Tue
16 Jan
2018

Ever­y­thing is much more per­so­nal on such a small ship – inclu­ding the offi­cal part, so we went altog­e­ther after break­fast to the immi­gra­ti­on aut­ho­ri­ties to say offi­ci­al­ly good­bye to Argen­ti­na. That did not take much time, and soon we could lea­ve the litt­le pier and turn into the Bea­gle Chan­nel – an exci­ting moment!

The wea­ther kept chan­ging by the minu­te from sun to rain and hail and back, but the wind kept coming from the east, so we could put sails up and use them addi­tio­nal­ly to the engi­ne while we enjoy­ed the sce­n­ery slow­ly moving past.

We had almost left the Bea­gle Chan­nel when Heinz stop­ped the ship to get some main­tainan­ce done befo­re we would be in open water – a litt­le rou­ti­ne exch­an­ge of a part in the engi­ne room. But it tur­ned out to be a bit bey­ond ever­y­day rou­ti­ne, becau­se the spa­re part as it had been deli­ver­ed to the ship in Ushua­ia tur­ned out be not the right one. A dif­fe­rence of just one mil­li­met­re could be more than enough to screw things up, and so it was here. The­re was not­hing else to do but to make a 180 degree turn and set cour­se for Ushua­ia – it was just not an opti­on to sail to Ant­ar­c­ti­ca wit­hout having the essen­ti­al infra­struc­tu­re of the ship 100% in good working order. Actual­ly, we all agreed quick­ly that the risk of having our pas­ta uncoo­ked for seve­ral weeks was not real­ly an opti­on.

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

For tho­se of us who were on evening watch, we got a love­ly view in exch­an­ge when some dol­phins came clo­se to the boat and two of them jum­ped out of the water and tur­ned in the air, per­fect­ly syn­chro­ni­zed!