The Pole of Inaccessibility. New Year at Point Nemo

The Pole of Inaccessibility. New Year at Point Nemo. January 1, 6 a.m. Beneath the little Christmas tree there is only one present: a chocolate bar for the young sailors, with a line dividing it in half. Father Frost couldn’t find us so far from any land. On the first day of the year, Lady Mary left the Roaring Forties of the Southern Ocean behind without mishap and entered the Furious Fifties. Andryukha and I can’t remember: what are the sixties and seventies called? I reckon “totally screwed” and “utterly done for,” respectively. The captain isn’t entirely sure. ... The Pole of Inaccessibility. Needless to say, we took a highly creative approach to choosing a place to celebrate the main holiday for children and adults. In Siberia, they were already popping champagne corks to the sound of the Kremlin chimes, the president was inspiring heroic deeds through millions of television sets, while we were taking a screenshot of the iPad. The navigation app showed that the nearest land to us consisted of three islands: Maher Island, Antarctica—to the south. The uninhabited Ducie Atoll to the north, part of the Pitcairn Islands. And Motu Nui to the northeast. Each of these islands was exactly 2,688 kilometres away. Hundreds of years ago, beside the rock of Motu Nui, the strongest Rapa Nui men, inhabitants of Easter Island, competed for the title of Birdman of the Year. Their descendants are the people closest to Lady Mary this New Year. Apart from the cosmonauts, whose existence is hard to believe in beneath the cotton-wool blanket of fog that covered the ocean half a month ago. And so, quite symbolically, on December 31 we began the final long leg of our expedition. The first leg was from Bora Bora to the 37th parallel and the Maria-Theresa Reef from Jules Verne. The second was along the 37th parallel to that same reef, as marked on Admiralty charts. The third leg was from there to Point Nemo. And on the holiday we started ticking off the last of the long legs. Cape Horn is 2,034 miles (3,767 km) away. By New Year, we had covered about 4,000 miles. ... The oceanic pole of inaccessibility (Point Nemo) is an imaginary point in the World Ocean that is farther from any land on Earth than any other. In 1992, Croatian survey engineer Hrvoje Lukatela calculated this point using computer modelling and named it after Captain Nemo. The orbit of the ISS passes 400 km above Point Nemo. We were unable to contact the cosmonauts because there is no equipment aboard operating on their frequencies. Space agencies use the oceanic pole of inaccessibility as a spacecraft graveyard. We asked Father Frost to make sure no fragment of a flying machine landed on our deck. The old fellow arranged everything. On New Year’s Eve we sent a load of letters back to land; most of them remain unanswered so far—everyone is celebrating. But we are not discouraged. ... We prepared the vegetables for Olivier salad and the potatoes for baking on the 30th. That same day, Laduska baked a batch of Alyona’s biscuits—that’s what we call the little biscuits made to our niece’s recipe. Nastya, meanwhile, conjured up an amazingly delicious cake out of nothing. We have two such recipes, where flour, powdered milk, sugar, cocoa and baking soda turn into a cake worthy of a top-notch patisserie—especially if you add plenty of cream and sprinkle sifted cocoa over all the imperfections. Tea and cake while watching The Irony of Fate, plus half a litre of cola between us—that was how we saw out the old year and marked our passage through the Pole of Inaccessibility. Then there were songs accompanied by guitar, the recording of a musical greeting from the crew, a film, canapés made with tinned ham and cheese, and another film. We even dug up last year’s presidential address. And both times he said, “Congratulations on the arrival of 2018,” we all corrected him in chorus. It’s 2019, after all! Lada’s fancy-dress performance and the festive quest took place the next day. I won 10 dollars; when we get to Ushuaia, I’ll buy myself something nice. And in general, we have grand plans for Ushuaia: we need to celebrate Nastya’s birthday, Christmas and New Year, with presents under the tree. Laduska even wrote a letter to Father Frost, but it is still lying here. The old fellow can’t fly to the Pole of Inaccessibility—he’s a frost spirit, not a water spirit. We’re waiting until we get closer to land; perhaps the kindly magician will make an exception. His hectic season will be over by then anyway. And our young sailor has requested gifts of the impossible-to-find variety—even Father Frost will have a hard time. Russian second-grade textbooks. She came up with that herself; stunned, we muttered something along the lines of, “Well, give it a try—perhaps he’ll manage to find them at the very southern tip of South America, in a town with a few thousand inhabitants.” Guys, any ideas? ... There are fewer than three weeks left until the finish, provided we don’t get becalmed. At night it is about 8–9°C above zero. This morning it wasn’t exactly warm inside the yacht either: +12°C. During the day it is much the same outside, 11–12°C. No one goes out on deck unless necessary. Our hands are already going numb when we work the sails. But on January 2, the sun finally came out. And we remembered that nature has colours other than grey. We are trying to dry out the condensation, but without much success. When the real cold arrives, we will move the young sailor into the aft cabin and all sleep together under a heap of blankets, as if in a tent. Plus the watchkeeper’s settee in the wheelhouse. We wanted to begin the move with the saloon settee, but something is leaking underneath it—either condensation from inside or condensation from outside. The settee has been dismantled for two weeks and still won’t dry. Twice a day we collect water from the walls of the forecabin, and ten times a day from all the windows. We have to spray the mould with a chlorine-based product; nothing else works. In places that come into contact with people or food, I spray vinegar, which has to be thoroughly rubbed in because it does not dry by itself. We have implemented an experimental innovation: instead of fitting a second pane to the hatches in the galley, we taped on a layer of cellophane. We are watching to see what happens with the condensation and heat loss. It’s a shame to have all the heat escaping directly through the glass of the hatch above the stove. During these first days of the new year, our general weariness with the passage seems somehow more pronounced. Perhaps it is nostalgia for a proper celebration at home? ... It is becoming easier and easier to slip into hibernation, and harder and harder to make ourselves do anything. Day 44 underway; it is cold, but it will get colder still. The following wind is blowing at 20–35 knots. When it reaches 35 knots, we drop the mainsail and accelerate to 7 miles per hour under the small staysail. And the five-metre waves give us a shove in the stern. But the following seas often collide with the high swell from Antarctica, and then the yacht dances, scooping up water over her sides. The forecast for the next 10 days promises nothing above Force 8. Ladunka is happily working through a second-grader’s summer workbook. Nastya, as always, is thoughtful and reads a great deal. I busy myself with housekeeping; the captain repairs one thing or another—the temperature sensor, or now the bedroom ceiling has turned pink because the hydraulic steering fluid is leaking. And when Andrei cleaned the speed transducer, that was something, because one end of the transducer protrudes from the bottom into the bilge and the other into the ocean. When you pull it out, water gushes through the open hole in the hull. The faster you plug it with the special blanking plug, the lower the chance of going to the bottom. And on that optimistic note, I’ll wrap things up. ... You can see us on marinetraffic.com. Our MMSI is 273334590. Friends wrote that there are ships everywhere, while in our part of the ocean there is only the lonely red dot of Lady Mary. Well, and somewhere out there Fyodor Konyukhov is rowing too. Guys, please write in the comments: what are his current coordinates? And please take a screenshot of us on MarineTraffic. You can send the screenshot in a message to our group on Facebook or VK; once we reach the mainland, we’ll have a proper look and thank you. Friends, may you be happy in the year that has begun. Thank you for being with us! Hugs from 52 degrees south latitude and 117 degrees west longitude.