Sailing into the forest thicket. Puerto King Bay, which has nothing to do with either a port or kings. Children’s amusements, lessons, and the philosophy of solitude among crew members.
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“Alpha Bravo! Alpha Bravo!”
.. .. followed by lots more letters in male and female voices. The Chilean Navy was holding a roll call on Channel 16 long before dawn. There you are, moored deep in the forest, and unfamiliar call signs from unfamiliar people, snatches of conversation, laughter and jokes are reaching all the way to the masthead. The unknown border guards do not bother switching away from Channel 16—there is no one else around anyway—so after the official information, “Sécurité, sécurité!” they can have a chat. And through the scraps of sleep we hear the call signs: “Alpha Bravo, Alpha Bravo!”
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We, the ducks, and the leaping seals are all enjoying the sunshine, which has been rare lately. Yesterday, tuna the size of dolphins were leaping above the waters of the strait. Today, for the first time in our lives, we see seals bounding above the water. We place bets: who will jump out tomorrow?
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On AIS we can see the Yaghan ferry, which runs once a week from the Strait of Magellan to Puerto Williams; our new sails arrived aboard her at the end of June. The ferry seems to have identified us by now as well, since we are the only yacht in the area. No sooner had we thought that than the captain’s sharp eye, aided by binoculars, spotted something. A sail on the horizon!
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Well, would you look at that—hooray! There are fellow sailors even in this backwater. And we wonder who it might be: could it be our friends Jacques and Sophie, who planned to set off through the fjords a few days after us? I was already daydreaming about how we might suddenly spend a night anchored together, but the sail vanished somewhere among the islands.
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Today we are test-driving the new genoa, the large headsail. At last the wind is blowing from astern—or perhaps we have turned our stern to the wind. Dead downwind. It feels strangely quiet without the engine, and there is no stink of exhaust. At first we maintained a speed of about 6 knots. Later, some adverse current robbed us of a knot and a half. On the far side of the strait, an immense blue glacier comes into view; it even lights up the clouds, making them look more cheerful above it. We are happily dawdling along at 2–3 miles an hour. Along the way, we either drink hot tea on deck or sing poems by Pushkin, Bunin, and Lermontov with Ladunya while simultaneously wielding a needle. We are sewing a set of bed linen for the dolls. That is during the breaks. Otherwise, the young sailor’s lesson is on subtracting two-digit numbers in columns. Somewhere in between, yesterday’s vegetable rice gets tuned up with fried eggs and cheese, so by the time we reached our anchorage off the shores of Tierra del Fuego, the main island of the archipelago of the same name, the crew arrived neither hungry nor short of accomplishments.
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For some reason, being anchored off Tierra del Fuego feels more exciting than being off the little islands. Maybe because here you can encounter guanacos, foxes, and even a puma. Yep. The young sailor wants to know whether pumas are dangerous to people; I tell her they probably do not come down to the sea—they live in the mountains. It is just a shame there are no Indigenous people left. If we are talking about people in such an impenetrable forest growing straight out of the water, ranchers and other sheep-farming fishermen would never have settled here. It is very unusual to be moored right in the wilderness: straight from the deck, you can feel the damp breath of the thicket and examine the mosses shrouding the old trunks. In the tropics, lianas and symbiotic plants do this—I do not know whether that is even a word in biology, but perhaps you know what I mean. The large bay resembles a lake with narrow little recesses. There are fishing-net buoys in the more open coves, so we chose the wilderness. Nastya went off to tie us to the trees, and then lay for a long time on the dinghy bench, gazing at the blue sky and the unusually tall beeches rising up the steep slope. The mountain blocks the satellite, but we have already had a communications session.
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We made a swing for the young sailor out of the bosun’s chair, suspended from a halyard at the height of the mainmast boom. A rope-mail service was added to the swing. We rigged an endless line between the forward and aft shrouds, tied on a basket, and until dark ferried mandarin segments and notes from the mast to the cockpit. Nastya cooked dinner to music, while the captain sailed ashore. There he found fresh fox tracks and a shelter made of poles, which is marked as a hut even in the sailing directions. If you wish, you can pile branches or plastic sheeting on top, light a fire, and take shelter from the weather.
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“Mum, why did Dad sail off without saying anything?” the young sailor asks.
“Well, Ladunya, because every person sometimes wants to be alone, in silence, with their own thoughts.”
“But I don’t want to. Does that mean I’m not a person?”
“You are a person, only still a little one.”
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I had barely finished explaining the whole philosophy of solitude to her when a hefty snowball crashed onto the deck, followed by another. It was our captain, philosophising in solitude, bombarding the crew. “See how quickly Dad missed us!”
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Hooray, today we finally received a pile of letters and comments, and after an almost Antarctic journey through a shady, snow-white gorge to the glacier, we settled down for a cosy group reading over tea. How little it sometimes takes to be happy! Thank you for the news and kind words, all our dear friends! We wish you a lovely end to the summer, and to everyone in Moscow, warmth and sunshine instead of cold, rain, and storms.
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You can follow the expedition in real time on our website under the Route tab, where the Iridium track is displayed. A map with the track and details is also available at bit.ly/iridium360