IN TILMAN'S WAKE - PART II

Denise Evans

(The concluding part of Denise's circumnavigation of South America in her Tradewind 33, Dunlin of Wessex.)

In spite of the friendliness of its inhabitants and the facilities which if offers in the way of communications, provisions and repairs, Punta Arenas is an anxious and frustrating place for yachtsmen. The 400 yard long Muelle Prat is built up on piles through which the seas sweep to and fro, whipped up by fierce and changeable winds. There is a constant coming and going of ships of all shapes and sizes, day and night. Mooring alongside can be damaging for larger vessels; for yachts it is potentially destructive. The anchorage assigned to us to the west of the pier was much safer, for the holding ground was good, but it brought other worries. Dunlin pitched and rolled wildly in the shallow water and there were days when it was too rough to go ashore. The fibreglass dinghy and the outboard were too heavy and awkward to haul onto the pier. On days when this manoeuvre was necessary we rowed the Avon and were always glad to reach the protective calm of the oil-slick that extended a couple of hundred yards from the Muelle Prat. Once ashore we left our lifejackets, oilskins and oars with one of the local fishing boats before trudging off into town.

We had barely adjusted to this way of life when Boswell announced his intention to fly home. Although not altogether unexpected, his defection was a blow. A minimum of three crew was required for insurance purposes and finding a substitute in this remote spot was going to be difficult. There were two even more urgent problems however: the gearbox, which was still giving us only two knots in forward gear, needed to come out again. More recently, we had noticed a certain amount of vertical play in the rudder stock, no doubt due to the pounding poor Dunlin had received in the approaches to the Magellan Straits.

Hamilton Carter, the genial Canadian skipper of an American powerboat, very kindly dived down to inspect our rudder. He found some play in the shoe which holds the base of the rudder and offered to dive again on the next fine day and remove the shoe. Our conversations over the VHF on this subject were overheard and reported to the Port Captain, and shortly afterwards Hamilton was expressly forbidden to dive again for us. Here was another setback and our first brush with authority. For reasons which were never made clear to us, Hamilton seemed to have fallen foul of the Armada, whose uniformed presence was everywhere apparent. Fresh faced and smartly dressed young naval officers thronged the port offices. There was a strangely familiar atmosphere about the place which Peter was quick to characterize as `public school'.

We began to make enquiries about having Dunlin lifted out at Asmar, the naval dockyard. On dry land we could attend to both gearbox and rudder. An American yacht, Synia, whose topsides and rubbing-strake bore witness to an encounter with the Meulle Prat, lay moored off the yard; she had been lifted out the year before, at great expense, with transmission problems. The price we were quotes was so ludicrously high that we decided that a lift-out here must be a last resort. Further enquiries about having the boat lifted out by crane elsewhere proved equally unsatisfactory.

We turned our attention to the possibility of careening the boat. Skip Novak, who brought Pelagic into Punta Arenas under jury rudder while we were there, was able to careen her on the beach, but Pelagic has a lifting keel. Dunlin draws 5ft 6in and at Punta Arenas the tidal range is insufficient; it is greatest at either end of the Magellan Straits. Careful scrutiny of the Chilean tide tables for 1991 revealed that there should be just enough water at Puerto Williams on 2nd and 3rd January. We had been told that although the Armada had fewer facilities at Puerto Williams, they were much less busy there and we were more likely to get help. Could we get there in time and would the rudder and the gearbox hold out? It seemed to me that we had no option but to try.

Having let it be known that we were looking for crew, we were surprised one evening to find no fewer than four takers, none of whom had sailed before - an elderly New Zealander, a German, and two very tall, very long haired Dutch boys who were touring South America together on a shoestring. We rowed them all out to the boat for a drink. Dunlin was performing her usual anchor dance and before long two applicants were very sick. After some deliberation Peter and I decided to take the Dutch boys, Herbie and Frank, as far as Puerto Williams on a trial basis. Frank had only one good eye but he had worked on a tug back home and must know something about boats. After all, the Dutch are a seafaring people.

Fuel, water and provisions were taken on board and Peter scoured the town beach for old tyres to use as extra fenders. We collected various items which had been repaired for us by Indu Metal, an obliging and enterprising engineering firm which also made us some new, stainless steel bolts to replace the copper rivets holding the rudder shoe in place. Chilean charts were obtained both for the passage to Puerto Williams and for what we hoped would be our subsequent passage north up through the channels to Valdivia. This was perhaps tempting fate, but we were unlikely to get charts further on for, as Tilman reminded us, beyond Punta Arenas all was desert.

A minutely detailed itinerary and timetable of our proposed route to Puerto Williams was submitted to the Armada, showing every anchorage at which we proposed to stop and on which day, together with the usual information required by officialdom about the boat and her crew. A jaundiced eye was cast over our new recruits, no doubt because of their appearance, but our papers were duly signed and we were able to get away from Punta Arenas at 2330 on 18th December.

The wind was very light and we motored slowly through the night in a southerly direction, with Frank at the helm learning to steer by compass. Herbie retired to the fo'c'sle, blissfully unaware of watch systems, while Peter and I kept an eye on the course. We made slow progress and reached our first anchorage in Bahia Aguila, just past Cabo San Isodro, the following afternoon after tacking for some hours against a strong headwind. It was an attractive place with wonderfully green, close-cropped meadows running down to the shore and steep wooded hills rising behind. We sailed as close to the beach as we dared before anchoring and Peter and Herbie rowed ashore with two long warps which they tied to posts planted in the sand many years before for that purpose. A kedge anchor was dropped astern, which saved us from drifting onto the beach the next morning when the wind changed. Variations on this procedure were to become routine during the next fortnight.

It was cold and grey as we crossed over the Straits towards Seno Magdalena, but we had impressive if rather sinister views of Cabo Froward some ten miles away to starboard and of the mountains behind and beyond it. Looking south towards Tierra del Fuego fifteen miles away it was disappointing to see only the lower part of Monte Sarmiento, reputed to be the highest mountain in the Cordillera Darwin. There were, however, penguin, seal, orca, dolphin and steamer duck to delight the crew. Soon Pta Anxious was identified to port, while close to starboard lay the entrance to Puerto Hope with its steep backcloth of snowpeaks: it looked dark and squally, a breeding ground for williwaws. A few miles further on Bahia Morris opened up. This delightful anchorage had the added advantage of a large buoy at the head of the bay, which spared us the trouble of anchoring and carrying lines ashore.

Next morning as we headed out into Canal Magdalena the wind became flukey and died away altogether when we reached the south end of the Canal where it turns west into Canal Cockburn. Here, at Cabo Turn, the fjord is only a couple of miles wide and narrowed further by extensive beds of kelp. It is fed by impressive glaciers that flow down from Monte Sarmiento but the cloud level was low and once again we were denied a view of the upper slopes. The wind came back from the north-west, very squally, with heavy showers of sleet. Tacking up into the north-west corner of Puerto Soffia, another spectacular anchorage on the north side of Canal Cockburn, was cold and exhausting work. With engine and sails combined we could barely make headway against increasingly violent gusts.

We left Puerto Soffia early on 23rd December, after dipping the oils and noticing with dismay that the gearbox oil needed topping up. The wind in Canal Cockburn was north-east F 5 and we enjoyed an exhilarating run for about 25 miles. Out to the south-west the Pacific was sending in a swell which broke on the Rocas Furias del Oests and other nearer hazards. Successive chubascos swept over us, blotting out the landmarks, but we were able to lay a course for the entrance to Canal Occasion, which separates Peninsula Brecknock at the western extremity of Tierra del Fuego from Isla Aguirre. The rock encumbered entrance, where a wind whipped swell was sending up great plumes of spray, was an awesome sight. Bare, grey, glacier worn peaks rose before us and as we flew with a beam wind through the narrow confines of the Canal the scenery grew ever wilder and more desolate.

We lost the wind for a time but when we turned north-east into Seno Occasion a few miles further on it came back on the nose. Ahead lay a sombre panorama of grey cliffs, seemingly impenetrable, with a dark headwall looming beyond. Somewhere beneath it lay Caleta Brecknock, remote but secure. Tacking again and again in the constricted space between steep granite walls we made our way up to narrows leading to an inner basin, over 20 metres deep with a muddy bottom. It was blowing hard from the north-east, and we made the mistake of anchoring and tying to trees too close to the north-east corner of the Caleta. We had barely done this when the wind went round to the south-west and blew equally hard from that quarter. With our 60 lb fisherman anchor down it was a tiring business re-anchoring and re-tying lines from the western shore so that Dunlin was in a more central position, but well worth doing, for the wind and rain kept up from the west and south-west all night and most of the next day.

Christmas Eve was spent at anchor, baking bread, fetching water and doing the washing in an icy stream that flowed from a hidden lake into the Caleta through a narrow canyon. Our immediate surroundings were so steep and rocky that it was difficult to explore. It was surprising too that anything could live in this austere and forbidding environment. The Antarctic beech, which is so prolific and adaptable everywhere in southern Chile, clung here, like a giant rock plant, to the cliff face, and we were amazed to see among its sheltering leaves the bright feathers of a jay.

Christmas Day was unusually sunny and warm with a light north-west wind, and we made good easting through the intricacies of Paso Brecknock which separates the west end of the peninsula from the outer islands. The clouds lifted to reveal a magnificent panorama of snow peaks to the north, on Tierra del Fuego. Out to sea the view was equally engaging: dozens of small islets in a placid, blue Pacific with hardly any breaking surf. It was almost sunbathing weather as we sailed into Canal Ballenero, and the Dutch boys, who were adapting well to boat life, sat on the foredeck and combed their long hair. Darkness fell as we moored to the heavy buoy at the head of Puerto Fanny in Isla Stewart.

From there onwards the Canal became more constricted as it led eastwards into Canal O'Brien, which in turn led into the north-west arm of the Beagle Channel. Lucky at last with the weather, we creamed along this fabulous waterway with a brisk following wind, enjoying breathtaking views of the icy peaks and snowfields of the Darwin range high above us and of the glaciers that tumbled down into the fjord. The most impressive of these was Ventisquero Italia, which we passed just before turning north into Caleta Olla, a lovely anchorage with a gently shelving sandy beach fringed with trees. While condors wheeled overhead Herbie and Frank, who were keen fishermen, caught an abundance of the much-prized spider king crab, as well as collecting quantities of mussels. These were a welcome addition to our diet though they were never a substitute for the kilo of dry rice, or its equivalent, that had to be cooked every evening for a hungry crew.

On 30th December we left the Caleta with regret and sailed on eastwards towards the disputed area of the Beagle Channel. Here the Argentinian authorities, ever watchful for anyone who might stray into their waters, began to ply us with questions on the VHF. They lost interest, however, when they learned that we were not coming to Ushuaia, a large, sprawling town which could be seen on the northern shore beneath a skyline of jagged peaks. Instead we put into Puerto Navarino on the Chilean shore, and moored to a buoy for the night. We were disturbed in the early hours by the arrival of a French yacht belonging to Alain Caradec, formerly skipper of the Basile of Antarctic fame and now, like a few other enterprising Frenchmen, doing charter work in southern Chile and the Antarctic peninsula.

On arrival at Puerto Williams we were directed to moor alongside the Micalvi, an old hulk lying in a sheltered inlet in the south-west corner of the harbour. It was pleasant to find another British yacht here, the diminutive Xaxero, skippered by Jonathan Selby who kindly took our lines and showed us round. With its dilapidated and rusting superstructure and tilting decks, the Micalvi - which belongs to the Chilean navy and does duty as a yacht club - is not at first a pleasing sight. But it houses a surprisingly snug and well stocked bar and provides a warm and friendly environment not only for naval officers but also for yachtsmen and other visitors to Navarino Island. The panelled bulkheads are covered with relics left by previous sailors, and a well used logbook shows how popular the Beagle Channel has become as a cruising ground in recent years.

After seeing in the New Year it was time to think of careening, an operation which was new to us and made us feel a little nervous. Opposite the Micalvi, on the other side of the creek, was a shelving beach of mud and grit with a few loose stones which the boys cleared away. Aware that we were providing onlookers with entertainment, but firmly disregarding their gloomy forecasts that we would never get her afloat again, we put our faith in the tide tables which predicted that the next two HHWs and LLWS were the highest and lowest respectively for many months. At 0400 the water was already higher than we had yet seen it and there were still two hours to go. There was not need of the engine; warps were rowed across the creek and Dunlin was hauled into position. Weights were stacked on her starboard side and four tyres suspended from the rail with a rope running through them to keep them in place. Halyards were run ashore and extended to reach the trees. Gradually she heeled over to an angle of about 60ø and settled gently on the beach, her topsides nicely cushioned by the tyres.

When the tide had fallen enough Jonathan came over with his angle-grinder and cut off the heads of the three rivets which held the heavy bronze rudder shoe in place. They were badly corroded. Now came a nasty shock - the new bolts made for us by Indu Metal were not long enough. We hurried across to the naval engineers and explained our plight and the need to get the shoe fixed at the next low water. The Chileans were very helpful and by 2300 had made us new bolts out of an odd length of stainless steel. At 0045 on 3rd January Peter and I were struggling by torchlight to knock them back through the shoe. This involved grovelling in the mud trying not to lose anything, and it was touch and go whether we could hammer the third bolt home, then fix it with a locking nut, before the water, already lapping round Peter's wrists, got too deep. We were just in time and retired wearily for a few hour's sleep - not to our bunks, which were at a crazy angle, but to the boat's sides and locker fronts. I woke as Dunlin began to right herself in the early morning. The keel had dug itself into the mud, but with a kedge out ahead and a halyard to a pontoon in mid creek we managed to rock her free.

Before the careening I had told Frank and Herbie that we could not take them any further. I did not know how long we might have to spend in Puerto Williams getting the gearbox sorted out and in the event we were there for forty days. The boys were naturally rather upset but soon consoled when they had the offer of a lift to Ushuaia on a German yacht. From there they could get across to the Argentine mainland and so make their way back by stages to Rio, where their flight home was already booked.

Peter now got down to the hateful job of lifting out the gearbox, not once but several times. Advice was sought and the help of the Chilean engineers enlisted. They kindly allowed us to strip it down in their workshops, where we found that it had been wrongly reassembled back in Rio. A tired bearing was renewed and the whole contraption put together again and lifted back into the boat. By adjusting the selector we now had more power in forward gear, but almost none in reverse. Thinking that we could perhaps live with this we decided to have a trial run down to Cape Horn and back. This meant, of course, that we were uninsured, but only temporarily as my husband had managed to find us a new crew who was due to join us in a week's time.

The cruise from Puerto Williams to the Horn, about eighty miles away, has become a classic for visiting yachts, several of which had been down there in the fine weather which prevailed while we were wrestling with our gearbox. When we left on 13th January and made our was past Gable Island and turned south into Paso Picton the weather was much less settled. After a night in Puerto Toro we left the shelter of Navarino Island and tacked across Bahia Nassau towards the Woolaston group which, in outline, looks rather like Skye and Rum. It was exciting to beat through the narrow and twisting Canal Bravo, which leads south-west into Canal Franklin. Whales were blowing close by, the spume from their lungs hanging for a moment in the wind. We dropped anchor in Caleta Martial on the north-east corner of Isla Herschel, and were presently joined by Torakina 2, forty-one days out of New Zealand and on passage to the Falklands. Her solo skipper, Peter Brown, came over for a very sociable evening. The glass was rising fast and in the night it started to blow hard. Both yachts spent the following day at anchor, but it was too rough to get together.

By the morning of 16th January the glass was falling again and the cloud was very low. We up-anchored at 0430 and headed for the Paso al Mar del Sur. With two reefs and a small jib we sped towards the narrows between Isla Herschel and Isla Deceit in decreasing visibility and rain. The wind was gusting F 7/8 in the rachas and as we crossed the few miles separating us from Isla de Hornos we completely lost sight of the island. At times we could see the vicious looking stacks on the south-east end of Isla Deceit looming through the mist. Peter spoke on the VHF to an invisible cruise ship, the Illyria, some six miles away to the east, then Isla de Hornos loomed up again and we could make out the rocks on its south-east end. We were heading straight for them and steered out to clear them until we could see the outline of the Cape itself beginning to emerge. Peter took one or two murky photos, and then disheartened by the lack of visibility and the increasingly violent squalls we turned back regretfully to Caleta Martial. Here we found the gearbox was leaking oil badly, which was even more depressing in view of all the work we had put into it. There was nothing for it but to make tracks for Puerto Williams and phone home, asking for a new gearbox to be sent out to us from distant Denmark.

It was embarrassing on his arrival to have to tell Jack that we were faced with another long delay, especially as he had flown out post haste to join us, but he was philosophical and decided to put in some hill walking in the Dietes de Navarino. The serrated outline of this small range of snow-capped mountains six or seven miles south-west of us looked engaging from our creek - reaching it was another matter. First came a dense and, in places, impenetrable forest of Antarctic beech that covered several hundred feet of the hillside. Here the large scale depredations of beavers, particularly near the numerous streams and lakes, meant that one had to climb endlessly over fallen tree trunks. I soon tired of this slow motion hurdling, though Jack, to his credit, actually reached the top of one of the Dientes.

Meanwhile Peter had taken to sailing the fibreglass dinghy in the bay. Shortly after his first sortie we were startled when a powerful inflatable, manned by two naval ratings, zoomed up and Peter was hauled off to see the Port Captain, who reprimanded him for not asking for permission to sail the dinghy. We had not realized that authorization was needed for the movement of any craft, however small, in and around the harbour.

Although spare parts imported for yachts in transit are not dutiable under Chilean law, everyone warned us how difficult and time-consuming it was to get them once they were in the hands of the Customs. We were exceptionally lucky in finding two indefatigable helpers. The first was Captain Bollo, head of the Engineers at Puerto Williams, who had already given us a great deal of his time when we were trying to mend the old gearbox. The second was Bernardo Matte, a Chilean yachtsman who had put into Puerto Williams in his elegant Swan. He was able to find out when the new gearbox had arrived in Santiago, and to make sure that it reached Punta Arenas. Once it was there, Captain Bollo arranged to have it shipped to Puerto Williams on a naval boat. Incredibly that boat also developed engine trouble, which meant more delay, but eventually, on 8th February, our new gearbox arrived and the good Captain Bollo brought it to the Micalvi in person. Adept by now at gearbox installation, Peter lost no time in connecting it up and realigning the engine. We were ready to leave Puerto Williams at dawn next day.

We made our way back along the Beagle Channel as quickly as we could, for it was getting late in the season and I was anxious to get up north through the channels, past the notorious Golfo de Penas and out into the Pacific before bad weather set in. We caught up with a German sloop, Koller, and sailed in company back to Canal Cockburn and through Canal Acwalisnan, which is poorly charted but offers an attractive short cut through to the Magellan Straits. Leaving our new friends in Seno Pedro, we turned north-west into the Straits and pushed on in the same direction for the next 100 miles, sailing or motor-sailing by day, for the wind was always heading us, and anchoring at night.

When we got near Cabo Tamar, however, near the west end of the Magellan Straits, we decided to press on through the hours of darkness in a northerly direction towards the entrance to Canal Smyth. We had an anxious passage: a westerly gale sprang up and with it the sea, which is open here to the Pacific, and though at first we had the lights of Tamar and Felix to guide us they were soon obscured in the murk. We had no radar, but at least the satnav was working again. What with leeway and a marked easterly set it took us many hours to round Tamar Island and clear the Stragglers, a dangerous group of islets, rocks and wrecks which lay close to starboard. In the early hours of 20th February we raised the light on Islote Fairway, and dawn found us entering Canal Smyth.

The so-called Patagonian Channels consist of an intricate series of inner leads which enable vessels of all but the largest size to avoid 300 miles of open Pacific, between the Magellan Straits and the Golfo de Penas. For the most part steep-to, these fjords, many of which have still not been sounded, wind through the wildest and most desolate mountain country imaginable. Except for the odd settlement or checkpost the region is almost wholly uninhabited, and the fear of being stranded here through some accident is well founded for the only communication possible is with passing ships. There is a wealth of wildlife, and innumerable sheltered anchorages. Most of these are wooded, making it easier to tie ashore for the night. This was nearly always our practice, for we experienced atrocious weather for days on end, with gale force northerly winds, deluges of rain and frequent white-outs. In our last anchorage before we emerged from Canal Meissier into the Golfo de Penas we heard reports from a southbound vessel of winds of 70 knots in the gulf, and it was with some misgiving that we launched out across this infamous stretch of water. It soon began to live up to its reputation - with the wind in our teeth and heavy seas it took 24 hours to gain an offing.

Once we were out in the Pacific, however, everything changed and we enjoyed following winds, a favourable current and fine weather almost up to the Gulf of Panama. We put into Valdivia for a few days and sailed from there to Algarrobo, where we had Dunlin lifted out and antifouled. Because of the cholera epidemic, which by now had reached Ecuador, we decided to sail direct to Panama and transited the canal at the end of April. On 1st May we left Cristobal for Bermuda via the Yucatan, continuing on 1st June after a week in St George's for an uneventful Atlantic crossing on a Great Circle route. On 26th June we sailed over Caernarvon Bar and back into the Menai Straits, just under a year after leaving in July 1990.