Position: 55° 03.335S 069° 47.644W
Caleta Mina
Date: 5 March 2012
Yesterday was our second full day in Coloane. There were
still lots to explore. After breakfast we took the dinghy round a headland on
the south side of the bay and clambered up a small hill and over rocks worn
smooth by ancient glaciers until we came to the snout of the glacier that
overlooks the bay. Glaciers we had come across up until now ended abruptly in
vertical walls of ice hundreds of feet high that plummeted into the depths of
the fjord. This one had receded to the point where it sloped to nothing on the
bare rock. So we were able to clamber onto the glacier for a slippery
walk.
And not just on to the glacier. Andrew walked under the
lip of the glacier to explore an ice cavern and found that he was able to make
his way under the glacier right to the front where he re-emerged. Although I
suspect that the snout of this glacier had not collapsed for several years but
had just been ever so slowly melting, it took someone with stronger nerves than
mine to try this out.
We then took the dinghy further round the bay to the
southeastern corner for a hike up a hill between two of the waterfalls that
brought the meltwater down to the bay. As we got out of the dinghy we were
confronted by evidence of lots of beaver work and there, just in front of us was
a large pond, dammed by beavers with their homely mound in the middle. We
climbed to the top of the hill over the crest of which was another, larger, lake
into which a stream of meltwater flowed. Yet again, this lake had been created
by beavers, but this time their dam was of spectacular proportions – about 50
metres long, and I have a photograph of Andrew (who is nearly two metres tall)
standing at the base of the dam, the lip being another metre higher than him.
So it would appear that beavers are not quite the
scarcity that I thought they might have been. In fact, the whole place would
seem to be awash with them. Mind you, I’m probably right in suspecting that the
beavers we had discovered the previous evening had been previously unseen by
humans – why would you trample through impossible boggy terrain when you have
even better examples of beavers with much easier access pretty much on your
doorstep?
This morning we left Estéro Coloane and nipped only a
couple of miles across the Brazo Sudoeste to Isla Gordon for a bit of
exploration. Just opposite Coloane is a fjord with two bays at the entrance, one
on each side, with a high island, Isla El Gorro, between them. First of all we
wanted to see if we could transit the narrow channel behind the back of El
Gorro. We inched our way through, eye on the depth sounder, and found there was
plenty of water. No problem. I felt like Magellan. But I could have saved myself
the trouble had I bothered to look in the Italian Guide where I later found a
two line note saying that the channel was deep and clear.
Of the two bays, the western bay is featured in the
Italian Guide with two anchorages detailed. But there was no information on the
eastern bay so off we went in full exploration mode to investigate. We went in
to the small bay and it looked ideal: not so deep you couldn’t get the anchor
down; not so shallow as to deprive us of access; sufficient accessible trees to
tie ropes to, and none of the telltale signs of the bay being subject to
williwaws (trees growing sideways or, even worse, no trees at all), and a good
hike over the hills at the back to a couple of pretty lakes. It was also pretty
and had the obligatory river rapids chortling in to the end of the bay. So here
we are, anchored and tied in, in an as yet un-named bay.
Whilst going through the process of anchoring and tying
in, I had difficulty getting either the DS or Andrew to concentrate on the job
in hand due to their excitement that the water in the bay seemed to be blood
red. The bay was absolutely crammed with shrimp-like krill, moving round in
shoals so dense that you could not see through them – they looked like large red
balls moving around the water. Krill are the staple diet of the larger baleen
whales and I was concerned that with more than a good meal in here, we would
suddenly find an enormous Sei whale muscling in to join us in the small bay. The
moment we were tied in, Andrew and the DS were planning how to catch a tasty
lunch. As I had thrown out the child’s shrimping net that the DS had insisted I
use to scoop jellyfish out of the water whilst she was swimming in the
Mediterranean, they were devising their own contraptions for catching the krill.
Andrew had purloined one of my green bags in which I kept the tying-in lines,
using bits of wire and lengths of wood to keep its jaws open, whilst the DS had
tied a wooden pole to a colander. Off they went in the dinghy like excited
children, playing for what seemed like hours, but failing to catch even one
specimen so that we couldn’t even identify which species it was. As Gret Krill
Hunts go, this one was completely useless.
There are so many bays and islands in the whole of this
region, and so few people who come here that many are still un-named – like the
bay we are in. So it is one of the few places left on earth where there is the
possibility naming a geographical feature. Indeed there have been a number of
Royal Cruising Club members whose cruises in the region have been remembered in
this way: Caleta Balaena, Caleta Sadko, Angostura Mischief, Isla Tilman, and
probably several more of which I’m not aware. All these places were discovered
in the sense that no one had known of their existence before or used them, and
they were justifiably named after the discoverer or his vessel. But only
spending a few short weeks down here, I don’t have time for all that pioneering
exploration stuff, and although I’m certain that we aren’t the first boat to
make use of this anchorage, nevertheless I hereby name the anchorage at 55°
03.33S 069° 47.64 “Caleta Mina” – not that anyone will know or
care.
One thing we have been surprised and delighted about over
the last week has been the dramatic change in the weather. On our first cruise
of the channels just a month ago, the norm was a full gale of wind, almost
sub-zero temperatures and a relentless precipitation of rain/sleet/snow. Almost
like someone throwing a switch, about a week ago, the weather transformed. The
winds went light. The temperature soared from near zero to double figures
(because the wind had shifted from predominantly southwesterly (from the
Antarctic) to northwesterly), and we started seeing more and more of this blue
colour in the sky rather than the variform grey we had been used
to.
The Tierra Del Fuego aficionados say that the best time
to cruise down here is in the austral winter – not the summer. For technical
meteorological reasons, there is less wind and more clear blue skies. The
downside is that the days are very much shorter, and it is so cold that some of
the bays freeze over and become inaccessible.
I’m just wondering, moving rapidly from summer to autumn
as we are at the moment, whether we aren’t in that honeymoon period when the
weather systems have changed to give less wind and more sun, but the temperature
has yet to plummet. To support this theory (which may be – literally – blown
apart next week when the southwesterly storms and snow return), we have noticed
that some of the leaves on the ubiquitous beech trees are beginning to turn from
vibrant green to orange or red. Every day, we notice more and more of them. But,
for the moment, we are just grateful for what we have – a perfect cruising
ground and weather that doesn’t turn its exploration into an SAS survival
exercise.
