The forecast for Monday was for reducing winds mainly from the South West and West, exactly from the direction we wanted to travel. In any event, we needed to move on and so we carefully moved the boat out of the channel and into the open sea again. I was the skipper/navigator for the day. A number of nights previous, we had gotten into quite a discussion after dinner (and wine) which started with Alan and the skip criticizing the use of the Chart Plotter. That grew into Alan condemning electronic assistance in navigating – remember, one of his prime missions was to teach us Celestial navigation, his passion. The thing is – celestial navigation isn’t anywhere near accurate or timely enough for coastal pilotage, but there are a lot of other techniques that can be applied and the paper charts and pilot books provide the information needed to safely navigate. While I wasn’t able to nail down the exact nature of Alan’s concern, I did volunteer to navigate without access to the Chart Plotter for this passage (of about 40 Nautical Miles) through a tight pass and across water passing closely by a group of Islands and their rocky outcrops and on into a little bay with Islands, rocks and kelp as dangers. I do know that Alan, who had assessed my previous navigation skills to be appropriately at the yacht master level, now said that all yacht masters should be able to function without electronics (for navigation you understand). And – he is right – and I had learned to do just that and practiced it a lot – but I haven’t done much for the last couple of years. Anyway, I was now navigating this passage without the use of the Chart Plotter. Just to make it a little trickier, the wind backed was we sailed out of the tight channel that had been home for the previous 48 hours and we decided we wouldn’t have a good enough angle to proceed under sail alone, so we changed our plan and changed our route!

In any event, with the combination of the hand bearing compass and sightings from the land – back bearings and forward bearings and holding the helm’s hand for the last 30 minutes, we pulled up in the most beautiful natural harbour on Beaver Island, right in front of the settlement there (described in the Pilot Book as having Stella Holding), safe and sound without incident or a Chart Plotter in sight! No arguments, this was a yacht master standard day! This place notched up the beauty stakes once again! We had hoped to go and collect mussels again and have them for dinner, but the tide was too high and the mussel beds were still covered. Giselle radioed from ashore to alert us the need to make a different dinner plan and also to tell us that we would have three guests join us. Thomas (First mate) volunteered to whip some fish dish up from what we had onboard and the raiding party from shore came back to help. Shortly afterwards, our three guests arrived, Leif, Dionne and Juliet. These were two brothers and one brother’s wife. Their family (the brothers’) had arrived here on a sailing boat just over twenty years earlier, from France and they had called the Falklands home over since. The boat they came on was the original lifting keel boat, designed by their father (who at the age of about 70, was currently floating up the coast of Chile and heading somewhere out on the Pacific). It just so happened that the boys mother was Sally from the conservation trust we had met and spent time with on Friday. She is no longer married to the father. There was a third brother, but he was in Stanley where he worked as a gardener. He had actually been born on the saloon table of their boat, delivered by the hand of his father, on board their boat somewhere off South Georgia. Apparently this experience had a lasting impact and he isn’t the intrepid sailor the rest of the family were. Maybe I was born up a tower somewhere and that might explain my fear of heights!

Dionne, the oldest and Juliet, his wife (I say wife – not sure if they were technically married, but they were an item) have just sold their business, which was a big tug of a boat, which had started out life in Norway as a rescue and fire vessel and was gradually relocated down to the Falklands where they used to run charters down the Antarctic peninsula and to South Georgia, often on Charter to groups of film makers or climbers or something. They had been doing this for a number of years and were now burned out (I suspect a bit like Alec and Giselle – who I only just found out were doing their last trip together on this boat – more to follow on that, no doubt). D & J’s boat had been moored alongside Pelagic Australis in Stanley and now it was anchored right beside us off Beaver Settlement. They provided excellent conversation over dinner. I hadn’t realized it, but Dionne was quite shy, but he held his own with the rest of us over dinner. Juliet was a fire cracker, asking a lot of detailed questions and unearthing a lot of information about us. She too had an interesting story. She was French, from Cherbourg and also an intrepid sailor. She had been delivering a friends boat from Ushuaia in Tierra Del Fuego up to Uruguay when her boom broke open and she ended up coming into Beaver Island to make repairs. I suspect Dionne impressed her with his quiet skillful ways. She fully admits that the boat she was sailing probably wasn’t sea worthy and she had agreed to do the delivery too easily – “I was quite naïve back then” she told us. She spoke English with a slight accent, but not necessarily traceable to France, but her vocabulary and pronunciation was excellent. Both boys spoke excellent English, and Leif spoke like he had recently returned from a British Public School (he was in his mid 30’s – so obviously he hadn’t!). Juliet had piercing eyes and a ready follow up, clarifying question to any remark. When she first arrived in the settlement, she had been married to someone else and now was married/with Dionne. These things happen!

After a little prodding, Leif told us he wasn’t sure he was cut out to be a passage making sailor. However, he had only just returned from sailing his old, smallish, steel hulled, 40 foot, boat up to Alaska and back single handed – via some Islands out in the Pacific. We also pried out of him that he had sailed the boat back from Spain, where he had bought it and he’d been over to Australia and New Zealand, not to mention across to South Africa……. A lot of sailing to then figure out you might not be cut out to being a passage maker. All of this he had done on his own – in an old boat that he constantly worked on. The neatest thing was that he had built a wood burning stove for his boat, out of an old oxygen cylinder, which he had built into where the refrigerator used to be so he could stay warm when sailing in high latitudes and he carried sufficient wood for long passages. Of course keeping food fresh was now going to be an issue – compromises have to be made! I have huge admiration for someone who has the skills and the fortitude to tackle this sort of challenge, but I think it must be a lonely life sailing so far away and then gong to places that have so few people there. I think he had been away on this last jaunt for close on two years! I don’t mind a little solitude time and time to myself – like being in Buenos Aires for that day – but the thick end of two years – wow, pass me the knife.

Once again, I ducked out of dinner a little earlier than some to call home and send of some messages and also to give Alec and Giselle some time with their friends . The next morning we assembled a raiding party and headed to the mussel beds where we extracted two huge buckets of the things. Depositing them back on the boat as we passed, we then headed to shore and to coffee with our previous nights guests. Once again, we were experiencing great hospitality and the opportunity to learn more about these folks. On shore, Dionne took us through a couple of sheds of parts and pieces taken from a succession of boats. There original boat, Damien II, was pulled up on the hard and it was in the process of a twenty year overhaul. I was assured it would be finished at some point! Leif invited us onto his boat, which he had already pulled apart since his recent return to effect repairs, like rebuilding the Land Rover engine he used to power it. On lowering myself inside his boat, I have to say, we’re not talking about cosy comfort and a prestige supper yacht interior here. It was basic, oily and in need of a spruce up (just this man’s point of view). However, this was a means to an end for him – a way of getting to places he wanted to see and the more important thing was that it was sea worthy and could sail safely. I could imagine on a long and lonely passage, with the wood fire burning away and the wind vein auto steering looking after the boat – it might be cosy down there, but it would still be rather lonely. Leif was a good looking guy, well spoken, smart, educated and interesting. But all of this single handed passage making has to have an effect on one, and then returning to an isolated Island that was equally spartan when it comes to people – doesn’t make for a lot of clandestine meetings and romantic assignations and the like! Did I mention they farm sheep, but they only have 300 head.

We toured the various houses that made up their settlement, a couple of them works in progress – which seemed to be the modus operandi around there and then finally went into the main house for coffee. They were hoarders for sure. There was a lovely timber floored sun room stretching along the North side of the house, completely windowed for the entire length (we’re in the Southern Hemisphere – think!). It was low and warning. However, along one side, things were collecting. The main dinning area and kitchen was also cosy, but reflected the sun room – from a collecting proposition. There were three defunct printers that I could see – none looking like they were in working order. There had to be a forth lurking below the surface that actually worked – because they were referring to stuff they’d printed out! Our Colombian friends took some of their treasured coffee as a gift. Dionne brewed it and then hunted around for 7 cups to drink it from. He found them – everything from mugs to small cups! This was a light and airy room. I noticed what looked like newly added central heating radiators. Juliet told us that Dionne had recently taken the ceiling apart and renewed the insulation, which explained its presence paint job. Once again the conversation kicked off. Juliet, who had sort of scared me the evening before – was more playful in her questioning and we all laughed at the accents of people trying to speak a foreign language (mostly the brothers’ father – who was French) and the inability of the French to recognize the effort of other people trying to speak their language and their intolerance with those who do.

As we said goodbye, we hugged and wished each other “Bon Chance,” but I could see Juliet had an unasked question – and so I invited it. Of course, what she wanted to know, but had been uncertain to ask (which suggested a certain sensitivity that might now have been immediately apparent) was about life in Texas with Trump as President. However, she wasted no time in prefacing any answer I might have been about to give by providing me with her own, pretty well informed hypothesis (it turned out her mother was American). I gave her my elevator speech and departed!

This had been a fantastic visit to a wonderful place – unparalleled in my view from all of the places we had thus far visited in the Falklands -unparalleled for its remote, simple and quiet beauty and, it’s seriously good, nice and interesting people. We raised the main, upped the anchor and pulled out amongst the islands and headed South to Ten Shilling Bay about 30 miles south. This would be our last anchorage of our Falkland cruse and from where we would sail overnight back to Stanley, having completed a circumnavigation of the Falkland Islands, and then our preparations would start in Earnest (which is not a small place to the south of Stanley – yes, that was a seriously bad, old joke)  – preparations for the second half of our time together – the passage across the Southern Ocean.

On our last night of this stint, five of us stood on the stern deck, sipped beer and scrubbed the seemingly bottomless buckets of mussels we had collected earlier on in the day. The sun was setting and the wind was freshening. We were cold, but cold together, laughing about what we’d discovered about each other and chatting about the next night when we would do our first overnight sail as a crew. I like overnight sailing as a rule, but this would be a taste of what would eventually be three weeks of sailing through the night, operating a proper watch system and keeping each other awake and alert through three hours that had until now, been asleep time! We would no doubt start our second phase of learning.

Pip pip!

P.S. We heard just this morning that James, the package we delivered to Carcass Island for shipment back to Stanley, looks like he will be re-joining us when we get to Stanley. He had wanted to fly out to meet the boat and come back with us, but as we were only 24 hours from arriving in Stanley – and about to pick up the anchor, it seemed better is he just met the boat upon our arrival. We will be six again!