Ushua­ia – 15 Janu­ary 2018

Mon
15 Jan
2018

It is a long trip from cen­tral Euro­pe to the sou­thern­most tip of South Ame­ri­ca, from Frank­furt via Bue­nos Aires to Ushua­ia. It is quite nice to get the body in a hori­zon­tal posi­ti­on after 38 hours in pla­nes and air­ports.

But this is just the unavo­ida­ble begin­ning of such a trip. Now that’s alre­a­dy histo­ry, and I am sit­ting in the cosy salong of SY Anne-Mar­ga­re­tha, a 22 m long Dutch two-mast sai­ling boat with a solid steel hull. On this boat, skipper/boat owner Heinz Wut­sch­ke and his crew of 4 will take us down south to Ant­ar­c­ti­ca in the next cou­ple of days, over a total dura­ti­on of 25 days from Ushua­ia to Ushua­ia. Serious stuff! Most of the big­ger ships are back in port after 10-11 days.

SY Anne-Mar­ga­re­tha (left) in the yacht har­bour of Ushua­ia.

Heinz and is crew are still busy get­ting ever­y­thing rea­dy. Our pas­sen­gers are around, yes­ter­day we alre­a­dy had the oppor­tu­ni­ty alre­a­dy to share a glass of whine and to bring out a toast to the voya­ge. May the winds be with us!

Rolf sett­ling down on SY Anne-Mar­ga­re­tha in Ushua­ia.

They won’t if we lea­ve today, we know that from the wea­ther fore­cast. So we will take it with time and lea­ve tomor­row, pro­ba­b­ly stay­ing some­whe­re in the Bea­gle Chan­nel and sail out into the Dra­ke-Pas­sa­ge the day after tomor­row. That way, we should have fine sai­ling winds all the way to the South Shet­land Islands ☺ and that would help a lot. We all know that the Dra­ke-Pas­sa­ge is a place to be trea­ted respectful­ly, espe­ci­al­ly from the per­spec­ti­ve of a 22 m boat. Fair winds will make our life during the crossing much bet­ter, that’s for sure.

The Bea­gle Kanal: the first step of our trip to Ant­ar­c­ti­ca!

So, ever­y­bo­dy is out, enjoy­ing a warm and sun­ny day some­whe­re in the sur­roun­dings of Ushua­ia, in the Natio­nal Park or else­whe­re, befo­re we meet altog­e­ther for din­ner on board.

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

P.S. as usu­al, I will update this tra­vel blog more or less regu­lar­ly over the next cou­ple of weeks. That depends on time and the pos­si­bi­li­ty to sit down on deck and estab­lish a satel­li­te con­nec­tion, so it will cer­tain­ly not hap­pen in the Dra­ke Pas­sa­ge and during peri­ods of bad wea­ther. Nevert­hel­ess, I’ll find oppor­tu­ni­ties every now and then, so plea­se keep coming back!

And when back in civi­li­sa­ti­on around mid Febru­ary, I will replace the few and small pics that I am able to send through the satel­li­te by much nicer pho­to gal­le­ries. So, again, it’ll be worth coming back to this site then!