When Friday morning came about – the weather was still blustery and a little grey. We sailed over Whale Bay (well – motor sailed) and up a tiny creek to another yet another settlement – this time to ask permission to go and visit another inlet just a couple of miles south. Once granted, we re-positioned to the new outlet called Crooked Inlet (you can imagine why – yes, because it was). This narrow channel with steep cliff faces on either side meandered its way in land and then opened up into an internal natural bay. We pulled the boat into a narrow side channel and tied up to rocks front and back and nestled in for the day. Now that sounds like a throw away comment – tied up to the rocks front and back – not quite so simple. If you were doing a risk assessment (there goes that term again) you would have to include the following: no common language, no previous experience of doing this for well over half the crew, a wind that was backing and veering, and numerous other things. So the “tech” for this is to drop a person off on a chosen rock together with a very large wire strop (like a heavy duty circle of thick steel wire, like 3/4 of an inch thick.) The rock has to have been assessed as being big enough and attached to the shore well enough to take the strain. The strop is placed over the rock and checked that it will not slip off. Once you have the port and starboard rocks sorted with their strops, very long lengths of polypropylene line are pulled from the boat by whoever is in the dingy, passed ashore and then tied to the strop with a robust bowline knot. Once both port and starboard are attached, the slack is taken out of the lines and the boat is set secure at the front and then the stern lines can be attached. Simple – almost!

Everything was going well, regardless of the lack of a common language and the lack of specific experience. I attached my bowline to the strop and waited for the strain to be taken up and then I would be picked up by the dingy to go and tackle the stern lines. The strain was taken up and everything looked good. I was looking at the boat to see what was happening when all of a sudden there was an almighty crash behind me and the massive rock we were attached to was rolling down the incline towards the sea with “gusto.” I was directly in its way. I had been very careful, even cautious to make sure I had good foot hold when I had clambered onto the shore initially to do the job. By the way, the shore was a cliff face. As I heard the crash I instinctively dived to the side, faster than I may have moved in some time. I then looked behind me to see this huge boulder unseated and 4 feet from where it had been initially. This tells you two things: 1) the forces involved with this boat are huge and 2) I hadn’t chosen the best boulder (I was given significant advice on which one to go for.) To cut to the chase – we spent the next 10 minutes undoing what we had done, retrieving the strop now trapped under the boulder (not an easy job) and then gingerly choosing another place to tie up to! With the job finally done, we were set for the rest of the day and the night – firmly tied up in the middle of the channel and safely being held off the rocks on either side. Some went off to fish for dinner and some of us stayed behind to…… not fish! Those who went ashore returned without fish and a new dinner plan needed to be made.

The weather for the next day was forecast as gale force winds from the West – which was the direction we needed to go if we wanted to head further out into the most western islands of the Falklands. We decided to just relocate the boat into the natural harbor further up the main channel and have a little explore of the surrounding countryside. That involved a reversal of the previous day’s activity, this time with a lot of speed so that the lines are pulled back on board before they drift back into the prop and bugger the entire boat up. Again, we managed to make it happen and we were free to move off. I have to say, Alec, the boat’s permanent skipper has a deft, tough maneuvering this thing about – very impressive. So that’s what we did, reposition into the open water, drop the hook and then 6 of us set out in the dingy – with a fishing rod and a fishing net to see what mischief we could get up to – and apparently, quite a lot. Firstly, we got well and truly soaked driving through fairly large waves caused by the strong wind whipping over the water (and I mean large waves – about 4 feet high and we were in a 14 foot inflatable dingy) and then upon entering a narrow channel and heading up to find fish, we hit a large rock and broke one of the three propeller blades off! Never mind, this was stunning scenery (because it was quite bleak and narrow, but it opened up at its head a plateau). It got really quite cold in the strengthening wind.

While 4 of the 6 of us stood around, the other two tried their luck with the fishing rod while progressively moving up stream. The rod yielded only 3 smallish fish – not enough to take back to the boat as spoils for supper. However, Alec stretched the net across the little river and that yielded 3 fairly large fish and 1 very large one – and so we ate what we caught together with large potato wedges cooked in the oven – the nearest thing to fish and chips we could do! The fish was fresh and awesome and baked stuffed with lemon and herbs by a combination of the Colombian and Latvian team members. I provided a more Irish input – the spuds!

Pip pip