Tawodi Sailing Adventures

One day left in this year.  We´re dodging rain squalls between trips to the fuel station and grocery store but yesterday, for two hours, the temperature climbed enough that  we took off our jackets.  And yesterday Stephen went to fly his kite. The wind climbed from 20 knots to 35 and he came home with grass stained jeans after being dragged about by his kite.  Today it occasionally snows with winds gusting to 40 knots.  This evening it might be calm or not.

That´s the thing about Ushuaia- the mountains demand constant photographic attention, art splays itself between graffiti and a body can´t walk ten steps without encountering another opportunity to take in some meat, chocolate or wine but it´s the weather that keeps it interesting.  There´s so much of it.

Cruise ships come and go as does the Antarctic charter fleet and we watch and wait.  Reprovisioned and refueled we are held here by Pancho, the metal fabricator who´s making us a new water blade for our windvane.   Hopefully we´ll be untied and on our way east within a day or two.  Until then we are entertained by the view, the bounty of good food to be had and the weather. 

Wishing everyone a Happy, Safe and Prosperous New Year.

We rounded Cape Horn on December 21st.  We spent one night in Port Williams, Chile and are now safely tied up in Ushuaia, Argentina.  We hope everyone has a safe and happy Christmas.  We´re going to give ourselves the gift of a few days wandering the city and marveling at the mountains that surround us.

54.45 S 74.23 W About 300 miles from Cape Horn
The Captain tends toward being unimpressed. Conditions and circumstances; the worse they get the more disaffected he becomes. Many times shifting expressions of uncertainty or fear are met with a shrug and a nod. He’s a snapshot of world-weariness- a man that’s experienced so much that little surprises. Resistant to astonishment and then there’s the onus of being The Captain. A job that curves his reactions around a ball of outward calm if only to maintain an unruffled crew. In that capacity he’s got himself quite a task. I tend to unruffle easily.

Despite the heft and necessity of all that nonchalance, in this place there’s something that’s got him. Here there’s water so massive that, for a moment, world weariness is scoured down to innocence. Two days ago our watery highway evolved beyond expectation. Puffed up by 50 knot winds, the ocean became a thing that left the Captain staring in awe. It washed over us, it shoved, it slapped, it stampeded. The Captain thought it was like being a child suddenly caught in the middle of a rush of enraged, steroid enhanced football players. I thought it was like being the football.

We watched with morbid curiosity- a look out a window often affected a frozen, mouth open moment. Outside careened an unimaginable view- walls of water rolling and breaking. Walls of water so much larger than any part of us. They flooded our cockpit, lifted our boat and shoved our windows under the weight of their momentum.

And then twelve hours later the wind was gone, the seas calm and the birds were fishing again.

And the Captain was back to his impervious self. The familiar shrugging Captain except every now and again he recalls those waves and shakes his head in wonder.

50.02 S 84.34 W 720 miles to Cape Horn.
The water’s 42 degrees. The air’s 50 degrees and the wind’s blowing anywhere between 19 and 40 knots. Wait 5 minutes and it will change, such is the end of spring in the Southern Ocean. We have slipped out of the roaring forties and into the furious fifties after three days of lumbering along through a gale.

Appalling magnificence. After our amount of weather those are the two words for this bowl of water we’re in. There are other words but they describe our human conceit, courage and cowardice as we tumble forward. As for the environment and our gale; they are large, wet, reckless and powerful. By their whim we can be pinned down or hurled forward or stalled completely. By their whim we struggle with wet gloves, cold feet and uncertain nights. Steel gray punctuated by moments of blue and yellow;

the water and sky come at us with enormous apathy and we are diminished just as we are exalted. Set aside apprehension and for a moment we can just watch the size, the shine and force rolling around us. It is appalling and it is magnificent.

Three days ago we began the gale with far too much canvas. It was a thrilling way to enter into this community of weather and gave us an hour of aerobic activity no piece of gym equipment could provide. Since then we have been under headsail alone, a drogue dragging some 300 feet behind us, on one tack or another as the wind demands. We hope to reach the southern most point of our journey within a week. Until then we sail on, watch our weather, dry out our clothes and laugh at the birds that play

in it all as if it were nothing worth note.

41.11 S 102.39 W About 1600 miles to Cape Horn
Naked Sailing left us about 1000 miles ago and, we assume, remains adrift north of Easter Island. That’s the last we saw of it. Sliding down our planet towards the icy bottom our latitude increases, our daylight expands but other numbers fall precipitously. The air temperature refuses any number above sixty degrees and the water temperature drops below 50. Perhaps it’s not quite the arctic, icicles forming in our hair kind of cold but it’s bitter enough that we’ve rekindled relations with our

hats, gloves and long underwear.

Three days of rain and wind have left us broad reaching under snappy, clear skies. Able to venture outside without battling the slow trickle of icy drizzle seeping past our collars we can, once again, watch the birds. Not much else comes around here and not much else could be as lively as the shearwaters. They take whatever the wind offers and duck, weave and dive at dizzying speeds with barely a flap of the wing. We’ve watched them for thousands of miles; ecstatic, entertaining lines of feather

and sinew but today they were dwarfed, humbled just a bit.

Today is the first day we have been graced by the giant albatross of the southern oceans. Huge, parenthetical shapes bracketing the wind in effortless swoops. Seemingly slow because of their size these birds roll over the ocean, scooping wind off the waves, meandering past like royalty on parade. They stretch across a span that covers close to nine feet and leave the shearwaters looking like tiny, hyperactive children.

And we, a wedge of line, poles, fabric and hull, waddle along like a hybrid puppet while they slope away barely glancing back. Enormous birds, locking their wings and floating easily over one of the harshest slices of our planet while we struggle and fidget, hoping our efforts are good enough to carry us forward. Funny how hard we work to mimic Nature and how easily Nature puts our efforts in their place. Funny how wonderful it is to experience our proper placement.

30.35 S 108.41 W 200 miles or so south of Easter Island
Death by a thousand paper cuts. I heard that quip during an economic downturn that cost a few their jobs. Complaint, comment, truth, perhaps it was all of the above.

Life by a thousand kindnesses. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one but I’m thinking it.

We are waddling our way south, one sail to one side, the other opposing it. We put one wing down and then the other. Side to side we go like an uncertain penguin. It’s not bad until someone wants dinner and then it’s a matter of keeping a hand free for the run-away tomato. And it’s got speed, this roll, miles to be made in its drunken motion, and it’s got time to reflect on all that hasn’t been mentioned.

The kindness of a Captain capable enough to need none and generous enough to include the most awkward of souls. Has that been recorded, taken into account? It’s lost at times; his competence, lost in the deluge of time spent in a space with nothing but wind, leaks and odd society. The odd society being me and my horrible sense of direction, atrocious vision, lack of competence, juvenile sense of humor and pride that I jovially wrap all together and label: Whimsy.

There’s only the two of us and out of that number only one owns the capacity to pull this venture off. The one is the Captain. The other half of two stumbles and frequently mistakes her right for her left. Perhaps kindness doesn’t describe it well. Perhaps courage would be a better word for what the Captain’s undertaken. The bottom of the world on a small sailboat with a girl who would be only mildly safer on land, inside, in body armor and a helmet.

It’s a kindness he’s given me, this adventure, this life I would not otherwise experience.

And then there’s each person reading this. Reading despite the lack of photographic evidence to back up our claims, despite the language of a stumbling, half-blind, whimsical author. Every eye that takes up these words and takes up our journey leaves behind a kindness; the kindness of interest and concern.

In a world stripped raw by a harried rush to save, make and buy time; the time given to reading about us and our small ambitions is a kindness. Proper thanks seem hard to manufacture but we give the best we can as we waddle our way south towards the roaring bits of the southern ocean and Cape Horn and beyond.

Leaving Easter Island.
We arrived on Friday. On Saturday, November 29th, we entertained a coterie of Chilean bureaucrats- seven to be precise. We signed papers, answered questions and watched as freezer, honey and fruit were sealed against use, upon pain of inconvenience and/or all the money we might have. We’ve schlepped 60 gallons of diesel back to the boat. Two rented bicycles of industrial proportion helped us pedal our butts from statue site to statue site and waited patiently while we, among a garden variety of

ultra-pale tourists, took photo after photo. The Captain’s scrubbed the barnacles off the bottom of Tawodi. Fresh vegetables have made their way aboard. The leaking windows have been attacked by a force of fasteners rarely seen in nature and I scrubbed the last of the island’s dirt off my ankles this morning.

Sure the island has huge, odd statues scattered across it’s face. That’s why there’s a plane landing here every day. That’s why you can’t swing a cat without hitting someone slung with a camera, outfitted in a safari vest and wearing sensible shoes. That’s why gas station, grocery store and clothing store alike sell miniature representations of said statues.

But what about water so clear a person can see the bottom,70 feet down, and surf that pounds the shore with crystalline blue enormity? And then there are the dogs. More than tourists, statues, taxi’s and South American bureaucrats- the number of dogs overwhelms. None collared, none licensed and none possessed by a single angry stitch of fur. And then there are the horses. Herds of horses dotting the hills and then a scattering of horses being ridden through town. The rest is what one would expect

of a tourist destination- a place with a splash of English language and a willingness to take U.S. dollars or Euros as easily as pesos. The population’s friendly if not a bit weary of statues and a bit intense in their ties to a Polynesian background but, what do we really know-we’ve only been here for three days.

Who knows what the island would offer if we stayed longer?

Now we’re off for Cape Horn- bound to waters and lands where our connectivity will be limited in the extreme. Keep following but forgive us if our postings are fewer and farther between. The workings of radio propagation and available stations are not always favorable.