Southern Patagonia

Estero Fouque

I´m lying in the hammock on a perfect blue sky day in Estero Fouque, a long hockey-stick shaped fjord on the north side of Isla Hoste in southern Patagonia.  The air is still and cold, and wrapped in fleece there is just enough warmth from the bright winter sun to remain outside and appreciate the surroundings - on one side cascading glaciers, on the other a view along the fjord to a pyramidal mountain and the snowfield I skied down yesterday.



 Seno Pia, Western Arm

My mind drifts back to trade wind sailing in the tropics last year.  The wind blew from the North East at 15-25kts, 28C during the day and 22C at night, and passages were planned and plans followed with rare exceptions. On reaching our destination we´d drop the anchor, put up the hammocks, and enjoy a celebratory drink on deck.

Sailing in southern Patagonia is different.

Horizontal snow, 46kt wind, safe anchorage

From Puerto Williams, where Otra Vida has been based for the last five months, most destinations of interest are to the west.  The prevailing winds are NW-W-SW, 15-45kts in strength, southern ocean low pressure systems carrying snow, sleet or rain.  Heading west means making a dash between safe anchorages on those occasional days without much wind. Days with winds from the east, while not unknown, are rare. Sailing back to Puerto Williams is somewhat easier, but one quickly learns that easier is relative in southern Patagonia.



No, the weather is not the reason to be down here.  Everything else is. 



Perfect reflection in Estero Coloane

The scenery … well, I´ll be frugal with words and mostly let the pictures carry their own descriptive load.  We don’t have a thesaurus on board Otra Vida.  If we did, it would have been well thumbed by now, searching for new superlatives each day to describe the experiences of southern Patagonia.  After a few days on board it seems everyone ends up saying “Wow!”, “Oh my!”, “Holy shit!” or some other fairly meaningless exclamation.  Words simply aren´t up to the task of processing what our eyes are seeing.

Lovely still anchorage in Seno Pia, ice from the glacier floating past outside



When the sun shines and the sky is blue these places are magical on a level that is qualitatively different to the tropics.  The feeling of space and peace is huge, elemental, humbling.  Southern Patagonia remains almost untouched*, nature in a near pristine state, and you encounter situations that are difficult to fit into any normal definition of sailing or travel.  The experience can be transformative, sometimes other-worldly.



The same anchorage, rather more challenging conditions

Then there are the sailors you meet.  I first heard of the Micalvi Yacht Club, legendary bolthole for every sailboat down here, from an experienced Antarctic sailor almost a decade ago, and I was hooked.  He summed it up: “No one arrives there by chance, and everyone is interesting”.  It´s certainly high on the list of contenders for Best Yachtie Hangout in the World.



Evening beach fire, Caleta Olla

Seno Pia

However, there´s complexity in my feelings about Patagonia.  It is a place of genuine danger – not glamourised danger, like extreme sports, but tangible real danger of loss of boat and loss of life.  Cold, hard, wet, uncomfortable danger.  This is not hyperbole.  These situations are not theoretical.  In 2017 already there has been one occasion where loss of life for a person ashore was a probable outcome (that the person is alive today is a testament to the professionalism and air rescue equipment of the Chilean Armada), and three occasions where boat loss was a real possibility, one of which resulted in damage to the hull below water line.   To put this in context, in 40,000 miles of sailing over the last eight years, including five major ocean passages and well over a thousand nights at anchor, I cannot recall any situation where I felt even a slight risk of losing my boat.



The view skiing down, Otra Vida just visible to the left in the distance

And this sharp awareness of the contingent nature of life here is mixed with sublime appreciation for the inescapable beauty of Patagonia explored with a sailboat.  The glaciers, the hikes, the tranquil anchorages. Evening beach fires with driftwood.  Whales, dolphins, sea lions, sea otters, guanacos.  Condors wheeling high above in an azure sky.  Hiking to a rock for chilly sunset beers overlooking glacial lakes, crenelated mountains, perfect fjords, sandy shorelines, windswept trees, spindly waterfalls.  Occasional solo hikes and dinghy trips, too.  These form a treasure trove of moments that I will carry with me forever, emotions so intense that tears easily rise up in my eyes.  These are times you don´t forget, ever.

Guanaco

There are many amazing places on this beautiful planet of ours.  I´ve been fortunate to experience some of them, and for sure there are many more still to experience.  But in quiet moments of late I´ve found myself asking a question over and over again, a question without an answer, a question that seems increasingly rhetorical: Where does one go after here?

 

Estero Fouque

* There´s a more nuanced discussion to be had on this subject, and I am not engaging in erasure or whitewashing.  For the record: yet again colonial westerners destroyed thriving indigenous peoples and cultures; the pursuit of profit by early fur traders resulted in non native animals being introduced, particularly beavers, damaging the ecosystem; the consequences of global warming including glacier shrinkage and changes in seasonal weather patterns are stark and unmistakeable.  Still, compared to the abuse we´ve inflicted on much of the planet, southern Patagonia remains relatively untouched.















Many thanks to Bodo Will for some of these photos.



It doesn´t always rain

Canal Chacabuco

It was a dark and stormy night... it often is in Patagonia.  The days too.  Except when they aren´t.  Then you´re transported to an Edenic paradise with forests of timeless green, peaky mountains harbouring eternal snows far above, serene water nourished by sourmilk cascades tracing down cliffs and gullies, all sheathed in a sonic backcloth of bird calls on which to paint contemplation or activity.



Entering Estero Clemente

Puerto Millabú, a comforting slash in the rocky southern shore of Isla Clemente, was our home for a couple of days, anchored by the river beach at the head of the valley.   The Cascada Salmón beckoned, drawing us to beach then river, through an enchanted Hans Cristian Andersen-esque forest where pixies might have been hiding behind every fallen log, along ledges under small cliffs, and across barenaked rock smoothed by abundantly present rain and wind.   What we optimistically referred to as the trail would have carried stern warnings in a tourist guidebook – myriad routefinding difficulties, easy to lose the trail once you´ve found it, dense and slippery vegetation, steep slopes, exposed steps on a moss-covered tree root between a near vertical bank of loose vegetation and a cliff to cross a stream several metres below, rapidly changeable weather, risk of mist descending, no possibility of assistance.  Wonderful stuff – our sort of hike.  We left temporary markers at critical points that were especially obscure – a ribbon, a hat, a bottle of sunscreen -  and they served us well during the descent.  Lunch found us perched on flat rocks munching granola bars and sipping stream water, pensive and silent, basking in a panoramic view of the upper waterfalls of the Cascada.  Far below Otra Vida swung to her anchor in the bay, dark tendrils of river snaking towards her through grey-green water covered sand.

Cascada Salmón lower part

The following afternoon I downloaded the latest weather forecast : not promising.  We needed a 36 hour window of settled weather to reach and cross the notorious Golfo de Penas, 60 miles of water wide open to the Pacific and therefore to the substantial groundswell radiating from storms that relentlessly pummel the southern ocean between Cape Horn and Antarctica.  As if that was not enough, add in a rapidly shelving bottom amplifying those swells, tidal currents pushing north and south, and intense and frequently changing weather.  It´s a recipe for dangerous wave conditions with anything more than modest winds, and one of our pilot books warns that “even large ships do not cross the gulf in bad weather”.  Finding a 36 hour weather window in Patagonia, we are discovering, is as likely as Donald Trump improving life for ordinary Americans, and rather less likely than finding a herd of pink unicorns.   So, acceding to metrological reality, we replanned our crossing into sections and looked again at the forecast.  Our choice was to leave immediately or wait about a week.  Up with the anchor, quick stowage of loose items below, and on our way within minutes.   Emerging from the protection of Estero Clemente the ocean swell greeted us as we followed a course dodging small islands and shoals through the mist and light rain.  The VHF burst out “Embarcación Otra Vida” summoning Allie to a friendly chat with the captain of a research vessel closing with us through a pass.  “You are very brave” he told Allie, hearing our plans to sail to Puerto Williams.

Belated Valentine´s Day celebration lunch

The islands behind us and conditions fairly benign, we discussed options, and jointly decided to continue overnight to Caleta Suarez, a safe and secure anchorage just shy of Cabo Raper at the northern limit of Golfo de Penas.   It was Léa´s first passage in the open ocean on a sailboat, ever, and Allie´s first overnight passage.  Straightforward, chilly, wet … we all had pleasant watches, and even more pleasant slumbers in the warm passage berths, lee cloths holding us in.   Cosily huddled behind the spray hood in the dark, I was reminded how much I enjoy night watches … the tranquillity brought back lovely emotions of those nights at sea between Ecuador and Chile in the last months.

The boat sign tree at Caleta Suarez

We arrived a little after dawn, our mooring plan for Caleta Suarez at the ready.  Another boat in such a small caleta could add complications, but cruising boats here are as rare as the aforementioned pink unicorns.  As we rounded the corner we noticed the five commercial fishing boats rafted together.  Undeterred, we stuck with our plan, dropping the anchor, launching the dinghy, and tying shore lines to trees.  One of the fishing boats left, manoeuvring around us.  We were almost done, eagerly anticipating a warm drink below, when a fishermen pointed out that our lines would block all movement, including the boats returning later, and invited us to tie up alongside.  Sounds pretty straightforward, but with our anchor down, their anchors down, our lines ashore, their lines ashore, other lines floating on the water … it took an hour or two to sort it all out.  In the rain, of course.  Allie, dressed provocatively in black oilskins and rubber boots while retrieving our shorelines, attracted plenty of interest from the young fishermen.

The captain of the fishing boat we tied to gave us two perfectly filleted fish, and we were gifted more fish and seafood later, eventually refusing some as there is only so much fish two women can eat.  Léa reminded us we had bypassed Valentine´s Day so a quick ceviche was rustled up (and a chickpea rice salad for me) while Allie prepared the table with a candle and a white silk rose. We enjoyed a celebratory Valentine´s Day lunch just two days late - who´s counting the days here anyway?

After a few days at anchor waiting for weather, including an attempt to reach a natural hot springs aborted due to too much of the wrong type of wind, Allie and Léa painted a sign to go alongside those of other yachts on a tree ashore.  Otra Vida´s longstanding philosophy, “no rules, no limits”, has evolved, and the sign reflects this: “no rules, no limits, no conspiracy theories.”  Yes, there is a story there … several, actually … but they are for another time, perhaps with a lovely Chilean artisanal beer in hand.

When we fixed the sign to the tree it wasn´t raining.  I take that as a good omen.



It doesn´t always rain

Saturdays

Saturday morning, 7th January 2017.  I´m at anchor in Puerto Ingles, a small lagoon at the northern end of Isla de Chiloe, now as quiet as a millpond, sun shining, birds crying, a seal playing in the water, two dogs running along the shoreline. I arrived yesterday morning in Chile after 19 days at sea from Easter Island looking for shelter ahead of an overnight storm.  It´s an excellent anchorage. 

Saturday morning.  A feeling I remember well from the days when I worked in a regular job, waking in the morning light with energy and anticipation.  Sometimes there was a glow from some achievement in the work week … a breakthrough on a project, a milestone achieved, a promotion gained, a political battle won, a contract signed - as often as not, something as insubstantial as a change in a number in a spreadsheet.

Saturday morning.  Most of all the feeling was one of precious freedom.  I could do anything I wanted on Saturday, could truly be myself, with the sure knowledge that the following day, Sunday, I didn’t have to put on the mask of management consultant or corporate manager.  I could live fully on Saturdays – take myself to that liminal space where sleep is a necessity rather than a duty.  A hard ski ascent, thighs burning, smiling so much that my cheeks ache, body caressed by sunburn and sweat and endorphins.  The calm of the last kilometres of a long run, in a trance from the drumbeat of feet connecting with earth, wondering if my iPod battery will last till I get to the end.  Diving deeply into a novel or an essay or a poem or a travel story and not needing to stop.  The intensity of the last hours before dinner party guests arrive, focused on cooking and setting the table and selecting music and tidying up and setting the mood with lights and preparing drinks and polishing glasses and anticipating conversation and smiling and … everything!

        "Why do I climb for hours for a handful of turns in untracked snow? Why do I grin and dance
          afterward?  Why is fun such an anemic answer to the questions above?  Powder snow skiing
          is not fun.  It´s life, fully lived, lived in a blaze of reality."  -  Dolores LaChapelle

Csikszentmihalyi called this Flow, Sartre described it as being engaged with life … whatever words one employs, and this is right at the edge of language, for me it is that feeling of being, not consciously being with that little commentator in your head describing it, but rather being as a state, without a separate awareness of the state.  Being completely in the moment, completely in the flow.  Saturdays.

          "The more you consume, the less you live" - Guy Debord

It´s an indictment of our western model that Saturdays are, for many, the only day of the week when this is possible.  From his perch in Soho in the mid 19^th century Marx foresaw a key consequence of capitalism – alienation from life – and refused to lie still and accept it.  Have we progressed in the 150 years since he was writing?  Yes, a little – we do have that one precious day out of seven, although for 1.9 billion people on the planet existing on less than $2 a day Saturday effectively doesn´t exist.  Being, Saturday morning, is, for the most part, a western privilege.
 

And living on a sailboat, where it feels to me that Saturday mornings are much more frequent, where floating at anchor and sharing the beauty of Patagonia with interesting companions is what life will consist of for months ahead … what does that say about my privilege?   I sometimes feel a need to justify it by explaining that living on a sailboat involves a lot of work, a relic of my upbringing in a western society.  But doesn’t such an explanation reinforce the very model that leads to work dominating life?

Ah, perhaps there´s no escape from the circular logic.  It´s enough to make you want to run off with a sailboat to Patagonia …

Easter Island

“… on this island the Wind God inhabits
the only church living and true:
our lives come and go, dying, making love:
here on Easter Island where everything is altar,
where everything is a workroom for the unknown,
a woman nurses her newborn
upon the same steps that her gods tread.

Here, they live! But do we?
We transients, followers of the wrong star,
were shipwrecked on this island as in a lagoon,
like in a lake in which all distances end,
on a motionless journey, so difficult for men.”

Men IX, La Rosa Separada, Pablo Neruda

We arrived at Easter Island after a lovely 23 day trade wind passage from Ecuador, port tack all the way, barely adjusting our sails, life lived at a 20 degree angle.   Rashly ignoring nautical tradition, we left on a Friday and had a woman aboard so probably we should have sunk.  As you are reading this obviously we didn’t.  Another small nail in the coffins of patriarchy and superstition.

During the passage I read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive”.  I chose it because it sounded interesting, and it was a surprise to find Easter Island as one of his case studies.  To précis the book: he examines historical and contemporary societies that have thrived or failed, and teases out five substantive themes: environmental damage; climate change; hostile neighbours; friendly trade partners; and the society’s response to environmental challenges.

Easter Island was occupied by Polynesians from island groups to the West in about 900AD.  The population is estimated to have grown to about 15,000, and then declined to about 3,000 by the time the first Europeans sighted it in 1722.  By then it was already an ecological disaster, with no significant trees left standing, and its population was barely surviving  The iconic moai (stone head statues) were there in profusion, extravagantly contrasting with the poverty of the islanders.

What had happened? Diamond meticulously brings together strands of scholarship, describing how the Polynesians developed a two class society, with aristocrats living in large houses in prime locations, and peasants farming the land.  Over time the felling of trees, used for house construction, cooking, elaborate cremation rituals, and for moving the large stone statues from the quarry to their final sites, denuded the island.  The response of the aristocrats appears to have been to erect ever greater monuments as power struggles developed between rival chiefs.  What had been an island capable of supporting its population became an ecological wasteland driven by the vanities and egos of the ruling elite and their ever more elaborate traditions.  Unsurprisingly, following the immiseration of much of the population, the aristocracy was overthrown, but it was too late – the forests had gone.  Soil erosion accelerated without trees to moderate the effects of rain and wind.  Heating and cooking was only possible by burning grass.  Game animals died out with the forests, cutting off that food source.  Lacking large trees, large canoes could no longer be built, limiting fishing to what could be caught in sheltered waters very close to the coast.  Chickens and rats became the main sources of protein.

Of course, while the Polynesians destroyed the forests and reduced the population by 80% from its peak, western imperialism takes second place to no one in these matters.  By 1877 the population had been reduced a further 96% to a mere 111 inhabitants through a combination of disease deposited by Christian missionaries, slave raids by Peruvians, and profiteering by the European chancers that imperialism regularly excreted into occupied lands.  Every Easter Island Polynesian today is descended from one of the 36 survivors who had children.

Given the history one might expect the Polynesians to be unwelcoming to those of us from western nations still carrying an imperial stain. Not a bit of it.  Warm, friendly, sharing, willing to help … the culture of the island seems grounded in welcoming hospitality and mutual support.   Going into Hanga Roa by dinghy the first evening we were swamped by several breaking waves.  Local fishermen hoisted our dinghy onto the dock and gave us a hand up from the water, then put glasses of whisky-cola in our hands and invited us to share their barbequed fish while they got to work saving the drowned outboard motor.   As the evening continued we were invited to stay in one of their houses rather than return to the boat in our wet clothes.

There´s a happy and relaxed feeling to the island.  People have enough to live on, and there seems to be neither obvious poverty nor ostentatious displays of wealth.   People have time to talk and want to get to know you.  Within hours I felt I had friends on the island.

Was our reception coloured by our arrival by sailboat?  Of course, to some extent.  Significant numbers of tourists fly into the island for a few days vacation, apparently 5000 a week in peak season. Travelling here by sailboat takes a bit more effort, and Otra Vida was only the 23^rd sailboat to arrive at the island in the previous year.  Compared to the volume of boats at the average Caribbean island that is a rounding error, sure.  Then again, an average of two sailboats a month means that sailboat crew are not so unusual on Easter Island.

The model underlying western capitalism, the model of rational economic man, says that our nature as people is to be competitive, to maximise our own self interest, if necessary using violence.  It says that these dark base instincts need to be controlled by strong social rules and norms, backed up by the threat of state-applied force.  Altruism is a fantasy, according to this model, and all interactions are calculated (perhaps imperfectly) in terms of the benefit to each party.

I´ve found it noteworthy that cities do indeed seem to bring out that version of human “nature”, but that smaller more remote places seem to operate quite happily against “nature”.  Or could it be that our more fundamental nature (let´s forget my skirting dangerously close to essentialism here) is to be cooperative and generous, to support each other in community, and that our “natural” competitiveness is socially constructed?   Looking out at Otra Vida at anchor in the distance, the maoi to the north proudly staring inland, after a day of getting provisions for the boat with my fisherman friend Juan, it certainly feels that way.  And that feels right, feels good, feels like something I can hold on to.