Tierra del Fuego

by | Feb 19, 2001 | Read, Listen, See, Antarctic Tall Ship Series

I A Tierra del Fuego

Beyond the arid pampas, above the Amazon’s basin, South America seems to rise with volcanic indignity at the eastward encroachment of the tectonic Nazca Plate, unseen beneath the blue Pacific. This vast tract creeps beneath the continent, it’s implacable push forming isosceles peaks such as children draw, wind-whipped and sheer, and leaving no doubt as to their simple wildness. Where the nether tip of the continent dips to meet the sea, the mountains form the coccyx of the Andes spinal Cordillera – Tierra del Fuego. 

Literature has long promoted Tierra del Fuego as an exotic place – in league with the distant mysteries of Zanzibar and Timbuktu. When people speak of “the last place on earth,” they are referring to a place such as this; the locals call their home “El Fin del Mundo” – “The End of the World.”

This island group – grudgingly divided between Argentina and Chile has long held a fascination for adventurers. The pall of native warming fires along this stark, forbidding coast caused Ferdinand Magellan, in 1520, to chart the place as Tierra del Humo – the Land of Smoke. Magellan’s boss, King Charles V of Spain, preferred The Land of Fire, and so it became. 

Spurred by government incentive programs the population of the Fuegian port town of Ushuaia has swelled, along with the commensurate houses, hotels and road projects. 

Sfx – jackhammers #1 track 1> street sounds #1 track 2… Many newcomers to Ushuaia service the influx of visitors not only to Tierra del Fuego, but also to that real End of the World – Antarctica. 

This season some twenty ships will tour southward, most of these luxury cruise liners which, on a black night time sea resemble nothing more than Darth Vader’s Death Star and its amazing profusion of tiny lights. They steam into town for a few hours to reload with the fresh passengers who have just arrived through Ushuaia’s spanking new jetport: the closest runway to the farthest continent. With a longing reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, man reaches out from Tierra del Fuego to the lone peninsular finger of the Great White Continent.

The Netherlands’ square-rigged tall ship Europa will undertake the only Antarctic tall ship voyages during this austral summer. As such, we voyage more in keeping with those who came here long before us, for the square rig sailor’s work has changed precious little in the passing of the centuries: setting and furling sail high aloft in the tops, keeping watch for the killing ice, exposed to the South’s extreme elements. 

As a member of the ship’s small crew of professional sailors I am to record the journey south. We will work with a “voyage crew” of novice sailors who are paying to serve as trainees on the venture and as we transit through Tierra del Fuego we too look to the south with growing curiosity and anticipation.

There are those doomsayers who warn that the end of the world is coming. The prophecy might be more accurate were they to say that the End of the World is going… as El Fin del Mundo becomes more and more just a stepping-stone to the Last Place on Earth.

Sfx – sounds of the town with the feeble town clock…#1 track 4

(Time-3:25)

*

I B Bark Europa

Bathed in stark morning light, the bark Europa’s intricate rigging, as deftly woven as a web, stands in bright relief beneath the brooding peaks that cradle Ushuaia harbour. Like a patient, haltered thoroughbred, the tall ship nods quietly at her moorings on the cold swell of Beagle Channel, waiting to slip her lines and run.

A contemporary of Ernest Shackleton’s stalwart ship Endurance, Europa was constructed in Germany in 1911, of strong, riveted steel. Her fore mast and main mast are “rigged square.” This refers not to the rectangular shape of the sails, but rather to the many long horizontal yards from which the heavy sails hang, and which are perpendicular, or “squared”, to the keel. The aft-most mast – the mizzen – has sails rigged in line with the keel as are found on schooners. For this configuration of sails, she is called a barque,

Handsomely refit from her long career as a North Sea lightship, she boasts skysails atop the ten story tall main mast and is fitted with a rare, full suit of light wind studding sails. Under a full press of as many as thirty sails, she may fly some thirteen hundred square meters of sail. Truly, she is one of the most graceful of the modern tall ship fleet, sailing the world under the tri-colour flag of the Netherlands, seeking high adventure and teaching the arcane arts of the sea. Her skipper, Klaas Gaastra, long ago earned his reputation as a hard-driving, yet fair and imminently capable captain.

When I first met Klaas in Bermuda amidst the excitement of the double trans-Atlantic Tall Ships 2000, I was crew aboard the lovely English brigantine Eye of the Wind, the inimitable Tiger Timbs, captain. I was following a fleet rumour that Europa, at the end of the race in Amsterdam, would next cross the length and breadth of the Atlantic again. Decreasing degrees of latitude to and across the Equator, she would then gain them all back – and more – fetching the Roaring Forties of the Southern Ocean, beyond through the Furious Fifties and farther still to the Screaming Sixties, she would run the Drake Passage to Antarctica, and return via infamous Cape Horn. This, to me, sounded adventure enough, and I applied for a berth on Europa by way of a sustained campaign of annoyance on Klaas through the remaining ports of the race. He relented, at last, in Amsterdam.

As the sun tractors up the horizon, the provisioning trucks easily find us on the wharf; tall ships are very rarely seen now in these waters.

ASfx – Anneka and the Argentine chandler – “Lemons .” “Onions.” “Onions.” “Cebollas!” “Cebolla.” “Now we only need… I would say two boxes. Give him back the two boxes… “(:31) #2 track 5.

The second cook, Anneka, double-checks the long lists of supplies organized in Dutch, German, English and Spanish as the crates and cases are passed along hand to hand and below into the ship. 

Sfx: Passing provision boxes hand to hand in chain from shore to ship and laying on deck. Voices  and ambient in bkgrnd. #2 track 6. The cupboards, freezers and refrigerator fills with the ships needs… everything but peanut butter, which we cannot find here.

The stores secured below, we wash down the deck with the firehoses – a daily drenching keeps the wood decking wet and swollen watertight.  These long-handled deck brushes are requisite tools of every square-rigger, and officers consider them indispensable for making deckhands “hearty.”  Sfx – Deck wash #2 track 7. Don -“That’s real pretty.” Todd – “Why, I can see myself.” Don G. – “Yeehaw.” #2 track 7.  

With the amateur crew shipped aboard, the entire ship’s complement gathers in the deckhouse, a long salon containing a few dark wood tables with padded, olive green benches and the ship’s small pub. Klaas – tall, in his mid-forties – pushes back his curls of shoulder length hair, removes the bright red half-moon glasses from pale blue eyes, and begins the orientation in his typical, understated fashion.

Sfx: Klaas – “Anyway  welcome aboard. I’m Klaas. It happens to be that I am the captain.” #2 track 8>>“Most of you are Dutch but I think there are some foreigners. What kind of nationalities do we have, Conny? German? No colonies. No colonies. Okay…” I hope you had a reasonable good flight and probably you are a bit tired, so uh we won’t bother you too much for the coming night. We give you a few instructions which are very important and that’s about, uh, fire and, uh, we will sound the alarms…”>>(Fire ALARM goes off ) “…and that’s the fire alarm… I hope he can find the other button also.” Laughs. Alarm goes off “Got it” Laughs “If you hear this don’t panic, it’s just fire.” #2 trrack 8. 

Klaas introduces the ship – the watch bells, emergency stations, water conservation, and so on. He reminds the amateurs’ of their special status:

Sfx: Klaas – “You are officially called “special personnel”, not passengers, because you have to work on this ship. Keep that in mind.” Laughs. #2 trrack 8. And with this we make ready to sail. #7 track 6.

We follow in the wake of some of history’s great adventurers; these waters bear the names of ships and men who geographically, scientifically and politically helped to define the modern world.  Magellan threaded his tortuous straits to the Pacific, his crew, in the end, proving the earth to be round. This long channel to the sea is named for the vessel of naturalist Charles Darwin. His years aboard the HMS Beagle engendered an independence of thinking, the courage to embrace the heretical notion of evolution. This evening will find us entering the passage identified with Sir Francis Drake, the Virgin Queen’s redoubtable captain. 

Freshly provisioned and with the promise of a rare and wondrous voyage ahead, we busy ourselves surging the mooring lines, freeing fenders and down-rigging the heavy gangway. As the ship’s head slowly turns to the channel for our departure, Klaas lays on the ship’s horn, without a doubt, curing hiccups across Tierra del Fuego and leaving dumbfounded dairy cows dry for days. Sfx: horn-#11 track 4.

 (6:30)

*

I C Beagle Channel

Sfx: wind, sails and waves

The Argentinean coast stretches away to our port, heaved high against a blank, blue sky. We climb aloft to loose and let fall the square sails – the fore course, topsails, t’gallants, and royals. The yards are braced square for running and as the sails are sheeted taut to the wind the masts seem to flex as the ship, like a beast, leans into its traces; the curling bow wave grows. Though we are now making six knots, we barely feel the Patagonian wind, for we move along with it, inside it, and on the brisk, following sea Europa glides as if on liquid rails: quiet, efficient, muscular and poised.

Ragged mists drag between the saw-toothed mountains, which glide silently by, sun bright and dappled with summer snowcaps. A grey rain draws its curtain a league to the west but before us the wind-combed Beagle Channel promises an easy eastward reach to the open sea. High in the tops one feels decidedly alive and colours seem to breathe into our lungs. The work is spiritual amidst such grandeur.

Sfx: penguins squawking, etc.#1 track 9

Despite the shortness of the warm season, the area is full of life. Albatross’ wheel and skim, flashing snow-bright bellies like whitecaps freed from the sea. Penguins practice their odd waddles and fur seals laze on rocky mid-channel islets. Dolphins frequent the bay where seabirds snip morsels from the icy waves. Kelp Geese and flightless Steamer Ducks pluck and mutter in the thin margin of wetlands. 

We tend our course carefully – to enter the Chilean half of the channel to starboard requires a permit and a seven thousand dollar pilot’s fee. Klaas has wisely declined being piloted to the poorhouse, and we feel the glower of the Chilean watchtowers following Europa’s graceful progress.

.

An inbound Russian freighter reports forty-knot winds and fifteen-meter seas in the Drake and this information jives with the story from the cruise ship Marco Polo, which had several deck windows shattered three days ago. We assumed it was from smashing waves, but more sobering, we found the glass blew out from the massive hull twisting in the gale-driven waves of The Drake. 

We tend to our preparations for a rough passage, double-checking lashings and stowage of stores and equipment, rigging hand lines across decks and long nettings above the mid-ship’s rails. These are “crew strainers,” designed to keep those on the ship in the ship; being washed into the freezing seas of the south is a death warrant. 

Sfx- sea, chains, voices, luffin, various voices – Good sea sounds, chains clinking, voices on deck, sails luffing, “Haul away the clews” “It’s in it’s lifts” “Cast off the sheets” Sails luffing / Voices / “Up there?” “Yea, I can’t see it from here. / “Ein, zwei, hup! Ein, zwei, hup! Ein, zwei, hup!…” Sail beating… “Clews are good Go ahead with the bunts. Get all you can on the bunts!” “Ein zwei Ein,zwei…” # 12  track 4. (3:36) 

In the late afternoon the breeze freshens and we furl all but the topsails. In the evening we feel the long unmistakable swell of the ocean. The channel widens then gives way from the last of the land. The silhouette of Tierra del Fuego, like a painted stage prop, hangs above our wake; its sparse, twinkling lights echo the original inhabitants’ warming fires. We bring the helm ‘round to South South East and turn toward the Great White South. 

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