The South-Aris expedition got off to a rough start. After an idyllic sail down the Beagle Channel on the 6th of January. We stopped at Puerto Williams which is the naval base for Chile's southern district. Unlike the hustle and bustle of Ushuaia with 40,000 inhabitants aspiring to the tourism industry, Puerto Williams is a sleepy village of 2,000, consisting mainly of naval personnel and their families.

The Chilean Navy controls the Cape Horn Archipelago and it is appropriate to check in with them when leaving for Antarctica. The area around Cape Horn is the last shelter before the Drake Passage. It is also a great place to do your final stowage and take care of the last minute details without interruption, not to mention getting your thoughts in order before a major passage.

After dinner on board we spent the evening of the 6th in the 'Micalvi' which doubles as a jetty and yacht club. A ruined naval supply ship dating from the 40's the 'Micalvi' has a bar serving 'Pisco Sours', the Chilean specialty of eau de vie, beaten egg white, lemon juice and castor sugar. The atmosphere is warm and cozy thanks to a fire fed by native beech and you can peruse the guest book filled with drawings, poetry and signatures of previous boats' crews who have passed before.

After a warm and sunny morning we checked out of Puerto Williams and motor sailed down the last stretch of the Beagle Channel. The decision of when to leave on a crossing of the Drake Passage is predicated on timing it right to slip through on a northerly wind before the next cold front strikes. The two previous weather maps had, as usual, a series of depressions stacked up in the Drake Passage. The Chilean weather facsimile map comes at 2300 GMT which is 2000 local. The 6th January map showed a far from ideal ideal scenario, but not bad enough to justify hanging around waiting for a better window. Our tight schedule - we had to be at Elephant Island for the rendez-vous with the M/S Molchanov on the night of the 14th January - also pushed us to go for the crossing .

So we deflated the dinghy, stowed it and the anchor below, bunged up the anchor hawse and we were on on our way. Night was just coming on at 2230 as we sailed between the dark shapes of Islas Picton and Nueva to port and Isla Lennox to starboard in a light northwesterly. Elena cooked up a vegetable stew and I joked that it might be the last square meal for some days to come. Eight hours later the prophesy proved correct. In the middle of the night on the 7th, the wind swung into the west and strengthened to gale force 7. Our mainsail was already reefed down to the last position - a wisp of its maximum area - and the genoa was rolled two thirds of the way in.

Still on the continental shelf, just southeast of Cape Horn, the waves and swell were irregular. Big seas continually crashed over our starboard beam soaking the helmsman with water already registering 7 degrees Centigrade. This was an inauspicious start and a bit of a shock to our systems. It is always preferable to begin a long passage in reasonable weather, in other words a 'soft start', but this was not to be our luck. As expected many of the crew were seasick. Buckets and bowls were passed around for those who couldn't make it to the head (toilet) or better still on deck. A grisly scene!

The morning of the 8th dawned no better. The wind was even more in the south, making it difficult to hold a course just to the west of Elephant Island. We had 450 miles to go, not far by usual navigational standards, but given the time and place it was looking likely to be a formidable voyage. On the other hand, if you had the inclination to admire it, the seascape was nothing short of inspiring - great cascading breaking waves of aquamarine gave lift to soaring albatross and petrels who followed in our wake. The albatross are the harbingers of the fortunes for those who travel the southern oceans and their company is always a welcome alleviation of an otherwise inanimate world.

By nightfall it was evident that we had to 'heave to,' by taking down all our primary sails, backing the small staysail to windward as a brake and then lashing the wheel. In this way the boat stops dead only to drift with the wind and current. There was no point in losing more ground to the east in a Southerly that was now gusting over 50 knots. Only one man was needed to keep watch for ships from the doghouse, so the rest of us packed in the sleep. By 0900 the wind had slackened and the morning weather map confirmed a shift to the north later today. This would give us some time before the next depression when the cycle of gales will repeat itself. Most of the crew are on deck sunning themselves and drying out, watching the albatross soar, each with his own thoughts of things to come in the 'Tom Crean'.

Skip Novak