“Andryukha, I’m going to earn myself some time off by standing all these watches, and then, when it starts blowing, you and Nastya can take the strain, all right? Here I am, standing watch after watch, while you two sleep...” “Then go and set the mainsail, since you’re on watch.” “Nah, it’s already time for me to sleep—I have to get up early.”
For almost a week now, I’ve been standing the night watches alone. To be precise, I sleep on the little settee in the wheelhouse. Andrei and Nastya are in the cabin, while Ladunya, as usual on expeditions, is under the table. About five times a night I wake up, keep a watchful eye on the situation, then go back to sleep. The radar alarm stays silent; there is either no wind or only a light one. Dawn breaks at half past four, and that is when I get up for good. If I can be bothered, I set the genoa; if I can’t, I go to the captain and say, “Andryushka, let’s set the sails” (or “set the sails”), then, “Go back to sleep, and I’ll carry on with the watch :).” That’s how calm the anticyclones are here in the Roaring Forties. I wish it could stay calm, with good speed, all the way to Australia. The albatrosses fully agree with me, and this morning they are circling the boat as though playing a game to see who can fly closest and complete a full circle.
Crossing the Ocean. The Route
So, we have settled on our only stop in the middle of the Indian Ocean: the Kerguelen Archipelago, at 49 degrees south latitude, 2,000 km from Antarctica. But we still haven’t decided on our Australian port of entry. At first we thought we would head to Albany, haul the boat out there, and then, without calling at Sydney, pass south of Tasmania and enter the Pacific. Now we are considering Perth, the capital of Western Australia, or Fremantle, a town near Perth. And then perhaps calling at Sydney after all and hauling the boat out there. It all comes down to the wind and the budget.
If you want to sail into somewhere, you need to understand how you are going to get out again. And if the first days of the next passage, with no money coming in, coincide with headwinds, we’ll be in deep trouble. So we are studying charts and books and thinking hard. I’m rereading the diary of Captain Litau’s circumnavigation aboard the yacht Apostol Andrei: from Cape Town to Australia they followed our route. And they had quite an adventure. They lost their rudder three times, contacted Moscow via Antarctica while seeking help, and had plenty of other fun and games. So for now we are hoping our resort-style voyage through the Southern Ocean will continue. So far we’ve been in easy mode: one storm in 16 days and about a week of strong winds.
Learning Is Light
The children and I have finally figured out the right way to approach our morning documentaries. At the moment we’re watching one about the Romanov dynasty, starting with Mikhail Fyodorovich. We arm ourselves with a notebook and pen and take notes as we watch. Then we ask one another questions. It works brilliantly. Even Ladunya now knows what the Sobornoye Ulozheniye is, for example. And the film made for the 400th anniversary of the House of Romanov is excellent—you can’t tear yourself away. The following morning, over breakfast, we watch the previous day’s episode again, filling in the occasional gaps in our notes. Then we ask questions again. It makes for a great hour and a half.
After that, everyone sits down to their own lessons. And yesterday our young sailor sewed a teddy bear and put on a show for us featuring him. She drew the tickets and booked a backing singer—in the person of Mum. Before dinner we got ourselves energised with dancing soft toys, and at the evening film screening we watched a historical tall tale about roughly the same period we had studied that morning—the film 1612. We read on Wikipedia how it had all really happened, then went to bed. Or rather, everyone else went to bed, while I went on watch. That’s how we live.
We can already feel the high latitudes: for three days now it has been +14°C inside in the mornings and +16°C in the evenings. Our hands have started freezing on deck again without gloves. The water from the tap has become icy cold. Today we fired up the heater for the first time. Startled by the occasion, it began to smoke, but at least that gave us a reason to air the boat while the captain got out the repair kit and fixed everything.
“Mmm... it smells like Antarctica,” Nastya drawled.
It’s romantic when the smell of a diesel heater is associated with the Frozen Continent. We are carrying a reefed mainsail and genoa on a broad reach. The wind is 15–20 knots; a two-metre swell is coming from the south, while half-metre wind waves from the north are running against it. It looks unusual. We moved the clocks forward by an hour, so now we are on Moscow time. Today was bath day. The captain looks devilishly handsome in his black Balinese harem trousers from an expensive Thai shop. It’s a pity that, through sheer carelessness, he tore my harem trousers up for rags—one pair of trousers down.
...I can’t properly proofread this post: the young sailor comes running in every two minutes with a maths question. She’s doing the actual calculations on her own like a champion; her questions are purely organisational—such as which pen she should use to trace over the numbers.
Talk soon, friends! Tomorrow, through our shore team, we’ll try to post the RIA Novosti article about our expedition that we didn’t manage to publish before entering the Southern Ocean.
You can see us on the map in real time under the “Route” tab on the website. Our coordinates are transmitted by an Iridium satellite tracker from MVS Telecom.
Friends, thank you for contributing to the expedition’s ship’s fund via PayPal and Yandex Money.
A huge thank-you to Yakov R. from Canada, Andrei P. from Novgorod, and Nikolai U. from Moscow! Thank you so much for the motivation and inspiration, our shore-based support team! And a huge thank-you to everyone for your comments, friends! They fill us with positive energy. We always read them with such pleasure. We love you, our dear readers, near and far! Hugs from 44 degrees south. May your February be a joyful one!