The jour­ney back home: Bue­nos Aires (or not …) – 20th March 2020

Fri
20 Mar
2020

So the­re was not­hing else we could have achie­ved in Ushua­ia, they would just not allow us to lea­ve the ship. But we were rea­dy for all kinds of sce­na­ri­os, inclu­ding a full month at sea – this voya­ge, or rather the ship-based part of it, may just as well end in The Net­her­lands.

Most of us would cer­tain­ly wish to go back home as soon as pos­si­ble. Obli­ga­ti­ons of all sorts, or „just“ the desi­re to be clo­se to fri­ends and fami­ly – pret­ty much ever­y­bo­dy has got good reasons of one or ano­ther kind. But the Coro­na-virus is just clo­sing the pla­net down. Argen­ti­na threa­tens to decla­re a nati­on­wi­de sta­te of emer­gen­cy (wha­te­ver the exact wor­ding was), so we bet­ter take off and lea­ve befo­re the clo­se the port.

Our hope was to sail up to Bue­nos Aires and fly out from the­re. We would just not be allo­wed to fly the­re, the trip to Bue­nos Aires would have to be on the ship, and we would need a valid flight ticket and of cour­se no nor­mal tra­vels into the coun­try, just a direct and safe pas­sa­ge to the air­port. So ever­y­bo­dy went and star­ted loo­king into flight arran­ge­ments out of Bue­nos Aires.

But this hope was not to last long. Argen­ti­na announ­ced to clo­se the coun­try soon, and we would not be able to get to Bue­nos Aires so quick­ly. We will need a cou­ple of days for this pas­sa­ge of a good 1500 nau­ti­cal miles.

Any­way, we got a love­ly pas­sa­ge of the Bea­gle Chan­nel. Some of us have been through the­re dozens of times but you hard­ly ever real­ly see it becau­se it is eit­her the first day of the voya­ge when you are busy with brie­fings, life­boat drill and so on or the last day and then it is usual­ly at night.

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

Near Puer­to Wil­liams we could at least say good­bye to our 6 heli­c­op­ter crew (3 pilots, 3 mecha­nics) who had final­ly got their per­mis­si­on to lea­ve the ship with their heli­c­op­ters and fly into Chi­le. Home, for them! They are Chi­le­ans! And even for them it was uncer­tain wether they were able to lea­ve the ship and go home. The world is a cra­zy place the­se days. We were reli­e­ved when they final­ly got green light, and it was a warm fare­well and good­bye and some very fri­end­ly fly­ing around the ship.