GREAT SEAMANSHIP
AN ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE SEES JOE PHELAN TRAPPED INSIDE A VOLCANIC CALDERA WITH 50-KNOT WINDS HOWLING
Joe Phelan is one of Ireland’s great sailors. With his wife and equal partner Trish he has been quietly standing out from the crowd for over 50 years, with dinghy trophies, Fastnet silverware and many a wild cruise under their belts. He has held flag office at commodore level in several high-ranking yacht clubs and managed all this alongside a distinguished career in medical science.
In 2004/05 Joe signed on as right-hand man to ownerskipper Peter Killen of Malahide, bound for Antarctica in Pure Magic, a 54ft Amel Super Maramu ketch. The book of this voyage with fellow rovers from the Dublin/Malahide region forms a big part of what is, in a sense, an autobiography of Joe Phelan. It is called Sailing To Antarctica because to Joe, now 81, this voyage has been the highlight of his time on the water.
Descriptions in the Antarctica part of the book take the form of emails sent at sea, interspersed with text written later. This gives it a unique, immediate feeling which, coupled with a quintessentially Irish humour, makes for a great read. We join the shipmates in heavy going seas approaching Deception Island in search of respite from the gale. Unusual adventures await...
Thursday 23 December 2004 at 0900, Deception Island Those of you who have read the blog should by now know we had a little difficulty yesterday.
Indeed, over 50 knots of difficulty. As we came through the gut, that is the narrow entrance to the caldera, the echo sounder failed. Great! After that we rounded up into Whalers Bay and went to within 2m of the beach, the water shelves quite rapidly. Dropped the hook and we drifted back pulling all the chain and the hook through the water at speed as the boat was pushed by winds which were the wrong side of 50.
The inside of this volcano is about 5 miles long by 3.5 wide. We were sharing this with a cruise ship and both of us began to doodle around as one does when one can’t anchor; except that the visibility was down to about 100m, it was snowing hard and for most of the circuit of the volcano the walls rose sheer above the water. We circled each other gingerly using radar to warn us of each other and the walls of this place. There was no way we could get to the open sea through the gut as the wind was blowing almost straight in.
Our engine was running at about 2500 revs to maintain steerage and so we continued ‘til about 1130 when Pete decided enough was enough and called up a small Argentine Naval resupply
