Eyes wide shut !

Our travel to The Melchior Archipelago was forecast at 4 to 8 knots from the WNW. Based on the data from the Drake Crossing we were looking at a crossing time in excess of 20 hours for the 104-mile passage. We scheduled and early start at 4 am but it was mirror flat and raining so we dived back into bed for an hour or so. We got away at 7h20 under spinnaker. I mentally prepared myself for another long sail.

Getting into some clear breeze was difficult as we flopped around in the confused sea in the lee of the snow-capped mountains of Deception. We slowly got going and it was not long before we spot our first small iceberg. Probably the size of a house – it has some dark patches on it and we presume they are seals. On getting closer we see they are huge black rocks and the guardians of this floating island are a few lonely penguins. The exterior coastline of Deception is rugged and unforgiving with glaciers falling into the sea and vertical walls rising up steeply finishing in sharp needle like peaks. Absolutely no chance of even getting close to finding a place stop if you needed it.

Soon a cold mist blows in and the wind changes to the NE. The blue spinnaker fills and we start to pick up speed. Our first waypoint is marked up off Austin Rocks 25 miles away. The breeze is building slowly and the temperature drops to 2 degrees. This breeze is coming straight across the huge frozen expanse of ice known as the Weddell sea which lies to the west of the Peninsula. You may remember this is where Shackelton got caught in the pack ice and his adventure started. Next its starts snowing and in one of my radio checks with Kotic, I sign off by saying its ´f-… cold´ - I have also discovered that my dry gloves on my left hand have two holes in them. Today is going to be tough ..

We pass Austin Rocks a mile to the east and the sea is confused and building. The frequency of bergy bits is starting to increase. No chance of dozing off here. The wind is 15 knots. We are making good progress and the feeling aboard is positive but we are both feeling the cold. Eventually we gybe down onto our straight-line route to Melchior. Kotic 2 is just 4 miles behind us. Both Roberto and I are determined to get to Melchior today and not have to spend the night out. We decide to step up the speed. Neptune decides to do the same with the weather.

We are now experiencing an interesting set of sea conditions. The long range SW swell is pushing through from the Pacific at about 5m coming from our right – moving mountains like a right hook coming out of the corner of your eye. The wind swell from the NE continues to build with the breeze and as the two meet we feel like a cork about to get projected into space by a froth of champagne. Put together with this a current from the west - against the wind and you have a perfect concoction enough to give you a headache after the first sip. We drive hard - playing the spinnaker and taking big surfs – we knock of 20 miles in an exhilarating 90 minutes.

The breeze continues to build and we drop the bag – then roll the jib, then down to two reefs. The peaks are now a dirty black and the crests are getting blown off in waves off white spray. Some are breaking from the NE and we get smacked from the side and boat shakes and shudders with every punch. The surfs are so big sometimes that we are forced to gybe resulting in anxious moments before the boom returns to it proper side

We are on the limit of 2 reefs and so decide to stop and put in a third. The wind is now gusting 35 to 37 knot off the crests and we have decided to stop taking surfs as a safety precaution. In the troughs it changes direction radically. Oh by the way it’s snowing again. The snow is piling up on the batten packets and even having time to give the boat a white sheen. It’s still misty and the visibility is at about 150 meters. Oh and I forgot to mention, we are and have been for a while, in graveyard of ice. Let me tell you about the ice.

Well its pretty ‘fricking’ scary. The big bits let say the size of cars have a certain luminosity of their own - they shine blue in the otherwise grey environment. It’s eerie. We take evasive action as soon as we see them. We don’t have 100 % control of the boat and well I wouldn’t want to discover that when you are close to one. The big Ice bergs just loom out of the mist as dark shapes- first you think they are islands – they are ok – no problem there - they are quite easy to miss. The real tricky ones are the ones that are about the size of a small backpack. They are almost clear and very difficult to see because they do not have enough mass to turn completely white. I know I haven’t blinked for about 15 hours now and my eyes are sore. One of those would slice through and make short work of our Kevlar protection. Lets just say its adrenalin stuff. We keep re assuring each other – keeping focus on the job in hand - any lapse in concentration could be fatal. At one stage surfing down a wave a southern Wright whale, traveling in the other direction surfaces only 25 metres way. It dives and I see the water swirl below me only a few meters away as we woosh by. Later we see the small dorsal fin of a mink whale heading eas t- why are all heading the other way? And so it continues…

Just off Brabant Island the sea is still pretty bad and Mount Parry (8300 feet the second highest peak of the peninsula) looms up white out of the mist. Its looks like a pretty unforgiving place this Antarctica. We turn left and sail on a close reach – I guess we can say we are in survival mode or at least pretty close it.

We hope for a calmer sea and Neptune grants us some slack as we approach The Melchior Archipelago. Things calm and we eventually shake out the reefs and put up the bag again. Now we are confronted with a landscape of snow and ice and small black bits of rock. We are 4 miles away and battling to figure out where the entrance is to the Island group. There is a huge iceberg at least in my books (40m high and about 500 or 600 meters long) blocking the entrance while numerous others like apartment blocks lie scattered around. The wind dies and we accept a tow from Kotic into the land of white.

Let me say now this is one of the most impressive landfalls I have every made and for the first time I really grasp what this whole adventure is going to be all about. I could never have imagined, guessed or dreamed about the sheer splendour of this place. We are towed into a labyrinth of Islands, bergs and glaciers. There is no way in my wildest imagination that we would have been able to sail in here. There is ice everywhere. Roberto and I are speechless. In the dying light the bergs glow blue. We pass meters from vertical ice walls, the canal narrows to 40m. Where are we going? Ice now completely surrounds us. We move slowly and eventually Oleg gives the order to drop the anchor – the chain rattles out in the silence- all 40m of it. It is perfectly still and the water does not have a ripple. My body aches and my hands are numb but my heart is filled with emotion. We have arrived in the frozen continent on a small catamaran – now we are in Antarctica.

More from the land of white to come
Regards
duncan

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