Windhorse Sailing

Day: 12
Position: 49.50 South 65.53 West
Airtemp: 41F
Heading: SE
Weather: Overcast, wind SW
Seas: 5′ southerly chop

In the end the 3 days in port ended up a waste of time as the repairs we’d hoped to accomplish were impossible and the need to move on with what we have has taken precedence. We won’t likely need the engine until we enter the Beagle Channel so by then we’ll have something worked out to get us by. The tiller pilot is only something we need when there’s no wind to steer the boat, and this is likewise something we don’t anticipate. We did have a beautiful day in port that we could have used to repair the staysail, but neither Luke or I could get out of bed after tying on a night of beers and wine I would have been proud of in my college years. Unfortunately neither of us recovers as we once did back in those days, so the sail remains in its bag, and will until we reach Ushuaia.

We left Puerto Deseado four hours before sunrise, on the ebb tide and a light westerly so we could simply sail off the dock rather than go through all the necessary stunts to use the engine without a throttle or control in the cockpit. Luke navigated through the maze of fishing vessels with aplomb and once we got out into the main channel the combination of ebb current and river flow catapulted us back out to sea in rare speed. Two Tonina Olvera dolphins played in our bow wave, acting as pilots for our exit and reassured us with their presence. Sailors, whether they care to admit it or not are a superstitious bunch and dolphins are always taken for good luck. For the first 10 hours we enjoyed steady NW winds which allowed some solid southing in calm seas, but since then it’s been more similar to our journey up until this point: slow.

In hindsight we should have never stopped at Deseado and gone with the northerlies that would have taken us all they way to Bahia Thetis, our launch point at the tip of Tierra Del Fuego to round the peninsula through Le Maire Straits, by far the most hazardous segment of the journey. From Deseado to Bahia Thetis it is only 420 miles, but there isn’t a single anchorage the entire distance making this run the most weather dependent of our voyage and thus timing is critical. But those three days in Deseado has allowed the next series of lows to sweep across the Andes and in their wake we are now caught again in their southerly winds, blowing relentlessly in our face.

Cold and damp these winds are, and while this boat is steel and acts like a gigantic refrigerator by far our most pressing concern is not our comfort, but our need to get south. With any luck we’ll cross into the 50’s tonight but miles are ticking by slowly. We have to sail 3 or 4 miles for every one gained south, our track an endless run of Z’s that wears on our spirits. The forecast? More of the same. We are hopeful another low just reaching Chile now will reach us sooner than expected so we can ride the northerlies on its front side past the Straits of Magellan and down to Thetis, but the pros are saying southerlies for the next 3 days, which means more Z’s for us, but not the kind we seek.

Gavin McClurg