Meeting Fyodor Konyukhov at Cape Horn

Meeting Fyodor Konyukhov at Cape Horn. The storm, movements and manoeuvres, the return journey and the end of the expedition. First impressions of meeting a legendary adventurer. Between the first and the second 🙂 This part about 8 and 9 May should be read after the report: The Expedition to Cape Horn to Meet Fyodor Konyukhov and the Flotilla’s Unexpected Split . 8 May, evening — after we all “lost” one another Australis, the flagship of our three-yacht flotilla, ended up south of the Diego Ramírez Islands; AKROS, Fyodor Konyukhov’s boat, was a little west of Australis; the yacht Sara was sheltering behind False Cape Horn; and we bravely took refuge in Martial Bay, off Herschel Island. Neither AIS nor VHF could reach anyone. Guys, shall we go ashore? How fortunate that Vanya misses dry land. Otherwise, how would we girls have rowed our way there? Because the captain doesn’t miss dry land at all, and so he stays on deck to keep a vigilant eye on the situation. Ivan’s mighty arms wield the oars with ease, while Nastya and I—the only ones wearing boots—prepare to jump onto the sand and haul the dinghy ashore with all our might. The land smells of autumn and rotting grass. The streams murmur of the ancient Yaghan tribes who lived in Tierra del Fuego for a good thousand years before the colonisers drove them out. The shore is covered with limpet shells and long fronds of seaweed with broad blades. A little south of our landing place, a small river flows into the bay. It peeks out directly beneath the crowns of twisted trees with small, tough leaves. The foliage has either already fallen or is defying winter: “November—sorry, May, you say?! I’m not dropping. I’ll stay right here till spring, green as ever.” It would be lovely to take a little boat into that tunnel. But no one even thinks of fetching the dinghy—it is already about 300 metres away, dusk is falling, and the river is rather shallow: we’d run aground, and that would be that. This isn’t the tropics, you know. Ignoring such feats of valour, Vanya and I settle down on the sandy shore, conveniently raised like a bench, and watch the young sailor make her way up through the bushes to the top of the hill for a look beyond the horizon. Vanya pulls a flat bottle of 40-herb liqueur, an apple and a pear from inside his jacket. And Dasha and I quietly raise a toast to the success of our venture—to finding everyone and heading out into the Drake Passage to meet Fyodor. Lady Mary rocks gently, Australis and Sara have got lost somewhere, a storm is on its way; all in all, everything is wonderful :). Morning of 9 May Our inbox delighted us with repeated messages containing coordinates from the trackers and the positions of every yacht in the flotilla from marinetraffic.com. Thank God we have friends! They’re far away and we’re here, yet thanks to the internet they can see everything from there. We’re only 20 miles apart and can see nothing. The captain sat down with the navigation software and, within an hour, knocked together a neat and, most importantly, comprehensible picture of the movements of every boat in the flotilla. “While we’re waiting, why don’t we at least sail around Cape Horn?” Vanya suggests. “Oh! Exactly!” And to three cheers of “Hurrah!” we begin weighing anchor. The story of our second rounding of Cape Horn and how we celebrated 9 May over the VHF— here >> Sorry, the chart screenshots are on another laptop, so I had to grab them from our YouTube channel :). . Storm in the Drake Passage And so, during the night of 9 to 10 May, it began blowing like fury. We were anchored a little closer to shore than the crew aboard Sara, and our wind instrument showed 48 knots. Gusts, possibly stronger, broke through my uneasy sleep. The crew on the neighbouring yacht recorded 57 knots (105 km/h). The rigging hummed, the boat heeled somewhat towards the water, and I was half on watch, half asleep. I must say, keeping storm watch near shore with no icebergs or ice floes is far less nerve-racking than in Antarctica. There, every half-hour, you leap out onto deck to fend off ice mountains and clusters of smaller chunks with a boathook. Direction of the storm and positions of all three yachts and the boat AKROS All night long, Australis, towing the rowing boat AKROS, battled her way into the Beagle Channel. We knew this from the satellite coordinates of both boats, which a kind friend in Russia sent us throughout the night. By our reckoning, the flotilla’s flagship would already be in Chile by lunchtime. The only question was whether the crew would complete all the formalities at once and head off into the night, or wait for us and Sara after all. In that case, we would go our separate ways in the morning: Lady Mary and Sara to complete the outbound clearance formalities—we had been in Chilean waters all these days—and Australis straight to Ushuaia. ...Fortunately, the second option proved correct. The wind howled to its heart’s content and, by the morning of the 10th, had almost settled down to a steady 35 knots. Well then, clearly the perfect time to head out, we thought in unison with Sara’s captain, and an hour later we weighed anchor one after the other. For the first few hours we were tossed about, while Dasha, our camera operator, heroically filmed from the yacht’s bow despite everything. Sara was somewhere ahead; by our reckoning, Australis had been in Puerto Williams since morning. By lunchtime, we too had entered the shelter of the archipelago and began motoring towards Puerto Williams at cruising speed. On the approach to the southernmost village in the world, Misha’s voice from Sara came over the VHF, and we were delighted to hear that all three yachts would ride to the same anchor, raft up to starboard and then head to a crab party in Sara’s saloon, where at last we would meet the legendary Fyodor Konyukhov. Three on one anchor :). Taken from the deck of Australis I dawdled a little while getting ready and appeared only after the whole company had already begun feasting on hairy crabs around the communal table. Do you know what meeting him felt like? It felt as though Fyodor Filippovich, a man who had literally completed his solo rowing passage across the Pacific just one day earlier, had been waiting specifically for me. And with that feeling, I sat beside him for a couple of hours, together with a dozen or so other people. Fyodor answered our questions, talked about what life had been like during all those months in the ocean, and recalled moments from days long past... And it felt as though you had met your father... And I kept wanting to hug this incredible man. All of us fell under the spell of his unaffected manner, his guilelessness and his soul, ablaze with new ideas. And I think that is Fyodor Konyukhov’s secret and magic, the reason why the very different people who were with us consider themselves part of his family. . 11 May Morning in Puerto Williams, Chile The next morning we cast off from the two neighbouring yachts—if that is the right way to put it. Australis left for Ushuaia, on the Argentine side, where Fyodor Konyukhov was met at the dock by local Russian speakers; there are about twenty of them in Ushuaia. We completed our outbound clearance in Chile, fooled around by the metal sign reading “Immigration Police,” and departed for Argentina. Ladunya and Ivan battled it out at cards, we filmed Sara overtaking us in a cloud of spray, and then we sat talking in the cockpit, unable quite to believe that the adventure was coming to an end and that people would already begin heading home the next day. . Arrival We reached the AFASyN marina at dusk. AKROS was already ashore, and the shells knocked from her sides, perched on long, wormlike stalks, lay in little heaps nearby. All that remained was to wash the boat completely clean, dismantle her, rinse the gear with fresh water and dry it, then send the boat by container to Britain for repairs and preparation for the next stage ( link to Fyodor Konyukhov’s Instagram post ). At the AFASyN marina, Lady Mary came alongside Australis, and we followed Captain Ben and Roxana, the fairy godmother who had come to meet us, into the yacht club. Another encounter was waiting for us there. A handsome, friendly Briton with a very familiar face stepped forward to meet us. “I’m Marina,” I say, holding out my hand. “Charlie,” he says simply. “Wait... Charlie Pitcher?” “Yes.” “Ohhh! May I hug you? I’ve read about you!” Charlie Pitcher (left) and Ben, captain of Australis The very same Englishman, Charlie Pitcher, who in 2013 broke Fyodor Konyukhov’s world record for crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a rowing boat. (link: https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/582046 ) The rowing boats AKROS and Turgoyak, in which Fyodor Konyukhov crossed the Pacific Ocean in opposite directions, were built at this smiling gentleman’s boatyard. “Do you know who this is?” Oscar asks with a smile. “He’s the man who broke Fyodor’s record, and that doesn’t stop them being friends.” . For the next two days, the whole crowd of us bustled around the yacht club, sorting through the gear and cleaning the boat. We laid out tea spreads, and the young sailor baked a cake especially for Fyodor Filippovich. We had tea with it—the cake—during our breaks. The crew from Sara came to our deck saloon for supper and songs accompanied by guitar, and on the eve of their flight to Buenos Aires they dropped in with the Konyukhov family to say goodbye. We even managed to have tea together with a marvellous cake made by the landlady of their apartment. Three fast-paced, active, eventful weeks vanished in the exhaust fumes of the cars carrying the last of those departing to the airport—Fyodor, Oscar and Arkady Konyukhov, Misha and Pasha—and a piece of our soul... . Afterword The next day, immediately after a live broadcast about the expedition, I came down with a fever and a streaming nose. I still haven’t recovered. The leaves have all but fallen; Australis left this morning, and as we said goodbye we called out to one another, “See you next season :))).” That is a joke, of course. We are hardly likely to stay here for the winter. And yes, winter starts in a week—it’s time to make tracks. Or rather, make sail (by the way, our sails still haven’t arrived from Hong Kong; we’re wa-a-aiting). Hugs to you, friends! Thank you for your support in the comments, and for the fantastic help our friends Dmitry from St Petersburg and Dima from Novosibirsk gave us in keeping our bearings—and thanks to everyone who is with us! And enormous thanks to Igor P., Nikolai L. from Novosibirsk, Mikhail T. from Moscow and Igor N. from Perm for supporting the expedition via Paypal.me/TravelyFamily ! Hugs! . One Day at the Police Station And finally: at Cape Horn—the crew of the yacht Sara, the crew of the yacht Lady Mary, and the storm on the weather chart 🙂 The Sara gang Our crew The sustained wind (stronger in the gusts) is indicated on the chart by colours: grey means winds of 50 knots and above, burgundy means 40 knots, and red means 30–35.