A False Start and a Real Start

Day 62 (days at sea, not counting days in Ushuaia)

Noon POS: 53 23S 59 46W, under the Falklands

Course and Speed: NE7

Wind: W25

BAR: 996

Sea: W6

Sky: Clear

Temp: cabin, 56; Water, 47

A blog for Jan 11 and 12…

At the office of the Prefectura (Coast Guard), the captain waggled his finger when I showed him my exit papers, completed and signed in advance so as to expedite the process. I was breathless from the three flights of stairs and clearly in a hurry, and there is nothing bureaucracy hates more than hurry.

“The man for the Zarpa, he is out in the port. Will be back ten minutes.” He pointed to the empty waiting area and smiled.

For an hour the captain’s small room with a desk, two chairs and a wall of binders filled with other officers who chatted affably, made notes in binders, browsed others, and then chatted again. One came over to take my paperwork but was waved off by the captain. When “the man” finally arrived, he looked at my forms once, stamped each three times, signed them, and I was off…

…to the office of Aduana (Customs), where I stood watching as a man behind the counter stamped a collection of forms nine times on each page and signed each stamp. He did this with utter seriousness, the stamps thwacking the desk-top with the sound of a gavel. Then the man answered the phone. Then he chatted with another man who arrived with papers but seemed not to need anything done with them. Finally I caught his eye from my solitary position behind the tape on the floor that read “line forms here.”

“Oh, certainly,” said the man, reaching for a stamp.

I had wanted to be off the dock by 9am, so I had begun the check-out process at 7am, but it was noon before I was back to the boat, engine running.

“You best go now if you wish to, Randall,” said Roxanna, the club commodore. She kicked at my mooring lines. The wind was already singing in the rigging, dark clouds above the mountains tore at the peaks. The day before we’d had 40 knots at the dock. “Same this afternoon ,” said Roxanna.

For a moment I waffled. I needed calm water in order to commission the autopilot. But too late.

Mo glided slowly off the pier, and with that we quit beautiful Ushuaia.

I searched in vain for a dead calm in which to perform the autopilot sea trial. Under the mountain was best, but here the gusts could be 30 knots. The calibration wouldn’t take and, when engaged, Otto began to put Mo in circles. I moved down coast, hand steering, to try again. Same result. I re-read the manual while we drifted, but could find no fault in the procedure nor my implementation of it.

Finally I anchored under Punta San Juan and called for help while I still had a cell signal. “Remember, you have an older boat,” said Dustin in San Francisco. “Otto thinks you have a wheel, like everyone else. So when the commissioning test says ‘put the rudder to port,’ you must move the tiller to starboard.’

“Damned remedial of me,” I grumbled.

“You’ve had a lot on your mind.”

By this time it was evening and winds were still gusting 30 off the mountain, so I stayed at anchor under the point, a mere five miles from where I’d started. I had wanted to depart on the 10th. Now it would be the 12th before I really got going.

At dawn the autopilot test took on the first try, and Mo and I were soon motoring in a flat calm and under a brilliant sun down the Beagle, past Puerto Williams, past the inviting anchorages behind Isla Gable at which point Mo and I crossed into Chilean waters.

Within ten minutes an officer from the Chilean navy called for the usual check in.

“Sailboat Moli, what is your last port?”

“Ushuaia.” I said.

“How many crew on board?”

“One, soy solo.”

“And what is your next port?”

“Greenland,” I said

There was a pause. “Can you spell?” asked the voice.

“I spell,” I said, “Golf, Romeo, Echo, Echo, November, Lima, Alfa, November, Delta.

After another pause, “And where is this green-land?” asked the officer.

“In the North Atlantic east of Canada,” I replied.

“Ah, Canada,” he said, seizing upon a recognizable place name. “And what is your eta to Greenland, Canada?”

I counted on my fingers. “July,” I said.

“Please repeat?”

“July. El mes de julio, este ano.”

“Oh, ok senior. Thank you for the information. Have a good navigation.”

But it hadn’t sunk in. Over the next two hours the officer called three more times to confirm my destination and eta.

Then we were east of Isla Picton, and I could see hummocks on the horizon beyond Isla Lennox I thought might be the Horn. The day had continued to be sunny and windless. I toyed with the idea of a hard right turn, but a detour under the Horn would cost 150 miles. I pressed on.

Wind came up out of the southwest to 25 soon after we passed Isla Nueva. I unfurled the working jib and switched off the engine and with that we were at sea.

Steering had failed on December 20th at a position 340 miles westsouthwest of Bahia Cook. We arrived Caletta Olla on December 25th and Ushuaia on the 28th. Jo arrived with companionship and parts (needed in equal measure) on December 31st, and we took a holiday until the 4th of January, after which I worked furiously to get through a longish list of jobs, which I completed on the 10th. Ushuaia had been a lovely, refreshing break, but the failures had cost me twenty days and nearly 3,000 miles of easting.

There is a long way to go to complete the Figure 8 … and we are behind schedule.