

Antarctic Pilot - Hydrographic Office

Northern Light - Rolf Beilke and Debora Shapiro

Southern Ocean Cruising Handbook - Sally and Jerome Poncet, Damien II, available from Bluntisham Books. (See Book Reviews, Flying Fish 1992/1).

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