We set out Thursday night and Friday across the sound from Stanley. The weather went from a howling gale and rain, to calm and overcast on a rolling basis – switching one out for the other. Based on the weather forecast, it looked like it would be good to leave early on Saturday and head up and around East Falkland to find an anchorage, tucked in between the main land and Little Shag Island. I kid you not, there is a Big Shag Island – as in the birds (minds out of the gutter). 

So Saturday morning came and at 6.30am we weighed anchor, hoisted the main and motor sailed out of Stanley. It felt so good! We quickly became a sailing boat (no engine) and the crew came together to be a proper crew. It might take a good wind to get this boat going, but once she’s going, boy does she zing along and eat up the sea. We were sailing along in 30 knots of wind and seas that might have been thought to be choppy in normal circumstances – but in Pelagic, they rode like calm waters. As we would find out – when the seas get up a little, you still feel the power of the water below you!

We sailed for about 7 hours, arriving in good light at a beautiful natural anchorage on the north side of East Falkland – at the head of Salvador Water (if you want to find it on a map). We dropped the hook (anchor) – a very technical activity on a boat of this size, and then within 15 minutes we were into a dingy and heading to the beach on Big Shag Island. I’ve already owned up previously that I know bugger all about wildlife and plants – yet here I was heading to an island where all I was going to do was look at wildlife and plants. As we rode the dingy in – dolphins followed us and you could pretty much touch them – seriously they would surface about a foot from the dingy’s side and dart away. They are very entertaining and very fast – I think they want stupid humans to lean out and try and grab them, thereby falling into the freezing water to be laughed at by the much smarter mammals! Upon landing on the Island, the most incredible things were the seal pups and parents. We had been warned not to get too close and to never get between parents and pups. We walked carefully around the rocky headland and passed by the most humongous sized seals – like 15 feet long. Surely these must be the parents? Apparently not, they were the immature males. The West Texas Whataburger effect came to mind – surely not on this small Island? As I would find numerous times over the next 24 hours, there is a serene beauty down here in the Falkland Islands – very different between East and West, and while I could make comparison to Scotland and Ireland and New Zealand, there was something unique about this place and I can’t yet place my finger quite on it. The topography would change dramatically over the next several days, but off Shag Island it was undulating, really quite green, but also rocky. It was dramatic in a non enormous way. I think it was the remoteness that struck me. Here we were, over 200 miles from the nearest next land mass, but many more miles to the nearest inhabited place – actually, maybe Rio Grande would be that place – I need to Google it (but not from here where I have no access to Google and won’t for the next 5 weeks, and I may just be a better human being for that!)

The following day, we had figured on a short boating day, taking the boat down the channel into Salvador Water itself – about an hour or so of careful voyage. This was new territory for the boat and for the three permanent crew members who, I haven’t yet mentioned – and I should do, especially as two of the three aren’t coming with us across the Southern Ocean! When I started my last blog I resolved not to talk about the people I was sailing with and then half way through and a few long days sailing with Barclay – and I had to mention him – it was my release and that dragged other people into the thing – so to not mentioned the permanent crew of Pelagic would seem churlish. 

First of all, our current skipper, Alec. He is from Cornwall, but says he’s spent over half his years in South Africa and his accent is a combination of the two – he definitely has a “grudge” and he keeps “hees car een eet.” He is a good guy – probably in his late 30’s, could be younger, but I don’t think so. He has been master of Pelagic Australis and, before that, Little Pelagic (as they say) for the last several years or so, but sailed down here in the high latitudes with Skip Novak (the owner) in various positions over 12 years and he is quietly very confident, very knowledgable and very capable (which is a good thing, don’t you think?) His briefing on the first day was straight forward and to the point. Not a single word was wasted and nothing superfluous was added, including telling us the main safety briefing would be later in the week – “so don’t destroy my boat in the meantime!”

His first mate is Thomas – who looks a bit like Captain Haddock from Tin Tin. He is German, from the very nice Bavarian town of Ulm (which I know quite well). He’s been first mate on this boat for quite some time, like 5 years I think. He is quite a philosophical sort of chap maybe late 30’s also, but who knows because he has a thick black beard covering his face with rounded wire framed glasses perched on top of the beard. He quietly expounds well thought out points of view, rarely extreme in any way, thoughtful and declarative! He knows the boat inside out (and this boat has a lot of mechanical and electrical systems and they need to be understood before we take it across the water) and if you engage him and listen, he is a very good teacher. When I say there are a lot of systems – they aren’t necessarily high tech, but they are still systems. The doors to the two heads do not have locks on them, so there is a system to avoid the embarrassment of someone opening the door while one is attending to matters of state – knock first. I said not everything was high tech. Between the heating, the gen set, the very large Cummins diesel engine, the day tank, the lock on the lifting keel, the very heavy duty winless (lowers and raises the anchor), the battery monitoring system, the switch over between regular and power driven steering (one is on deck outside, the other in the pilot house inside, one is good for sailing and one isn’t – guess which one isn’t? Yes – inside the pilot house – swines!)

The sails and running rigging are a thing of beauty with more lines than the London Underground – running back stays, three forestays each with a furling line and two sheets, a four reef main with 7 lines and a boom that is large enough to climb on and crawl along when the sail is coming down and being flaked. There is a coffee grinder (a two person pedestal winch – not really for grinding coffee) to grind up the main or a reefing line.  So – a lot of things to master if we’re to be able to adequately crew this thing and sail her properly.

The third member of the team is Alec’s South African wife, Giselle. I believe she and Alec worked the Little Pelagic (53 ft – not so little and then worked this one for a number of years). She is equally qualified on the boat systems and on making Pelagic sail (and secretly, I may be more afraid of her – she doesn’t take any crap when she’s running the deck!) She also acts as our wildlife guide and she is a fully qualified dive instructor – like I’m going to do that – underwater! She also is a first class cook, but then all three of them can cook really well. So far, we have divvied the cooking between us and we’ve eaten some pretty damned good meals.

It must be hard living in the confined space of a boat for an extended time, even if this one has more space than most sail boats. This is their life. They are on her for more than six months of the year. And then, a bunch of guys arrive who want to sail your baby and they are going to invade your privacy. This has to be quite difficult. When we sailed around Great Britain, we would settle into a pattern with the crew by the end of the week. Everyone knew the system and the way of working. Then – a new bunch would arrive on the Saturday and our space, the space we had become so comfortable in, would be infested and things would become uncomfortable and sometimes annoying! The biggest part of this boat’s work (and therefore her crew’s) is carrying paid passengers down to South Georgia and to the Antarctic Peninsula. South Georgia is an Island in the South Atlantic, not the State in the US – it is the place where Shackleton eventually sailed to from Antarctica when his expedition became marooned – and he sailed it in an small open boat in freezing, rough seas – with just a sextant to navigate by, then he climbed a hither too unclimbed mountain without equipment and eventually reached a Whaling Station to raise help to go back and rescue his crew – which he then did – and so, I would suggest he was a hill climber in life.

Generally, the passengers who charter Pelagic either want to climb something or walk on an ice field or film wildlife in very cold, remote places  (the BBC have certainly chartered this boat in the past). Pelagic Australis used to also take charters around Cape Horn, but apparently the Chilean Government have put pay to that and decreed that all boats doing that trip out of Porto Williams need to be owned and skippered by Chilean nationals – not an unfair thing maybe, but it’s a job protection scheme for the large Chilean Navy, for when their deck officers retire. Incidentally, these ex-naval officers have no interest in this kind of work, so instead, the boats going out Porto Williams theses days tend to be unfit, unsafe and mainly unprofessional boats, but of Chilean ownership and management. I’ve heard this is a now a dodgy business to be involved in or to buy from – maybe it’s not unlike buying a car in Essex – where I’m sure you have to be from Essex to sell cars and on the surface the vehicles might look good, but in reality. …… know what I mean!

Any way – now you know a little about the permanent crew – and I’m sure you’ll know more if you keep reading! Back to Sunday and our day. In the morning, a few of us took a dingy ride over to the main land and walked a little inland and then back around so we could come up on a colony of Gettu Penguins (is colony the right word – let me check Google…..apparently yes – who knew – not me, but maybe Google, which I don’t have!) They were small penguins and very amusing. Some were practicing building nests – which involved bringing stones – individually – from the shore about 100 yards away and then meticulously collecting small pieces of plant and other Flora and the like to bed down on top of the stones. They were only PRACTICING for the next season! Can you imagine humans doing that – practicing building houses – OK, maybe there are certain companies in the house building business who roughly approximate to practicing when they build, as in they haven’t necessarily got it right yet, but they charge for their output regardlessly. The penguins eyed us up with a certain caution, but because this wasn’t the breeding or rearing season – they didn’t care about us. Once again, I was in awe of the surroundings. We had stalked up and around a little creek and back to the penguins, and it reminded me of an area up on the North East Coast when you get behind the Dunes (Beadnel), – but more unique than that – there are no penguins in Northumberland. It was just stunning in its simple beauty. I remember as a kid, camping up on the Northumberland coast and we kids would be shooed out of the tents very early in the morning, occasionally accompanied by Dad, but usually not and we would scout this area behind the dunes, in search for mushrooms. We rarely found any and when we did, we had no idea if they were toadstools or mushrooms. Over the years, when I thought about it, I realized that what seemed like a treat from Mam and Dad, letting us sneak off early to explore was in fact an opportunity for some peace and quiet (and they already had eight kids).

We spent the early afternoon navigating carefully through the channel up into Salvador Water and, once we’d dropped the hook in a strengthening wind, we again headed to the shore, this time it visit a settlement – which was a group of a few houses, and a farm with out-buildings. It was a damp business getting on to dry land, but worth it. Where we landed, there was an old stone jetty and a deserted boat house, harking back to the days when getting from here to Stanley would have been a ridiculously long horse ride (there was a plaque up by a dirt road telling us that the road was only built in the early 1990’s) or it would be a boat ride. The first building and some half a mile from the main buildings, was the shearing shed. It was easy to see how the sheep are fed in one side and out the other. There were raised air vents in the corrugated roof and an old generator stood to one side – this was still clearly in use. No doubt at one time, the fleece would have been bundled and taken directly down to the jetty to be transported to Stanley and onwards to the U.K. Midway between where we landed and the main settlement, set off to the side of the road, there were two small graveyards. Taking a closer look, one had three graves in it, the most recent was dated 1893. I would guess that over time, things changed and the dying or dead would be taken back to Stanley and eventually buried in the Main Island cemetery. Of course, no one will know exactly where they were buried, try asking. The other graveyard had no head stones, just an outline of the grave in small rocks, but there were fresh flowers on both the graves. One was normal grave size, while the other was clearly for an infant or child, and again it had relatively fresh flowers. This suggested known relatives of the current farmer. We later met the farmer and land owner, Nick, but I couldn’t ask him about it – it seemed way too personal. These two sets of graves were away from the main settlement and on a bleak Sunday afternoon they seemed isolated and lonely places to be (thinking about it – I guess all graves are pretty lonely places to be). This settlement was into its 5th generation, so it could easily have dated back to pre 1893. The current farmer has been farming it since the early 1980s, when he took it over from his father. In speaking to him (and we concluded he was pleased to have someone to talk to), he told up they had 8,000 (yes, eight thousand) head of sheep on 5,000 hectares and they had specially bred a strain of sheep that would thrive in this barren area and produce high quality wool. Clearly sheep farming is a technical business and the Archers fully misrepresent what has to be done in the world of sheep farming (for those in places other then the U.K. – the Archers is a daily radio programme – a tale of everyday country folk). This guy has spent time in both New Zealand and Bradford in the U.K., learning his trade. He drove an old Land Rover, wore shredded blue overalls covering a spectacular green sweater with a high collar that would have cost a fortune anywhere else. He spoke with a slightly West Country English accent. He was educated, informed and generally thought we needed to know far more about sheep farming than we really did, but it was very informative. As we turned to heard back to the dingy and out to the boat, the heavens darkened, the wind picked up even more and the rain started. By the time we got back to the boat we were drenched – but this is normal on a sailing boat.

We repositioned the boat a couple of miles to the other side of the large bay, tucked in on the lee side of a small hill, ready for the gale that was already building. We then tucked ourselves up below deck and dined on meat balls in a rich marinara sauce served with pasta and a salad. Just the sort of food on a night like this and a great hit, washed down with some distinctive red (from a box!) Our Sunday had been filled with new discovery and it was ending with a great dinner with good people, safe and protected. I think I shared in a post from the last sail – how I like Sunday nights – it’s a glorious feeling I get when the evening draws in, folks turn their lights on to greet the dark, winding themselves down from the weekend and up for Monday and the return to the work week – and I’m not! I really like it when the night draws in, dark and blustery and I just don’t need to worry – fire on, cup of tea in hand (absolutely no fire on a boat). So this Sunday night we tucked ourselves up down in the salon (saloon) on Pelagic Australis and waited without anticipation for the gale to arrive.

Pip pip!

PS. A message for Jamesie. The sunglasses you took such delight in poking fun at are working just brilliantly – not a tear it be experienced – so there!