The Navy

I am unsure whether these boys have a sense of irony, I certainly hope so. In the bible of cruising in Patagonia Giorggio says that Natales is a horrible place for any sort of personal yacht, motor or sail. There is no jetty, no peir, no marina for private yachts. However after a nice chat with the Armada guys (the navy) after they told us we could not be at their peir, they sort of just shut their mouths and let us stay there three nights.
Today is the 19th of May, two days and counting until el 21 de Mayo, the anniversary of a naval battle in which, like he explained to us as we stood in the white office, backs to the sea, Chile won against Peru and General Arturo Pratt (a national hero) died. This means that we have been surrounded by navy boats, the rumbling engines of grey and black boats, massive guns that move at 30kts through the water and can hardly be seen under the grey sky. All the boys on board are young, idealistic, brainwashed perhaps, very polite and nice. It seems they don´t fully understand what they are undertaking, what they participate in...
As the patrol boat that was docked next to us pulled away this afternoon, all the young boys wore lifejackets as they were politely given orders to cast off lines. As they steamed away into the mountains triumphant music blasted on their speakers, orchestral, battle music. I look over to Ian, we are on the deck and I look at his smiling face and say, I hope those boys have a sense of irony...
O no, this is serious stuff he says, they take this very seriously... He is right and on our port side there is a jetblack cruising gunboat also rehearsing presumable, and some bigshots are off the boat. The speakers blast tinny naval marches over the hoisted flags and the little white caps and all the boys march, they stop, they stand at attention, bayonnets in the air, they march, they stop, always looking forward, never to the side, looking down a tube to the boat, to the black and the flags, to the massive guns...

I think it was the bigshots, but as soon as that excersise started we were advised to leave the jetty. We checked in at the Armada office and were told by the innocent little boy that he would see if we could stay - we all agreed that something much more powerful must be watching over his shoulder... thankfully we have basically all our chores and errands done and are ready to leave early tomorrow morning.
I´ll be disembarking in Puerto Edén, a port on an island, a habited village connected to Chile only by the Navimag ferry from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales - there is no road connection nor airport... lets hope I don´t miss the boat!
until next time

and not to forget, more photos on www.flickr.com/photos/44544772@NO3/

Some more diary excerpts

Just to get the feeling:

May 6
We set out with a little wind on our bow and a low cieling. We followed a pod of whales in the distance until a giant humback surfaced 1-2 boatlengths off our starboard beam. Snow had almost reached the sea and with this scarry background we sailed as best we could tacking up the Magellan (our 3rd day). The wind died completely and we had a current against us so we motored for a few hours (in this area of the world you have to take every opportunity to move forward because prevailing winds are very strong and dead against you...) Soon after though, we were able to continue sailing. No close calls this time (the day before we tacked about 1-2 boatlengths from a rock islet evading narrowly a huge disaster) but I went up on deck to un hook the genoa sheet fromt he forestay while tacking and at the moment I got up there it unhooked itself, slapping me in the face-head knocking my balaclava, which was perched on my head, into the Magellan... goodbye!
At around 3 or 4 o clock, the wind picked up such that the boat was heeling alot especially in the gusts which were over 25 knots and the chop got short and steep. Down under it was very difficult to walk with only one reef in the main sail and a full genoa. I got thrown in a gust - my hand grabbed the wooden rail of the bookshelf and my face in the same moment struck the back of my hand. If not for the hand I would have lost teeth for sure. In any case the taste of blood lingered in my mouth for a few minutes...
The wind having reached in excess of 25kts we had to reduce sail, so I went up to put a reef in the main and as I stepped out fromt he dodger (the sort of wind and water sheild int he cockpit) I got swamped and completely drenched by a wave that washed over the boat at that moment! I got up to the mast and started working, clutching something (the winch handle or the mast) at all times so as not to be launched into the salty sea! The wind, in its gusts, whistled int he rigging and waves crashed over the deck, washing spray into my face... We left Bob behind this day (Bob was a Australian singlehander who we spent a few nights with in an anchorage waiting for good weather - we would later meet him for another night).

May 7

...The prognostic was for 10 to 15 knots all night so we thought we could almost make the beginning of the Smyth Canal by the next evening, some 60miles in a straight line. As we got ready to go the weather was still very bad... williwaws (cold air that is pushed up over a mountain and plummets down in jets at extremely high speeds) were making our dinghy fly around like a kite, literally, outside so Mario and I went out to tie it back on the deck of the boat. A gust almost flung it, and us into the water but we held on. We managed to get it on deck but suddenly a williwaw ripped through the cove at probably 70-80kts. The Persimmon, swinging at anchor heeled over, with no sail up, at probably almost 30 degrees, making a mess of the food we were preparing below. Water sliced and lined having been thrown by the wind in black and white, deafening, screaming in my ears and in the rigging. Mario and I on opposite sides of the boat ducked, flattening ourselves down against the dinghy. The wind went up my nose, it blew so hard I could not think and I was almost lifted off my feet and off the dinghy on which I lay. When it passed we looked to leeward in the fading light to see a swirling tornado-like spectre white and dynamic, twist its way down the bay, spray given form...
We set out at 22:30. Ian and Katya were on watch from 11 to 2am so Mario and I tried to get some shuteye. My shoulder (which I injured the day before and am still recovering from - this was the first and worst day) was so bad that I could not sleep. I could not find any position that was not excruciating. After 2 hours I came out and sat there at the table, forced to explain to Ian and Katya what was up (i don´t like to complain and had just kept my mouth shut). I took an anti inflammatory (very uncharacteristic for me) which did nothing but when my watch came at 2am the wind started to pick up. I couldn´t do anything with my left arm and apart from the massive seizing pain that it gave me at rest, supporting any weight with it was even more excruciating. Instead they made me go to bed but I was unable to sleep because of my arm and with the rising wind, up to 30kts and over 2meter seas I was being thrown around like a ragdoll in my bunk. I came out again at 530am to violent pitching and a defeated feeling in the air. Current against us, wind at 30kts, gusting 40kts on our nose, an unenterable cove (in the dark) zero progress and three hours until daylight meant we had only one option: we had turned around and were headed, no sails, no motor, downwind and with the current doing 7kts. I was nauseous with pain (the worst I have felt in my memory) and the pitching was making me seasick. I was sent to bed again at 6am and at about 7am I somehow managed about 2 hours of sleep waking up at 9 to coffee and a boat our home, secure in the same cove we left ten hours before. Distance travelled: 28miles Net distance covered: 0 miles. Morale: shit. Pain: unbearable.

a few photos, more to come before I embark again

The Persimmon lies in the bottom left corner

Seno Pia glacier and some cool mossy things at Caleta Brecknock, before entering the Magellan Strait

Photos of Caleta Brecknock where we went for a nice walk on one ofthe days waiting for bad weather to blow over






Williwaw on the left (gust of about 60-70kts (over 100 km-h) and below a double rainbow, honestly a dime a dozen with the crazy changeable weather

Coming out of Seno Pia the Darwin Range of Tierra del Fuego

Yendegaia where Jose and Anamy live, only accessible by boat!

Snow in Puerto Williams on Georggio´s boat (the italian man who wrote the 1000plus page patagonian cruisers bible - we chilled with him - a professional musician we could hear him practicing scales and playing studies every day!)

Futility

Is the name of the game, this game, the game of trying to put into words what can only be experienced in life. James Joyce said that "the fall" came not when Eve ate the forbidden fruit but when humans began to use language. When we began to use more than simple grunts of effort and groans of pleasure. That is when we limited ourselves. Lately I have been feeling very limited by language and my human ability to express.

We sailed away from Puerto Williams almost a month ago now with snow and gale force winds. Our motor died and we had to find an anchorage in the dark...
We have traversed canals, the massive Darwin range of Tierra del Fuego looming all around us, white and blue. Sneaking into a protected by we have struck ice, of the many chunks that had calved off of a glacier right in front of us that ran into the sea. Glaciers that flow and cling off mountains and pour off of the humpbacked hills and mountains, snowy peaks that feel dipped in frost, dusted. A land, this land that has scared spectres and ghosts for thousands of years so that the only thing that remains is the wind, the scraping bare, horrible, lifegiving wind that twists trees and gnarls branches. And water a bed of water, a bed of fresh sweet liquid that permanently pours off of the faces of green metre-thick moss and delicate flowers, sweating rocks and horrible faces.

Instead of writing all my diary entries which could prove to be very tedious for the both of us, I will instead post some of my poetry and maybe a few "extraordinary" experiences (as if not all else is also extraordinary!)
Mostly what is fresh:
May 11
... Today we left Puerto Tamar, the western end of the Magellan strait, rounded the cape of Tamar into the huge mouth, open to the massive poorly named Pacific. What we experience was a dreamy sun, and dreamy rocks, hard as the sea and the wind, the angelic sun cutting luminescent coins from the glowing black clouds. All these words are just words. they cannot ever paint the gold on the water like shards of stainedglass or broken ice on the mountains of rolling water, folding into themselves and into the sweating rocks that hump the horizon and trace their green veins and capillieries from a celestial blue and black to the forever grey ocean...
We sailed all day at 5kts and when the wind began to die, fade fast into the endless brine and be sucked up in the calm swell... at this moment we were doing 2kts...but within 5 minutes the water was black with wind shadowing the exploding sun. White conches broke the dark water with heaven , with white. A forest of surrenders, white flags. We bore off and reached in 30kts of wind, with one reef in the mainsail and a reduced genoa until the mouth of the Smyth Canal where we found a land of enchanted orange flowers growing on meters of soft moss and a thousand homeless rocks. we squeezed into bays where we broke the obscure mirror sending our wake to the edge, fast, feet away by the draped stones, draped in green and turquoise grey full of twisted branches beaten for thousands of years by the real winds these jets that buffet everywhere always forever.
Ah, and all under a yellow hue, in a world squeezed from a tired lemon and left to glow, black and yellow quiet and full of trolls and one eyed unicors and the wet dark smell of moss. All that was left for us was everything in the world, the sunset painted on the first clear sky in weeks and cypress silloittes creeping out of the whispery quiet walls around our anchorage.

...
The next day we reached with only our staysail in 30-40kts gusting over 50 at 5-7kts and only went twelve miles when the wind shifted against us we pulled in and anchored.
...
The next day...views have been spectacular. the sun made vegetation very green, vibrant instead of the customary dull green. And the afternoon lifght was almost pink. We saw another whale that lumbered on majestically down the channel. Tere is something honouring and awe inspiring about being in the presence of such a beast! As usual, light and its absence makes the difference. Weather, clouds and precipitation mix with light and dark and the result is a cosmos of contrast and sweeping colours. Going through Paso Victoria we looked back at Seno Union, a spectacular mix of mountian silouetted land falling into the misty yellow light pouring out of a hole in the clouds... And then dolphins. We saw them in the distance on our port side so we rushed up to the bow and I stood on the prow right on the anchor hanging my body over the rail. But the dolphins, 3 of them, waited up, they could hear if not feel our escitement. They swam, crossing and twisting, sinchronizing and braiding their lightning paths in the bowwave. We yelled and called in excitement. they got ahead and doubled back to play in the bow wave again. They did this for probably ten minutes...

The following poem was inspired by my diary entry from may 11... thats why there are so many similarities...

The Beginning

You win this one

My bare teeth are
Pointing to the sky
And into the rascally rollers

Lines that are circles
Pry my awe, they pry my jaw.
You terrible bed of undulating shards!
You cracking beasts of lore!

No, no.
I win this run,
The cutout cloud prints sliced by the sun

Mountain jaws, the bareback humpback rotten hills
A bird, a kelp gull
Basks in the endless zephyrs til a downdraft
Flaps its wings.
Careen, float, in and out
With your brazen beak
Your weightless curves, searching
With beady eyes the fish famished waves
For a feed -
Goodbye gull! Goodbye you lonely floater!
I will never see you again -
Into the trough
And over a salty crest that saws the sky.

Horizon? Horizon?
I must have coughed or choked
On my own surprise.
Waves to slow my blood, accelerate the heart,
Explode into the sky by the tower...

A tower! A tower!
A howling sillouette, a plaster
Sculpture that becons the birds
And the brimming well of brandishing swords,
A beacon to boats,
A harlot of the standing silent swell

The answer comes to me:
This unicorn and this lemon sky;
These pink bells and 442
Different colours that whisper to me
From sponges, from river corners.

Twinkling dewy mosses
Drip with imagination and slimy lichen,
Protective rusts in the rotten childhood hideaways,
Laberynths of humanless fairytales,
Sopping twisted trees and green,
Green, green, green!

To me, into my wiley world
Of moss and stone
It is not a game!
This is not a game!

Untitled
I

I want to be where
Nobody sees me
Where I fly beneath senses
And everyone is muted
By grandeur.

Domes loom, domes punch the sky;
Rocks fragment the clouds and
Only rusty greens
Crawl up the granites, rusty capillieries
On the glowing, shining stones -

Shine on you wet rocks, where
Veins of minute crystals vapourize
Like a misty spectre

A spectre? A ghost? A phantom? No!
No spirits fly these winds,
Only mist and brine
Because the wind has haunted these rocks
And they never wanted, never loved,
Just blown away and lonely in the echoes.

II

Don´t be afraid grey lines,
I will remain here forever to see you ,
Even if every whisper says im dead
And the rain and the sparrows and gulls ignore me
I shall stay to watch all your shades
From which your tears pour onto the frost
Like morning petals.

Don´t worry grey lines,
You will never be forgotten,
Even if its only my humid bones
Where you engraved your name
Every second for months
And the blubbery backs of whales.

I feel your pulse
From this shell that bobs
Up and up and screams through
Cables and cuts through like knives and butter
Past the penguins and the seals.


Puerto Williams

There are little pebbles, echoes of a stone
That wait eternities or seconds for the sun to loosen
Rivers in the mountains,
For a trip to the sea, a one way ticket
To a channel that leads nowhere;

The grey street water
Feeds children´s breath for as long as
We can remember - as long as houses and
Planes last at the end of the earth
And the crumbling white mountains and the dogs.

A clown show and a circus of wild men
A clanging of metal and dacron in the wind,
A rumbling of engines, a gurgling of water
And a short everlasting snow in the sunchilled -
A goodbye under a bright black sky that
Sears the sea with white flecks and whips it
In our way