CHARTER SKIPPERS MARK VAN DE WEG AND CAROLINE THEORET EMBARKED ON A VOYAGE FOR THEMSELVES – TO THE MOST REMOTE ISLANDS OF THE SOUTHERN ATLANTIC, INDIAN OCEAN AND PACIFIC
It’s five years since our first voyage to Antarctica and we need a break from chartering to the Antarctic Peninsula. We love Southern Patagonia and the Antarctic but it’s time to refresh. Too many charterers like us started as sailors with the dream of making a living under sail but no longer hoist the sails: instead we have enormous diesel tanks and bigger superstructures to help us run our guests from one location to the next.
This time it’s just Caroline and me on the crew list aboard Jonathan. We make a last run for fresh vegetables then check out with the Chilean Armada in Puerto Williams. We share a smile when the officer asks if it’s really just the two of us. Well, yes – and the Windpilot of course. We take our time sailing to Caleta Martial, a well-protected anchorage close to Cape Horn. We’re heading back to the Peninsula, but this time it is on our own terms. Life takes time, as a Norwegian trapper once told me after spending another year in his small hut on Spitsbergen.
The Drake Passage is on its best behaviour and three-and-ahalf days later, at Melchior Island, Caroline rows out the first shore line. The anchorage is so small there’s no space to swing, so it’s two shore lines and the anchor with 80m of chain before we can embrace on the foredeck. The glacier wall is close ahead of us, there are seals on the pebble beach behind. All is perfect silence and it’s as if the world is no bigger than our little hideaway.
The Antarctic Peninsula seems to be in slow motion. We cross the Gerlache Strait in very light winds, our Southern Ocean-weight sails hanging listlessly. It is whale watching time: the giants are bubble-net fishing close by. There is no rush. On the Antarctic Peninsula in midsummer the sun only just sets, and dusk and dawn become one. Getting in before dark is weeks away.
SOUTH ORKNEY ICE
With the light wind, we sail over the bar into the Portal Point anchorage. A perfect slow day. But in the morning, we get a reminder we are not alone. We see 12 tourists dressed in uniform gear cruise across the bay. Then it is one Zodiac after another. They look at us as if we are wildlife. We take our coffee inside and watch through our Moitessier plexi-dome to check when they have gone.
A few weeks later we enter Potter’s Cove on King George Island. It’s not at all what it looks like on our charts. The old glacier has receded so much we can pass its front for many miles, and slowly find our way further and further in. Later at the Argentinean scientific station, they show us the retreat of the glacier
