Mina2 Heads North for the First Time in Six
Years
Position: 61:38.26S 065:58.99W
Date / Time: 19 January 2012 2200 (20 Jan 0100
UTC)
Yesterday morning Ewan and Peter went ashore and cast off
our shore lines and we swung to our anchor whilst we carried out all the work to
prepare Mina2 for the return crossing of Drake Passage, including winching the
dinghy onto the foredeck, deflating it and lashing it down with ratchet straps.
This is something we don’t normally do. Typically we sail with the dinghy
strapped under davits (like two cranes) at the back of the boat. But with the
risk in these waters of being pooped and having an enormous wave crash onto the
dinghy on the davits, the results would be disastrous. The whole thing took two
hours, and we were ready to go. But before we got to the Drake we had one last
70 mile cruise through the islands of the peninsula through the Neumayer and
Scholearts Channels, and, lastly through the Melchior Islands. This route passes
spectacular avenues of mountains and enormous glaciers and you can almost
guarantee to get lots of sightings of Humpback whales. Surprisingly and not as
forecast, the wind died to nothing. The water was like a mirror as we motored
almost the whole way. Disappointingly the visibility closed right in to no more
than half a mile. We had to have the radar on to avoid the enormous icebergs
that loomed out of the mist, and we could barely see the shore let alone the
mountains. And not a whale to be seen.
There was a slight feeling of anticlimax on board, but as
we approached the Melchior Islands in the late afternoon the mist cleared, the
sun came out and there was Antarctica glistening in all her glory. A brilliant
send-off to a life-changing cruise.
Once through the Melchior Islands, the long rolling swell
of the Southern Ocean came in. The wind was moderate and slightly forward of the
beam and we were off, for better or worse, across the Drake.
24 hours later and we are still making excellent progress
and we’re now more than a quarter of the way across. The sailing has been good,
although after two full weeks of being horizontal (the boat and Venetia that is)
we’re having to get used to life at a 30 degree angle. Just getting to the gin
bottle is like climbing Everest.
The one thing that lingers at the back of my mind are the
very strong winds and waves that are forecast for the last 12 hours before we
round Cape Horn and find the protection of the land. I think to an extent my
anxiety is induced by the reputation of the Horn for giving you a whipping. Nor
does it help having access to forecasts updated every six hours. Rather than
enjoying then sailing I am tending to spend too much time hunched over the
computer analysing every new forecast that comes in. In any event, this boat,
now we’re out of the ice, can take anything. So can the crew. We have a really
strong competent bunch on board, so perhaps I should relax more and enjoy the
experience.
Apart from anything else, we have some milestones to look
forward to like sailing in the South Pacific. We are heading west of our direct
line to Cape Horn. A line due south of Cape Horn marks the division between the
Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. Not many of us have sailed in the South
Pacific, so that will be worth a bit of a celebration, and we can put Peter and
Ewan on watch for any desert islands with shapely hul-hula girls in grass
skirts. At about the same time we
will passing from the Screaming Sixties to the Furious Fifties at which point we
will officially be out of Antarctic Waters and we will be able to throw
biodegradable rubbish overboard rather than feeding it into the narrow cap of
the big bin strapped on the aft deck. For some reason Richard is obsessed by the
need to throw his apple cores overboard and has felt a deep frustration that
he’s been unable to do so. The reason for this rule under the Antarctic Treaty
is that the water is so cold that none of the biodegrading microbes can survive
here, so anything thrown in the water stays there floating around for ever.
And talking of it being too cold for anything to grow,
that also applies to beards. It’s too cold to shave so we’ve all been growing
beards (with the exception of Venetia – so I assume she must be shaving). But
the facial hair that was positively shooting out for the first few days before
we got to the Antarctic Convergence and the temperature dropped to freezing, has
stopped dead in its tracks ever since. Peter’s OK because he had a beard before
we set off, but the rest of us after three weeks don’t look so much like Captain
Birdseye as scruffy old tramps (Richard says we probably smell like scruffy old
tramps as well).
