Winter Is Coming

Winter is coming. About the marinas and prices, the hardiest polar captains and their yachts. About how the young sailors motivate and demotivate themselves, and whom they socialise with / refuse to socialise with. ... Two days ago: I wrote a mind-blowing philosophical post. Not even a post—a whole five-page story that took me three days to write. And just then the captain says: Marinochka, you haven’t written anything for the website in ages... Well, okay, I say. Here, read this. It’s turned out rather controversial, I say. Not exactly a travel post—more philosophical, harking back to lessons learned in childhood. The captain sat down to read it, while I waited in ambush: what would he say? Wonderful, he says. But not for the website. Just the thing for the book. Absolutely splendid. But not for the website. So what, I ask, am I supposed to fire off to the website today? And so it turns out that after three days of what I shall not hesitate to call work, we have five more pages for the book. Not bad either: the strategic objective is gradually being achieved, but the tactical one is spinning its wheels. Because the website demands fresh chronicles. With explanations of why we are still here, at the edge of the world, even though Winter Is Coming, and the night is dark and... well, you know the rest. And those five pages were about a childhood drama of mine, and why it suddenly came back to me in connection with the present moment—waiting for Fyodor Konyukhov at the AFASyN marina in the city of Ushuaia, near Cape Horn. . Club Náutico Ushuaia has two marinas—AFASyN and Club Náutico. Club Náutico is almost in the centre, on the waterfront opposite the casino. That is both its advantage and its drawback—you can’t let the young sailor go out on her own because there is nowhere for her to go: the pedestrian area, then straight onto the road. But it is close to the shops and the laundry. There is internet and a small shower. Though you can only go online in the guard’s cute little two-chair booth. Which also serves as the office. On the plus side, the berth costs half as much as at AFASyN. Club Náutico Marina . AFASyN Marina It has the indisputable advantage of a fenced-in site and a green lawn. Trees draped in old fishing nets, and an aero club pockmarked with rabbit burrows. If our young sailor were older, she would have built herself a treehouse there—especially since someone before her had already tried to do just that. For now, she is happy enough with the rabbits. Or are they hares? The funny little creatures come out onto the lawn after dark to nibble the grass. And I immediately remember my childhood at Grandma’s in the village—she kept rabbits, and when I put them out on the grass, they would hop awkwardly along on their fat bottoms. Those fat bottoms, however, can reach warp speed when they have to flee. The other day, the two guard dogs went hare-hunting and chased a brown hare right across the yacht club. They were just about to catch it when one of the pursuers tripped over a metal support holding up a yacht ashore. There was a loud bang, and I immediately stopped worrying about the fate of the hare-rabbit and started worrying about the dog. The poor thing began whimpering and wailing and limped towards me when it heard me wailing along in sympathy. Since the dog was large, still fired up from the chase, and had just bashed its paw, I got a little scared. You never know with dogs like that—what if it bared its teeth at me out of misery? For some reason, I always get upset when a dog bares its teeth viciously. Apparently it saddens me that the dog failed to recognise a good person in me. Anyway, while I quietly retreated to the rear, one of the workers went up to the dog and comforted the poor creature. . AFASyN has a spacious clubhouse with a cosy attic library, where we have temporarily relocated our office. Downstairs there is also a grill, three spacious, completely separate bathrooms with showers, a playground, children’s and adult yacht clubs, and the magical fairy godmother Roxana. And ashore stands an old ship covered in graffiti. The young sailors train inside it in bad weather. Our acquaintance from Tierra del Fuego, Leandro, often comes to the open upper deck to drink mate and meditate on the Beagle Channel. To read about the culture of drinking mate and what surprised us here, see: Rules of Life in Tierra del Fuego . A Little About the Welcoming Party We wrote a little about Ushuaia from a sailor’s point of view in our report Gateway to Antarctica. At the moment, the gateway is rather deserted. Three other sailing yachts are moored alongside the wooden pier with us. One, black and orange, is being prepared for winter lay-up; the second, Australis, which will officially join the flotilla welcoming Fyodor Konyukhov, is also being prepared for lay-up—but only immediately after the welcome. Her captain, Ben, has flown home to Australia for ten days. When he returns, he will dash down to the Horn and then take his big steel boat to Puerto Williams on the Chilean side until next season. The Polish Selma, Captain Piotr Kuźniar’s yacht, has already begun wintering there. That captain is unbelievably cool, and he holds the world record for the southernmost latitude reached under sail. No one has ever taken a sailing yacht farther south. It happened in the Ross Sea, south of Australia. Roughly where Scott’s and Amundsen’s expeditions landed before setting out to conquer the South Pole in 1911. Selma was the last yacht of the season to return from Antarctica, arriving just in time for Cosmonautics Day. By 18 April, Captain Piotr had already flown home to Poland, and the crew delivered the yacht to Puerto Williams. We’ll send her our regards when we call there before the Chilean fjords. Down-to-Earth Matters A berth at AFASyN Marina costs 16 dollars per day. Water is free; electricity costs 5–7 roubles per kWh. Since the heater is labouring away with every fold of its radiator, the words “electricity bill” make us want to stick our heads straight into the sand and wait for the unpleasantness to pass. Winter officially begins in May, and our fairy godmother Roxana closes down her yachting affairs and flies to Uruguay until next season. She will just welcome Fyodor Konyukhov, then adiós. Apart from that, there is not much keeping her here—or us and Australis, for that matter. Though we cannot leave Tierra del Fuego yet anyway: Lady Mary is impatiently awaiting two new sails, which are being sewn in Hong Kong right now, after which they will fly halfway round the world to Chile and find us somewhere here in Patagonia. We cannot undertake long passages without the new sails. An Ushuaia-Style Regatta Quite a few yachts are dug in at anchor until next season. Some of them are still sailing this one. For example, last Sunday the local yacht club even staged a regatta. People had been gathering since early morning; the loudspeaker wailed politely like a siren, frightening us all. The sun was squinting, and the smell of meat on the grill made our jaws ache. The start was given, and all the little yachts charged off and really got moving! They flew about a hundred metres, then the wind died to nothing. That happens here. On their remaining momentum, the boats somehow straggled to the buoy and made a clumsy turn. And whoever managed to coast the farthest back towards the finish was the winner. In short, everyone started their engines, returned to their mooring buoys and anchors, and went off to feast. In the middle of the feast, where for 300 pesos we too had the good fortune to enjoy sandwiches and beer, the organisers suddenly said: Oh! What are we doing? We’ve got award certificates! And they began handing out prizes to the participants. Whoever had drifted closest towards the finish won. Everyone had a good laugh, took photos, and carried on with the merrymaking, as a result of which a little fence around a flower bed full of daisies was broken. It had simply never had a large crowd sitting on it before, so it had remained standing. This time it couldn’t take the strain. The young sailor raced around among the sailors and their children, adding finishing touches to the still life she and Roxana had begun that morning. We practised Spanish with three women—Graciela, Eugenia and Anna. Though by the end of the first hour, it turned out that Eugenia spoke English. We agreed that perhaps we would go to the National Park together. The only slightly worrying thing is that she placed the entrance to this southernmost national park in the world about 20 kilometres closer than everyone else who has ever been there. Today (already yesterday), we’re going to check. A ticket to the park costs about 20 dollars. But all the Russian-speaking backpackers we have met (we wrote about them here) got into Tierra del Fuego National Park by bypassing the ticket office through the windfall. We’ll go and reconnoitre. If Operation Windfall fails because our young sailor’s legs are too short, we’ll decide on the spot whether to plunge into the national park’s wilderness of streams and lakes for 80 bucks, or just look at it from the road. It’s good that we can make it before the cold sets in. Winter is coming. Easter, Ushuaia Style Winter is coming... And just before it—not before summer, as you and I are accustomed to—they celebrated the Bright Resurrection of Christ here without much fuss. Thursday through Sunday were designated Easter days and were almost non-working days. How do you celebrate this great holiday? I ask Roxana. Well, you know... as a family. And there’s Mass on Sunday. But the main day is Friday. I’m no great expert on this, of course, but it seems they chose not exactly the brightest day as the main one for the celebration, did they? I say. After all, Friday was precisely when Jesus suffered and died. I don’t know—apparently Roxana is not entirely clear either on why Friday is more important than Holy Sunday. So, during Catholic Easter we had to go to a café to break up the sameness of our working days :). . Everyday Yacht Life for Yacht Kids Children grow up. Nastya bought herself an inspirational online training course with her own money. Now she gets up while it is still dark and goes straight to the mat to exercise. For the first few days she complained that her legs hurt; now she doesn’t bat an eyelid. There is a sparkle in her eyes, and her goals have straightened themselves out a bit. A joy to behold. That’s what happens when she buys it herself. Works better than any amount of prodding from Mum. If only Ladunya would buy herself some sort of training course too. For now she is experiencing a bit of a social slump—the few little yacht kids who used to drop by have all sailed away. And Lada does not want to attend the local Spanish-speaking school. She says, “But I don’t understand Spanish!” Although she has started learning Spanish on her own with an online programme—she even downloaded it herself—and in the evenings she builds sentences from blocks and is already writing, though only on her phone for now. Roxana inspired her. She says our Lada already speaks English just fine, so it is time to learn español. At six, our young sailor was up for anything—whether school in Mexico or gymnastics lessons there. Now, if you please, she has a language barrier. Thank God there is no English language barrier at least: somehow she taught herself to read and can chat away perfectly well. With a gloriously thick Russian accent :). Speaking of accents. We’ve finished editing our new film about New Year at Point Nemo. In fact, it has just come out on our channel. There is an episode in which the whole crew sings slightly off-key at a New Year’s concert in Panama’s Shelter Bay Marina. The acceeeent, guys—it’s somethiiing else!... When you are speaking yourself, you do not seem to hear it. But then you listen to the recording and crack up. How did that line from the classics of the Siberian Storytellers go? “To set their hearts ablaze with incorrect verbs and use the Present Indefinite”—yep, that is pretty much what the new film is about :). It also includes our review of the year, videos and photos with beloved friends, the peculiarities of a New Year’s table at the Roaring Forties’ 48th parallel in six-metre seas, the captain’s conclusions, songs, costumes and a crew wall newspaper, and, for the grand finale, juggling pressure cookers. The captain has also mastered a couple of new special effects, thereby confirming his honorary title as our crew’s very own Steven Spielberg. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel if you haven’t already! . Thank You! And special thanks to our real shore team, our true motivators and support group, for sustaining the expedition via Paypal.me/TravelyFamily. Thank you to Robertas and Dmitry S. from the Leningrad Region. Thank you to Fyodor L. from Nefteyugansk and Alevtina R. from Krasnodar! . We wrote about the peculiarities of berthing in the southernmost city in the world here: Life Aboard a Yacht in High Latitudes And here: Gateway to Antarctica About the travellers—and especially the female hitchhikers—we met here at the end of the world, see here: +Backpack – Wallet = Tierra del Fuego . How do the LOCAL people live at the very edge of the world? A few days ago, our new article appeared on My Planet. Fresh and straight from the source :): Rules of Life in Tierra del Fuego Now those mountains are white with snow, and rusty red has replaced the green 🙂 Sending hugs from snowy Tierra del Fuego. Stay in touch! Wishing spring to you all! While for us... winter is coming :)))