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March 2, 2010 – At Sea, 17º 09’S, 075º 59’W
By Herb McCormick
Long before the idea of sailing to Patagonia and ranging through the Chilean canals was on the rise, with detailed cruising guides and well-researched sailing instructions available to all, American cruising sailors Knick and Lyn Pyles were down there exploring. Way back in 1992, they’d already bagged a rounding of Cape Horn and were wandering through the Beagle Channel and points beyond with their daughter, Jenny. To say the Pyles’ were ahead of the voyaging curve is to traffic in understatement.
As an editor at Cruising World magazine at the time, I met Knick and Lyn on a couple of memorable occasions. Bold and adventurous, modest and funny, they had a million stories to tell, and they told them well. In fact, it was our pleasure and privilege to publish several articles by Knick Pyles, as good a writer as you’ll find in the pages of any yachting magazine. Knick wrote passionately about Chile, a place he and Lyn considered a second home, so much so that they bought a place near Concepcion and lived there part of each year.
Today, as Chile continues to deal with the physical and emotional aftermath of the earthquake that rocked the country to its core, Knick and Lyn Pyles are on our minds here on Ocean Watch. That’s because they’re missing.
Aboard our 64-foot cutter, this afternoon we were plowing towards our next port-of-call in Lima, Peru, with dispatch, rolling in front of a lovely 15-knot southerly with our working sails set wing-and-wing. The sky is clear, the sun hot, the ocean flecked with whitecaps. At this pace, we’ll be in Lima in 48-hours, well ahead of schedule. All’s good, right? Well, not entirely. As the reports from Chile filter their way out to our self-contained world in the South Pacific, we’ve begun to grasp the enormity of what’s happening upon – and what’s happened to – the land we last set foot upon. And we’re sick about it.
It would be pretentious to label the vague but real uneasiness we’re experiencing as “survivor’s guilt,” but perhaps it’s something like that. We understand and are grateful that we were lucky not to be in harm’s way. Were we still in Chile, it’s impossible to say what we might or might not be doing right now – probably not much, in real terms – but not being there – and in fact, sailing in the opposite direction – doesn’t seem quite right. You cannot visit the place and leave it without a tug at the heartstrings. To have left it in these circumstances feels downright miserable.
The note we received yesterday from current Cruising World editor Mark Pillsbury didn’t help matters. It read: “You have any insights that might help Jennifer out?”
The Jennifer to whom he referred was the same Jenny who plied the Beagle with her intrepid parents nearly twenty years ago. Mark forwarded a note from her, which said, “(Knick and Lyn) happened to be less than fifty miles south from the epicenter of this past Saturday’s earthquake. We have been unable to reach them and are wondering if you had any contacts down in Chile or sailors near their vicinity that could possibly get information on them in regards to their well-being, etc.
“They live in Coliumo which is across the bay from Dichato. The only word we have received is that they did survive the quake, and were huddled with other neighbors in a home that is higher on the hill and more stable. This contact was made within the hour of the first earthquake and no one has heard anything since then. There have been at least 90 aftershocks since then.”
Soon after receiving the correspondence, skipper Mark Schrader and I, respectively, emailed the two most well-connected people we know in Chile, old friend Mauricio Ojeda and new one, oceanographer Cristina Rodriguez. One can only imagine the chaos in their lives right now, but each responded within hours. In the chests of Chileans beats the heart of giants.
Mauricio’s reply was cautiously encouraging: “The biggest problem is communication with that area of the country. I will do my best to find out. However, we have tried without results to contact friends living in Concepcion, which is the big city close to Coliumo. The tsunami after the earthquake affected that area. If they did move to upper grounds, they should be okay. The earthquakes that followed were of less intensity.”
Cristina responded with the news that a list is being compiled on the Internet for those seeking news about friends and family. You can “google” a name and find instant information. Cristina did so with the Pyles’ and learned that their status was unknown at the present time. The URL address for this Chilean website is incredibly long, and we’re not comfortable posting it in this space for several reasons. But if you’re legitimately looking for folks in Chile, you can send a brief email note to crew@aroundtheamericas.org we will be happy to forward the link.
And of course, if you have any information on the whereabouts of the Pyles’, please send it to that same email address and we’ll forward it immediately to their concerned daughter, Jenny Pyles Cairncross.
Oddly enough, and please take this in the spirit that it’s offered, somehow this note from Jenny has been therapeutic. We fully share her concerns, but at least now we’ve been moved to some sort of involved action. We’re connected with our friends in Chile in some meaningful way. However small, we’re finally doing something.
For now, and hopefully for not much longer at all, what’s happened to Lyn and Knick is a mystery. Aboard Ocean Watch, something we can’t quite put into words is missing, too.
-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson
*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos
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