Position: 64:45.84S 064:04.86W
Palmer Station
Date: 17 January 2012.
So, we’d settled ourselves down for a peaceful night with
the anchor down and two lines ashore had we? The wind, which had been light and
from the south during the cloudless sunny day picked up a little in the evening
as a bank of cloud came in from the north west. At 0130 Peter, who was on ice
and anchor watch, called me on deck. The wind had picked up considerably,
blowing 35 to 40 knots from the northwest. The wind was now on our beam,
strapped as we were between our anchor and the two long ropes that were tied to
the shore, secured by wire strops that had been placed over rocks. Peter was
concerned as he thought we had swung way across the channel and we were getting
close to the rocks off the island the other side.
When we arrived in Antarctica two weeks ago it was
completely light all night, the sun just over the horizon. But now the nights
are closing in. Each night it becomes noticeably more dark and in the middle of
the night now, it is not fully dark but it is distinctly gloomy. The rope on the
windward side seemed too slack so we started to tighten it. We were hauling it
in rather too easily and it quickly became apparent that it had detached itself
from its rock. So that was why the boat had swung. There was now just the last
remaining line holding our stern to the shore, and it was bar tight. If that
broke, Mina2 would very quickly swing round and be on the rocks downwind of us.
We needed to do something and do it fast.
I scrambled Ewan, and Peter dived down below to get his
foul weather gear, boots and lifejacket on. They lowered the dinghy (with some
difficulty as our bar-taut line was lying obliquely underneath it). They shot
off in the now boisterous waves and driving icy sleet towards the shore. Ewan
leapt ashore with the spare line and wire strop and re-secured it to a different
rock, whilst Peter held the dinghy steady on the rocks as the surf pounded the
shore. By now Richard, who had been alerted to the emergency by the sound of the
engine running as a contingency, had joined me on deck. With the handheld VHF
Ewan radioed back to us that the line was now secure and Richard and I hauled it
tight, secured it to a winch and winched it tighter still. Slowly Mina 2 crabbed
round and away from the rocks. The boys came back to the boat. The wind was
still increasing and both lines were straining. We decided to put out a third
line, so we went through the same procedure, my heart in my mouth as I saw these
two brave young men disappear once more in the bucketing dinghy into the glim
across the icy waves. Once we had the third line braced up, we all felt much
more secure and went below for a hot drink.
And where, might you ask, was Venetia during this
life-threatening crisis? Was she down below brewing up hot drinks for our
returning heroes? No, she was not. Was she standing by the anchor chain ready to
cut it away to allow us to escape from its clutches as it swung us onto the
rocks when the final rope snapped under the strain of the storm-force winds? No,
she was not. Venetia, was curled up in her bunk fast asleep during the entire
episode. Snoopy was nowhere to be seen either. He had legged it to join Venetia
the moment the trouble started.
The wind continued to howl throughout the night, heeling
the boat over during the squalls.
Highest wind speed recorded was 58 knots.
This morning the wind was still strong at 40 to 45 knots,
so we decided to stay put. Even going ashore for a stroll amongst the Adelie
penguins and the Elephant seals would not be without risk. So it was a lazy day
with many of us catching up on sleep and reading. The one thing we didn’t have
to contend with last night, thank God, was ice but today, as the wind swung
round a little, the odd berg started moving slowly down the channel towards us.
This afternoon, one small berg, about 2 metres high and 10 metres long and wide
came bumbling along and decided its chosen route would be between us and the
shore, exactly where our three shorelines were. It may only have been two metres
high but there was probably another 10 metres below the water. It probably
weighed close on 1000 tons so slicing through three ropes with a breaking strain
of just 5 tons each would not have represented a problem. Action stations again.
Our SBS Rapid Reaction team donned their assault gear again and leapt into the
dinghy. As the berg was touching the first of the ropes, the cockpit crew
slackened it off and the boys managed to flick it over the front of the berg and
along its top. Whilst re-tightening the first line we were letting off the
second line for the same treatment. It was going well. But the third line got
jammed on a protruding piece of ice. The berg continued its destructive course
as we in the cockpit let out more and more line. The bitter end of the line
however got jammed and as the line got tighter and tighter, I rushed below,
grabbed a sharp knife and cut the rope before it started pulling the stanchions
off the deck. It whiplashed into the water, went slack and was recovered and
brought back to the boat by the SBS team for re-connection whilst the berg went
majestically on its way.
Over the last few days, I have been studying the weather
charts which we pick up by satellite phone, looking for a window in the weather
for the 580-mile four day crossing of the Drake Passage, past Cape Horn and back
to the comparative safety of the Beagle Channel.
The return journey across the Drake is the most perilous
part of the entire expedition. The winds in the Drake are generally very strong
and from the west or northwest. Whereas on the way over, sailing east of south,
the winds are most often on your beam or slightly behind you, on the way back
you are punching into the enormous seas unless you get lucky. Weather forecasts
nowadays are pretty accurate over a couple of days, but looking out over four or
five days they become much less reliable. The worst of the Drake weather tends
to be round Cape Horn at the north of the passage and that is four days after
you commit yourself and set sail. By the time you get there the forecasts can
have changed dramatically, and rather than a benign crossing you can find
yourself in the middle of a screaming Southern Ocean storm with enormous seas.
To cap it all, as you approach Cape Horn you reach the continental shelf. The
sea bed rises from several thousand metres to a few hundred metres and the
enormous waves that accompany the storms are known to break violently and
dangerously.
We had identified a window starting possibly this
Wednesday. This was a couple of days sooner than I had hoped for, but the next
window might not appear for a week or more. I have subscribed to a weather
routeing service for yachts which is run by a bunch of qualified meteorologists
who are also sailors. The data they have access to is a lot more comprehensive
than the forecasts I can pick up, and with their own expert interpretation of
the weather systems and the local conditions they can provide a better insight
into the conditions we might expect. They emailed me this afternoon, confirming
that the only window on the horizon was to start tomorrow evening (Wednesday).
Even then, as the forecast looks now, it would be a race against time to get
past Cape Horn and into the safety of the channels as early as possible on
Sunday to avoid a good slapping from a deep low pressure system that is expected
at that time. If it transpires that the front comes through sooner than
currently forecast we will simply have to grit our teeth and battle it out.
So early tomorrow morning we will be leaving our
anchorage at Palmer, get everything lashed down and make our way 70 miles north,
past the Melchior Islands and out into the Drake Passage.
