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January 31, 2010 – Isla Riesco, Chile
By Herb McCormick

If you ever find yourself shipwrecked, there are worse places you could wash up than on the shores of Bahia Mussel on the regally titled Chilean island of Isla Carlos III. Yes, it’s cold and damp, and there certainly isn’t a town, or even a soul, for many, many miles, but you definitely wouldn’t starve to death or die of thirst. For a clear, cool stream running out of a lovely mountain lake empties out at the head of the deep, protected bay, and the rocky beach itself is covered with hundreds of thousands of tasty morsels of shellfish. It’s certainly no mystery how the place got its name. The shores of Bahia Mussel might as well be called Mussel Beach.

Ocean Watch’s continued tour of the beautiful channels of Southern Chile continued today, but with minimal progress along the wide waterway known as the Magellan Strait. After an overnight stay at anchor off Isla Carlos III, the crew set out early this morning bound westward down the Strait. But howling headwinds of 35-knots had the waters churning and roiling, and after pounding into it for just a couple of hours, skipper Mark Schrader decided to seek shelter in another taut anchorage off nearby Peninsula Cordova called Bahia Borja. It’s no doubt a coincidence, but the tall peaks of Borja, complete with weeping waterfalls on high, bear a striking resemblance to the South Pacific paradise of Bora-Bora. That is, of course, if the summits of Bora-Bora were also speckled with snow.

At the moment, waiting for the winds to wane, we may not be covering great distances, but we are getting the opportunity to have a good look at some of the breathtaking scenery surrounding us.

Last night, once the hook was set, I plopped my Little Wing carbon-fiber kayak into the drink for a nice paddle in the calm anchorage, but the highlight of the outing was when I pulled the boat ashore and started climbing. My water booties, it turned out, were just the ticket for a hike on Isla Carlos III. To say the tundra was spongy would be a major understatement. It was mossy, soggy and bouncy; traction was more of a concept than a reality.

An old sailing friend of mine named Bill Storandt has sailed his sloop across the Atlantic and all through the Mediterranean Sea, and he has a habit I’ve tried to adopt whenever possible. Once he’s suitably anchored for the evening, he rows ashore, climbs the highest hill possible, and takes a snapshot of his boat for posterity. With Bill in mind, though the footing was sloppy, I aimed my sights for a steep ridge and started walking.

It turned out to be worth the sweat. Once I’d reached the top and caught my breath, the view of the anchorage, Ocean Watch and the majestic waters of the Magellan, lined with snow-capped mountains, was truly awesome. I lingered for a while, then tripped and stumbled my way back to sea level, where I startled a pair of geese that went flapping hysterically to either side of my head, just a few feet away. It scared the heck out of me, but I guess the birds were probably thinking the same thing.

The highlight of this morning’s brief underway foray was a pair of breeching humpback whales – a mother and a baby? – for which this current stretch of the Straits of Magellan are known. Once we were secure in Bora-Bora – er, Bahia Borja – another shore party dropped the dinghy in the water and had a wet hike on the peninsula, which they likened to a rainforest. For those who’ve read Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World, the name might be familiar. It was on the shores of Bahia Borja that Slocum tacked a wooden “name board” to a tree labeled with the name of his boat, the Spray, an age-old tradition amongst sailors in this part of the world.

This afternoon, when it appeared things were calming down, the skipper decided to give it another shot, and Ocean Watch again headed out into the Strait. But it was a short-lived venture, for the westerly was still piping. Back in we came, not much worse for wear, and we re-anchored in pretty much the exact spot where we’d spent most of the day. Before long, the sun broke through the clouds and just astern was a low, lovely rainbow, with one end on the water and the other, amazingly, on a white goose resting on a rock.

“It’s the goose that laid the golden egg,” said Dave Logan, and we all had a laugh. Well, maybe, but one thing is beyond reproach: It’s not something you’d see on Bora-Bora.

-Herb McCormick with additional photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

Open the above photos in a full-screen slideshow in Flickr

January 30, 2010 – Isla Carlos III, Chile
By Dr. Ned Cabot with an introduction by Herb McCormick

On Saturday, winding their way through the labyrinth of Chilean canals, the crew of Ocean Watch set sail for the first time in the famed Straits of Magellan, so named for the intrepid Portuguese navigator whose expedition for the riches of the Far East led to the first circumnavigation of the planet. By day’s end, they were anchored in a protected enclave called Bahia Mussel on Isla Carlos III, some eighty miles east of the mouth of the Strait.

Since leaving the Falkland Islands, the regular crew has enjoyed the expertise of one of the most experienced offshore sailors to join the expedition since leaving Seattle. Dr. Ned Cabot is a board member of Sailors for the Sea, and he is also the skipper of the J/46, Cielita, which he’s sailed across the Atlantic, to Newfoundland and Greenland, and as far north as 80º N. As well as crewing aboard Ocean Watch, Ned has also taken charge of the scientific duties for this leg of the voyage. Today he takes the helm of the crew log to report on what he’s learned thus far.

A Report from Sailors for the Sea Board Member Dr. Ned Cabot

I should start by pointing out that I am only a pseudo-scientist. I am a surgeon by training with only a very limited knowledge of oceanography and meteorology and geology and all that sort of thing. I know a lot about human biology, but I am not trained in environmental science. Having said that, however, I am an experienced sailor and an active conservationist, and I serve on the Board of Directors of Sailors for the Sea, an environmental education organization concerned about the health of our oceans and a sponsoring organization of the Around the Americas Project. As such, I have signed on for one three-week leg of the journey as a crewmember aboard Ocean Watch and as a visiting scientist to help with the collection of data that is part of our mission as the ship circumnavigates both American continents.

One of my duties is to record cloud observations twice a day. These observations are timed to coincide with the passage overhead of NASA CERES Terra and Aqua satellites that take pictures from above the clouds covering the Earth as they orbit our planet. We are given the exact time that each satellite will pass overhead, and we record information about the clouds as they appear from below. This information is then relayed to the NASA S’COOL Program so they can compare what the satellites see with what we see down here from the ocean. We also record and report information about air temperature, relative humidity, and barometric pressure, as well as our exact location by GPS at the time of each observation.

When we are stationary, such as when we are at anchor, we are also interested in recording sounds in the ocean with an acoustical device called a hydrophone. And we are trying to examine particulates in the atmosphere by means of a Microtops Sunphotometer.

And there is a lot of other scientific gear on our boat, such as the SeaKeepers system that continuously takes water samples for analysis, and a special camera that takes thousands of pictures a day in a 360 degree circle around the boat. It’s pretty neat stuff. The data we are collecting is being sent to the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington and various other institutions for analysis and will eventually contribute to research to be published in scientific papers.

Of course, I’ve also been making some observations of my own. We are presently at the very bottom of South America. We sailed around Cape Horn at the southern tip of the continent, and now we are sailing up the Beagle Channel, named for the boat that Charles Darwin was aboard when he formulated his famous theory of evolution. This is an incredibly beautiful place, with high mountains rising out of the sea and huge glaciers tumbling down and breaking off. It appears that many of the glaciers are melting faster than they are growing, so they are receding and their melt will likely contribute to the rise of the oceans.

The weather down here is pretty severe, even in the summer, which in the southern hemisphere occurs the same months as our winter up north. Cape Horn is at 56 degrees south latitude, which is about equivalent to the middle of Labrador and the middle of  British Columbia in Canada up north. But down here the weather is generally more severe than at the same latitudes in the north because of the impact of the Southern Ocean that circles the globe to the north of Antarctica, and the only place on earth where land masses or continents do not slow down the wind, and is known for its high winds and big waves.

So the trees down here are generally very small and often nonexistent. The winds are very strong, and the weather changes very rapidly. The water is very cold, around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, so the air is usually pretty cold too, sometimes just above freezing even in the summer. We’ve actually experienced several snow flurries, usually followed by a brief hailstorm.

And the geology of this region is fascinating. I wish I knew more about it. There is a ridge of high mountains that runs along much of the west side of South America. Further north this mountain range is known as the Andes. Down here in Chile it is known as the Cordillera. On its west side, where we are, the mountains attract a lot of moisture from the winds coming off the Pacific Ocean. This causes a lot of precipitation on this side of the mountain range in the form of rain and snow. And many thousands of years of snow have given rise to the glaciers, huge rivers of slow-moving ice that pour down the mountain valleys and sometimes reach the sea, sometimes creating icebergs and often creating spectacular waterfalls. You can see how the glaciers have carved out the valleys, scraping the sides and leaving behind huge ridges of gravel and stones called moraines. They are really something to behold. And where the glaciers have receded, which they are doing at an alarming rate due to global warming, they leave behind what is called a terminal moraine. When approaching a glacier in our boat, these terminal moraines can pose a real threat because they may be under the surface of the water, with deep water on either side but a shallow bar that might cause our boat to go aground (hit bottom).

In addition, we have been making our own observations concerning the flora and fauna of this region. On numerous occasions we’ve had Peale’s dolphins jumping clean out of the water nearby and swimming next to the boat in our bow wake. And we’ve sailed through a pod of humpback whales, including one of their babies, feeding near the surface – not to mention a number of South American fur seals that often appear quite close to the boat.

There are lots of sea birds to identify. We’ve seen Magallenic cormorants, several pairs of kelp geese, Turkey vultures, giant southern petrels, Magallenic penguins, black browed albatross, and one royal albatross, with a wing span of some 350 cm (over 11 feet!). Hiking ashore, we’ve identified a number of trees and plants, such as the evergreen beech, the firebush, and the holly-leafed barberry. We’ve also been learning some about the native tribes that used to inhabit these islands, such as the Yamana, also known as Yahgan, who are now almost entirely extinct. We were privileged to visit a very special place in the woods called Ukika where the descendents of the Yahgans have hung woodcarvings from the trees that represent the spirits of their deceased ancestors.

So science is an important component of this Around the Americas Project. Along with our other sponsoring organization, the Pacific Science Center, we want to call attention to some of the problems facing our oceans and how we all might help to make them healthier. We are thinking of the Americas as one giant island, populated by many different peoples but surrounded by ocean: the Arctic Ocean in the north, the Atlantic Ocean on the east, the Southern Ocean in the south, and the Pacific Ocean in the west. We must remember that more than two thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered with ocean, and the oceans control our climate and affect our lives on land in a whole host of ways.

So our oceans play a critical environmental role and must be better understood. And they must be protected from pollution and from being over fished and from acidification due to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Mankind can and does have a major impact on our oceans. We must make ourselves better stewards of the ocean environment.

So that’s why Ocean Watch, and all those involved with this Around the Americas Project, both on the ship and on shore, have undertaken this exciting scientific and historic voyage. We are trying to make a difference.

-Ned Cabot, M.D. with an introduction by Herb McCormick and photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

Open the above photos in a full-screen slideshow in Flickr

January 29, 2010 – Isla Clarence, Chile
By Herb McCormick

In the eight months since leaving Seattle late last May, the crew of Ocean Watch has experienced searing heat, frigid cold, mellow calms, biting winds, mist and fog, torrential rain and absolutely perfect, gorgeous weather. In other words, right up to this very morning, we’d witnessed practically every sort of meteorological and atmospheric condition known to mankind with the notable exception of one: snow.

And now we’ve seen that.

Yes, the ongoing voyage of Ocean Watch – now en route to Puerto Montt, Chile, via the labyrinth of waterways and channels that make up the world-famous Chilean canals – continued today after one of the strangest, most surreal beginnings imaginable: The fluffy white stuff was falling from the sky. But it didn’t snow for long. No, before we could zip our collars up around our necks, it was sleeting, hard and sideways.

They call this summer in the Southern Hemisphere?

Up on the bow, hauling the anchor, David Thoreson and I slipped and slid on the treacherous foredeck as it became buried under a thin layer of icy pellets of hail. Our Spanish translator, Horacio Rosell, whose halting English often captures the moment better than ours, summed it up concisely.

“It’s snowing rocks,” he said.

But David Thoreson also had a cogent observation: “Our summer just became winter.”

Anchored the previous evening in a cove on Isla Stewart laced by williwaws, it had been a rattling night…mostly due to the sound of our anchor chain rattling across the rocks in which it was secured. Still, the hook remained secure for the duration, but by 0700 skipper Mark Schrader had had enough, so he roused the crew and was ready to go. The snow, ice and wind were a rude awakening, but they did serve a useful purpose. We were up and out of there in no time flat.

Once we’d put Isla Stewart behind us, we motored west up Canal Ballenero and past Isla Catalina flanked by tall peaks covered in fresh snow. The scenery was magnificent. Astern, we could see a big squall advancing; ahead, the sky was highlighted with patches of blue. It all proved to be a screening of coming attractions, a day of schizophrenic weather that never could make up its mind.

A significant southwest gale is forecast for tomorrow, so we were mindful of making tracks to the north today, as our route took us outside the protection of the channels for several rough and tumble miles. Once back inside, we found not only shelter from the stiff winds, but a pod of humpback whales that lolled past our bow. One pair of synchronized swimmers, in particular, caught the eye of David Rockefeller, Jr. “I’ve never seen them so much in tandem,” he said.

The whales were accompanied by seabirds galore and even a posse of leaping seals. “There was obviously a lot of feeding going on, but I don’t think they were eating each other,” said Ned Cabot.

Following the whale show, we sailed up another long corridor of islands – Basket, Georgiana, London, Astrea and Aguirre – before hooking a hard right around the Brecknock peninsula at Point Aguirre, a massive face that resembled the Rock of Gibraltar.

Up to that point, we’d seen intermittent squalls with brief periods of sunlight. “Time to shed some layers,” said David T. But before long, the wind kicked in hard from the west and we were again scrambling for jackets and foul-weather gear. It was that sort of day.

Once around the peninsula and into open water, the breeze started to really hum and we enjoyed the best sailing since rounding Cape Horn, running before gusts up to 30-knots and flying downwind at anywhere from 9-12 knots. The peaks of Brecknock were also dusted in what looked like confectioner sugar, providing yet more arresting visuals.

The piloting was tricky, with lots of rocky hazards, as we slipped inside Isla Seebrook, to starboard, and laid a course for the evening’s anchorage, a small inlet called Caleta Cluedo just inside the southwest shore of Isla Clarence. We dropped anchor in the early evening twilight, right in time for another brief, icy squall, followed by more sunshine. If anything, it left us ready for whatever might transpire overnight. We missed a white Christmas this season aboard Ocean Watch, but safe and secure in our taut little haven, we could channel Bing Crosby with confidence: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

January 18, 2010 – At Sea, 52º 00’S, 058º 04’W
By Herb McCormick

On Sunday, after a week-long stay in the fine and friendly town of Stanley, on East Falkland island, the crew of Ocean Watch sailed out through the Narrows at the mouth of Stanley Harbor, hung a couple of hard rights, and set a course for the protected waters of Port Pleasant. A few hours later, we motored out of the protected waters and into Port Pleasant proper.

Pleasant Island was abeam, just north of Pleasant Point, which of course is the headland marking the little anchorage of Pleasant Roads. Unfortunately, though we have several iPods on the boat, no one had a recording of The Monkey’s old hit, Pleasant Valley Sunday. But not to worry: the day ended with one of the more spectacular sunsets we’ve seen on our journey (not to mention the first one we’d witnessed in the wild, wooly and windswept Falklands), and the night that followed was crisp and clear, with a sensational view of the Southern Cross (also missing in action since arriving in the archipelago) and more than a couple of shooting stars.

Things couldn’t have been more pleasant.

Today, we’re once again underway, this time for the 360-nautical mile push to the famed Patagonian waters of the Beagle Channel, and the town of Puerto Williams nestled along its shores. The Chilean port will serve as the staging area while the crew prepares for the highly anticipated leg around Cape Horn.

It would’ve been, well, pleasant to spend a few days kicking around the western islands of the starkly beautiful Falklands, but in this part of the world, when a weather window opens, it’s highly imprudent not to take advantage of it. So this morning, skipper Mark Schrader checked the forecast and saw favorable winds from the west-northwest scheduled for much of this week, and made the call to weigh anchor and get underway. By mid-afternoon, Ocean Watch had crossed the 52nd parallel and was again on course for a return to South America.

Before setting forth, however, we dropped the dinghy in the water for a quick look around, and mate Dave Logan and I launched our Little Wing carbon-fiber kayaks for a quiet paddle to the small cluster of buildings known as Fitzroy Settlement in the still morning waters.

Our overnight anchorage, eerily, and sadly, had been the scene of some truly unpleasant moments in the not-so-distant past. “It was in Fitzroy Creek,” writes Ewen Southby-Tailyour in his excellent cruising guide, Falkland Island Shores, “that the two Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships the Sir Galahad and the Sir Tristam were anchored on the morning of 8 June 1982 when they were hit by Argentinian aircraft, with the worst single casualty list of the whole campaign. The ships were anchored west of Pleasant Island and due south of the settlement.”

So was Ocean Watch.

We’d seen what appeared to be a small graveyard and the unmistakable war memorial upon arriving in the port. As we set forth in the kayaks, we would’ve been interested to find out more about the place, but there was no one to ask. As we approached the long dock adjacent to the settlement, it began to drizzle, which cast a slight pall on the proceedings. Even more unsettling was the pair of fat turkey vultures eyeing us closely as we paddled under the dock and into a shallow cove. Up on a hill, a closed-pen of dogs began barking wildly. Otherwise, the place looked deserted.

“Spooky,” I said to Logan. It felt like we’d slipped onto the set for a waterborne sequel to The Blair Witch Project.

But that was the last bit of unpleasantness.

Along the shore, Dave spotted a lone king penguin, but that was just the beginning of the fine, feathered friends (hanging out with Logan, I sometimes imagine, must’ve been like kicking back with James Audubon). After paddling out of the cove and up into the shallows of the creek, he pointed out one bird after another: a kelp goose, a couple of pair of steamer ducks, a pair of speckled teals, a variable hawk, and an imperial shag (also known as a cormorant).

There were even a few fish about. “I should’ve brought my fly rod,” he said. “It would’ve been nice to have a single cast in the Falklands.”

But the time for dawdling was over.

Once we’d hauled the anchor and were again underway, we had one more set of visitors, quite likely the same ones who’d greeted us upon our arrival. The small school of what were probably Peale’s dolphins were playful, fetching and energetic, and bid us a Falklands farewell with style and flair. Our days in the islands were a most pleasant interlude in the voyage Around the Americas. But now it’s time to head for Cape Horn.

- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

January 16, 2010 – Stanley, Falkland Islands
By Herb McCormick

There may be clumsier terrestrial creatures stumbling and bumbling their way across the face of this planet, but it’s difficult to say precisely who or what they might be. Nope, when it comes to awkward, ungainly, and lumbering forward motion, there is nothing more inept than a penguin.

For example, on Thursday, standing right at the tide line along the magnificent stretch of beach called Volunteer Point on the easternmost edge of East Falkland Island, I watched the last, crawling remnants of a broken wave knock a king penguin right off his pins. As the big, plump guy was advancing seaward in a mighty waddle, a little wavelet caught him about where your shins are, and toppled him forward inelegantly as if he’d been chop-blocked or shot.

Timber!

Splat!

As far as beak plants go, it was a solid “10.” Unabashed, the tuxedoed dude picked himself up, shook himself off, and rejoined the gang heading out for a swim. Once he hit deep water and was in his true element it was all a very different story, of course, and one we will get to in a moment.

Yesterday, the crew of Ocean Watch was topping off fuel tanks, tending to laundry, finishing off the grocery list, and readying themselves for a Friday evening presentation on their voyage at the Stanley Chamber of Commerce. It’s been a fast and lively week, punctuated by rather unseasonable weather on one hand, and the chance to meet many of the friendly Falkland islanders on the other. One thing’s for certain: We’re not in South America anymore. Whereas in the resort city of Mar del Plata, Argentina, the restaurants didn’t really get going until 10 p.m., by that time in Stanley, they’ve all been closed an hour. It’s hard to imagine what the late-dining, up-all-night Argentines would’ve done had they actually won the 1982 war here, other than perhaps starve to death afterwards.

The original plan when we arrived in the Falklands was to spend a few days investigating some of the outer islands, but with gales raking the archipelago for most of the week, it was prudent to remain dockside. That’s not to say we didn’t have a look around. Take Wednesday, for instance. Dark, cloudy squalls packing gusts to 35-knots were roiling the main harbor into a streaky, frothy maelstrom. The weather was bad and getting worse. In other words, in the Falklands, it was a lovely day for a walk.

We piled into local teacher Elaine Messer’s 4×4 for the six- or seven-mile drive out to Gypsy Cove and Yorke Bay, the nearest places to downtown Stanley for scenic walks and wildlife sightings. Along the way we saw a couple of shipwrecks, including the rusting hulk of the three-masted Lady Elizabeth, built in iron in the U.K. in 1879, and done with duty once-and-for-all after clipping a shallow rock in 1913. It’s never a bad thing for sailors to be reminded of the hazards when they’re traversing potentially treacherous waters, and the Lady Liz sounded a warning we heard loud and clear.

Once we’d hit the trail, the remnants of the gun station at pointedly named Ordnance Point, one of fourteen manned defense sites during the war – and the roped-off areas where land mines have not yet been cleared – were reminders of a different sort, of a fractured but significant chapter in the history of these beautiful, wind-swept islands.

And beautiful they are. “I don’t know whether I like this place better in the sunshine or on a day like this,” said Elaine. Her point was obvious: the shoreline was all the more dramatic under scudding gray clouds and with the big breeze rustling through the green tussock.

“There’s just something about these wild places at the ends of the earth,” said David Thoreson, between squints through his camera’s viewfinder.

On Thursday, at Volunteer Point, we discovered an even wilder spot.

To get there, skipper Mark Schrader had lined up a pair of 4×4s, and the long, mostly off-road drive out, across spongy, uneven tundra and muddy bogs, was a bone-jarring experience. But after a couple of long hours, we crested a small ridge and the view ahead was no longer a wide plain of highly shaky terrain, but a breathtaking expanse of sandy, white beach. With the wind blowing the tops off the endless sets of steep, greenish-blue rollers, it was clear the pounding had been worth it, loose fillings or not.

Volunteer Point is the largest king penguin colony in the Falkland Islands, but it’s also home to many other birds, including steamer ducks, thrushes, rock shag, skuas and geese, as well as a couple of other penguin species, the Gentoo and the Magellanic, known locally as “jackasses.”

“Those are the jackasses all right, I just heard one bray like one,” said Dave Logan as we strolled down the beach. The king penguins have their own, different language, a singsong nasal twang in a five-part cadence: “Rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr.” In concert with the sheep in the background, it all made for quite the racket.

There are over a thousand breeding adult king penguins in the colony at Volunteer Point, and over 500 chicks are raised there each year. Unlike the more skittish Gentoo and jackass penguins, the kings seemed relatively un-phased by the proximities of humans. After an afternoon of wandering around with them, we all had our favorite stories. Logan spied a protective parent wallop a skua edging in on a chick. David T watched a trio try to negotiate the long step from a sand dune down to the beach, without luck, until one decided to take the leap and tumbled forward like another felled tree.

“The dune was about six inches high,” said David. “It might as well have been Mount Everest.”

On the beach, big bullets of breeze were whipping up miniature sand storms. “Even the oystercatchers are walking today,” noted Logan. It made what appears to be difficult balancing acts at the best of times seem next to impossible. On the penguins marched, flippers a-flapping, like tightrope walkers without poles, straining for balance. One of the locals described it well: “They amble along like their shoelaces are tied together.”

However, all that changed when the birds hit the surf. Entering the water, they almost burrow into the first, shallow waves, with fins in full flutter mode. Once clear of that initial break, they swim underwater at incredible speed. When the jackass penguins surface and rest they could be mistaken, in shape and profile, for a loon.

Every once in a while, you’ll see one leap and dive, doing their best imitation of a porpoise. But mostly they swim, fast and free, their sleek black bodies sliding below the surface like a living torpedo. My own lasting memory will be the penguins I saw in full bodysurfing mode, nestled in the curl. On this voyage Around the Americas, we’ve seen some amazing wildlife, but for the life of me I’ll never forget the sight of those penguins, those natural surfers, slashing through the green room.

- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

January 10, 2010 – Stanley, Falkland Islands
By Herb McCormick

Just before 0600 this morning – six a.m. local time – I was roused from my slumber to come on watch with the usual greeting and a rare instruction: “Bring your camera.” Moments later, on the deck of Ocean Watch, I glanced forward to see skipper Mark Schrader wedged into the bow pulpit, laughing out loud like a school kid on recess. Aft, the athletic David Thoreson was bouncing from beam to beam, light on his feet, working the angles like a prizefighter. Both were raising and lowering cameras.

Raising and lowering: Click, click, click.

That’s because, quite literally, albatrosses surrounded them.

We’ve been sailing through random sightings of the unmistakable creatures for days now, but usually in small groups, and never more than a handful at a time. This was different. On a radiant, sunny morning bathed in clear, pristine light, there were dozens and dozens of birds soaring and wheeling around Ocean Watch.

“There are so many you almost don’t know what to…” said Thoreson, dropping the thought. Scampering atop the dinghy lashed to the afterdeck, he was already on to the next shot.

He was right, it was impossible to know which way to look. There were lone gliders hovering inches atop the wavelets. There were small squadrons of five or six flyers, tacking upwind in perfect alignment, as synchronized as the Blue Angels. Some were landing, an exercise not unlike sailing up to a mooring: head to wind; luff the foils; stop forward motion; alight.

There was poetic justice here. Just hours earlier, at sunset, David T had missed the opportunity to capture a few birds in pastel twilight when the chicken dish he was preparing down below went flying across the galley just as he walked away from the stove for an instant and was ascending the companionway stairs with camera in tow. He was not, to put it mildly, a happy lad.

“A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity missed,” he’d said. But now he was in his element – “painting with light,” our friend, the photographer Billy Black, has called it – the karma gods rewarding a just recipient.

“I never, ever, have witnessed anything like that.” he said later.

Perhaps not coincidentally, just five hours before, at precisely 0119 this morning, Ocean Watch slipped past the 50th parallel on the final approach to Port Stanley in the Falkland/Malvinas isles. You could say those morning birds were a final gift, the icing on the cake. For remarkably, with one relatively brief exception, the dash through the Roaring Forties had been a glorious run blessed with favorable breeze and in the company of those albatrosses. Yes, we’d been slapped around by a rude gale on the first miserable night at sea, but in retrospect, it was a small price to pay for the fine trip that followed. We exited the Forties like gamblers leaving Vegas with pockets full of house money.

It was time to focus on the Falklands.

Actually, yesterday morning, skipper Schrader had already begun to do so in earnest. I’d risen for that watch to find him already poring over the charts and making random observations:

“I don’t know if you want to be on a jetty, they have these Norway rats the size of raccoons. Seriously.”

And: “Stanley harbor is just littered with wrecks. Boom-ditty-boom. Welcome to the tourist mecca.”

He was also studying a document, one related to the historic, kooky 1982 war between Argentina and England over the sovereignty of the place, with more than casual interest. The heading read, “Stanley Minefield and Area Clearance Situation Map.” I had a closer look myself. It was color-coded for easier reference, and broken down into three sections, as follows:

“Category 1/Blue: These areas have been checked by the Royal Engineers and are believed to be safe.”

Wait: Believed to be safe? Not exactly brimming with confidence, there, eh, guv’nor? Let’s move on.

“Category 2/Blue stripes: There is no evidence at all (my italics) that these areas contain minefields or booby traps.”

Great! But there’s more:

“However, they may contain unexpected bombs, ammunition, missiles, etc.”

Now wait just a bloody minute. Et Cetera?!?

And finally: “Category 3/Red: These areas are known to contain mines or booby traps. DO NOT ENTER. This includes all minefields that have a water line as a boundary.”

These are solid red blotches on the map of Port Stanley, and there are a lot of them, lovely, vivid symbols of man’s endless, mindless yearnings. As always, we jest (sort of), but this is our first brush with ordnance, and we’re unsettled. Clearly, the crew of Ocean Watch is headed for uncharted waters, figuratively speaking, in their travels thus far.

Actually, that’s not entirely true, for Ocean Watch’s visit to the Falklands is a homecoming of sorts for our well-traveled skipper. Twenty-seven years ago (!), in December, 1982, on his first circumnavigation aboard a Valiant 40 called Resourceful, Mark paid an unexpected call at Port Stanley with mechanical problems. His eventful stay included dragging anchor across the harbor and celebrating New Year’s at the Governor’s House, where he was feted like a celebrity.

Mark’s memories of the island and its people, and his fondness for them both, are infectious. All week, as we drew neared to Port Stanley, he’s been thumbing through the guidebooks and providing previews of coming attractions, a few of which he’s jotted down in his Captain’s Log.

We all need to watch out for Leopard Seals and Elephant Seals, the latter of which, “if a person is silly enough to try and pet one,” might roll on you and crush you.

“Jackass Penguins (one of five species on the islands, which number some 200 overall, and which cover roughly 80 x 170 statute miles) are plentiful and live in burrows apparently not unlike rabbit burrows. They are dangerous only if you are foolish enough to stick your finger into an occupied Jackass burrow. You will survive…but it will be minus a finger.”

If we find ourselves in a survival situation, Mark notes, “The Diddle-dee plant might be key to our being found alive – and full of delicious Diddle-dee berries. Reportedly, eaten fresh they taste like Campari, and are used to make jam and wine. More importantly, the bush will make an excellent signal fires which lights easily no matter how wet and windy conditions may be.”

The plant was once used as a means to communication; fires set in a different pattern sent different messages. One of the downsides to this is a possible peat fire. “When the underlying peat catches fire it may burn below the surface for years, decidedly not good for the pasture or the sheep,” Mark writes.

Oh yes, there are 600,000 sheep. But they aren’t the only critters.

Mark advises, “Stay away from the wild cattle on Wickham Heights and the Guanaco, a llama-type animal on Beaver Island – both have been known to attack humans! And last, beware of seal wallows – deep pits at the back of beaches, in which seals have sloughed their skins. These may be deep, steep sided and filled with slime and mud. Escape may be difficult.”

Armed with this knowledge, this afternoon, after the unforgettable morning session with the birds, we made our final approach to the islands.

The Falkland Islands are as famous for their changeable weather as they are for their wildlife, scenery, and unfortunately, war. From thirty miles out, under totally sunny skies, the islands ahead were covered in cumulus. As we got closer, squall lines appeared. “I have known the wind to rise by one Beaufort scale each minute up to Force 8 where it remained for some hours; in other words it is more than a local and short-lived squall that can build up to this speed,” writes Ewen Southby-Tailyour in his wonderful cruising guide, Falklands Islands Shores (from which the skipper gleaned much of his earlier facts and trivia).

We got a taste of it in our final miles. The squalls came through. It was rainy. It stopped. It was sunny. Then cloudy. Rainy. Clear. Gray. Drizzly. Sunny. The next ten minutes were equally eventful.

There was a moment of deja-vu. When the skies parted enough to register our surroundings, the islands – low, barren, brown, spooky – looked startlingly like the landscape we’d encountered above the Arctic Circle, sailing through the Northwest Passage.

“We’re in Gjoa Haven again,” said the skipper.

The next step was to hoist our courtesy flag, the British flag, up the rigging. “Which side is up?” I said to Mark, as a joke; in haste, we’d already consulted the Atlas to make sure. Everyone knows the distinctive Union Jack is symmetrical, right?

“I want to make an impression coming in,” he said, as he sent it skyward.

Then, finally, we were on the final approach: the hills lined with tussocks, except, on a high hill, a turret. Dave Logan steered Ocean Watch through the narrow cut into wide Stanley Harbor. Big bullets of breeze came honking down the strait as we scrambled to drop the mainsail. The docks of the Falkland Islands Company were straight ahead. Landing was going to be sporty. Luckily, at the last minute, a helpful fellow in a red slicker appeared out of nowhere. We heaved a line ashore. He got it around a bollard. I scrambled onto the pier to help him out. Logan nestled the boat alongside. Mark secured the lines. We were there.

Our Good Samaritan was named Marcello; he worked for the company. He was a fount of friendly information. When everyone had caught their breath, he looked at us sheepishly and said, “Just one thing. I just got a call from up the hill.

“That flag?” he said, pointing at the British ensign flapping in the breeze.

“It’s upside down.”

We all gazed aloft, jaws slack. The Yankees had arrived in the Falklands.

- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

Open the above images full-screen in Flickr

January 8, 2010 – At Sea, 46º 08’S, 057º 38’W
By Herb McCormick

There are days on almost every long ocean passage when there is nothing special to report, and today, quite happily, is one of those days. The crew of Ocean Watch enjoyed a fast and sometimes peppy night of sailing, running wing-and-wing before breezes that hovered in the 20-25 knot range until the wee hours, when the northwesterly wind began to falter and back to the west. We reset the sails accordingly and continued making good progress to the Falklands on a beam reach through much of the morning before the breeze eased even more and the engine was kicked back over. Still, having now reached the 46th parallel, Ocean Watch has closed to within 350 nautical miles of the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas, with an anticipated arrival late this weekend.

By either name, the archipelago just ahead looks like a fascinating destination and a rarely visited cruising ground for long-range voyagers. Both skipper Mark Schrader and first mate Dave Logan have spent much of the afternoon poring over charts and guidebooks for the area in advance of our arrival. “There looks like so many interesting places,” said Logan. “You could spend a year checking it all out.” Our time will be vastly limited, but we’re all eager to have a good look around.

The other notable news to report, after a long stretch with very few wildlife sightings, is the welcome return of sea life along the track. We’ve mentioned the birds, but not the pair of orcas that came slipping past earlier today, or what we can only guess was a basking shark yesterday afternoon. One of the great lures of the Falklands/Malvinas, the guidebooks unanimously agree, is the great variety of critters that wait. Again, we’re ready to check it all out.

On what is clearly a slow news day on Ocean Watch, we’ll take the opportunity to update a couple of climate-related events of note on our route Around the Americas, one behind us, and one ahead.

Though a recent glance at the forecast for Cambridge Bay, in the Northwest Passage above the Arctic Circle – where Ocean Watch was berthed before the final stages of her successful transit of the Passage last summer – showed temperatures hovering at a nippy -20ºF, the National Snow and Ice Date Center (NSIDC) has reported that the November 2009 Northern Hemisphere sea-ice extent was the third lowest since satellite measurements began in 1979. The findings remain consistent with the 2009 summer readings, also the third lowest extent of sea ice in recent history. In ’09, for the record-setting third consecutive summer, every yacht that attempted to negotiate the Northwest Passage was successful. Will the trend continue in 2010? Stay tuned.

Ocean Watch, of course, won’t be in the Arctic to discover the answer firsthand, but it appears the crew will have a different set of meteorological challenges ahead of them. That’s because the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center is maintaining an El Niño Advisory for early next year along Ocean Watch’s proposed route up the west coast of South America.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has confirmed that “strong El Niño conditions (currently) continue over the tropical Easter Pacific. Ocean temperatures in the area 5º N to 5º S, 120º W to 170º W – also called the Niña 3.4 region, were at 1.6ºC above average on December 15th, just above the 1.5ºC threshold for a strong El Niño.” NOAA states that current conditions and model forecasts favor continued El Niño conditions lasting through the Northern Hemisphere spring of 2010…precisely when Ocean Watch will be sailing along the coasts of Chile, Peru and Ecuador.

An El Niño – the literal translation is “the child” – is a climate event involving equatorial currents that occur roughly every two- to five-years and typically last as long as a year. In an El Niño cycle, the tropical water temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific rise significantly and can wreak havoc on global weather patterns, ocean currents and conditions, and marine fisheries. A typical El Niño weakens the trade winds, increases rainfall over the central Pacific and decreases it in Indonesia. All of these phenomena play roles in El Niño’s effects on worldwide climates and weather.

We’ll be keeping what sailors call a “weather eye” on the Arctic sea ice and the 2010 El Niño in the weeks and months ahead. But first things first: It’s time to make hay for the Falklands.

- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

January 7, 2010 – At Sea, 42º 40’S, 057º 00’W
By Herb McCormick

Wiping sleep from his eyes, Warren Buck came up from below, sat down in the cockpit, glanced to starboard, and not twenty feet away, took in the arresting sight of a pair of wandering albatrosses gliding over the greenish-blue seas.

David Thoreson was incredulous.

For the previous couple of hours, he’d been scrambling to and fro across the decks of Ocean Watch, long lens in hand, shooting birds in flight, and the moment he set the camera down, arguably the most majestic image of the morning slipped fleetingly by.

“Pretty good timing, Warren,” he thought, ironically.

And that, we’re happy to report, has been the most fraught and unsettling moment of the day so far. Man oh man, what a difference a day makes.

For today, just 24 hours after a rude spanking from a Roaring Forties gale, the crew of Ocean Watch basked in the sun and took in the sights on one of the most glorious days imaginable, whatever your latitude.

“Roaring Forties?” wondered Dave Logan aloud at some point this morning, just about the time that first cup of java kicked in. “This is more like the Fantastic Forties.”

As usual, he was right.

With the passing of yesterday’s cold front, a massive high-pressure system has eased off the coast of Patagonia, with lovely blue skies overhead and a pleasant northwesterly breeze filling in from astern. It’s translated to a day of bird watching, quiet conversation, welcome rest, and in a couple of cases, necessary recovery in the wake of those gale-force conditions.

Last night was clear, and cold: We’d been told we’d encounter crisp air just two days south of our last port of call, in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and those rumors have been substantiated. Two days ago I was bodysurfing off Mar del Plata in 68º waters that were fresh but not unpleasant. Today, the seawater temperature gauge sits at 54º. Something tells me I’ve had my last dip for a while.

The temperature isn’t the only thing that’s changing. Take the length of the days, for instance: They’re longer. Last night, twilight lingered until well past ten; the waning moon rose two hours later; the morning sun arrived five hours after that. This time-elapsed celestial sequence made for a short, quick, merciful night, and the new day brought a steady progression of visitors of the winged and feathered variety.

For hours and hours now, Ocean Watch has been encircled by birds, particularly albatrosses and petrels, the former regal and stately, the latter sprightly and frenetic. Of all the petrels we’ve seen, the most unforgettable have been the ones that skip atop the wavelets like flying fish, plucking snacks of some sort from the bountiful ocean.

There’s been no lack of albatrosses, either, of several species, from mottled youths to confident adults. They seem to be particularly enamored with the disturbed air off the leach of our mainsail, where they twirl and wheel to our endless joy and amazement. The greatest of them all have are the majestic wandering albatross, with their effortless flight and law-defying wingspans, jibing downwind on the thermals like a racing yacht angling towards the leeward mark.

Logan’s pictorial guide, Peter Harrison’s Seabirds of the World, has become a cockpit staple, and the entire crew is grateful to his friends and clients back in Seattle, avid birders Curtis and Bobbi Pearson, for their most generous and useful gift.

The skies are not the only element bustling with activity. Our Raymarine depth-sounder/fishfinder has been issuing forth a steady record of, well, something, hovering just 20-30 feet below the surface. Shrimp? Kelp? Fish? Temperature gradients? Current upwelling? We’ve considered all the possibilities. The only thing we’re absolutely certain it isn’t is land; the ocean floor here is a couple thousand feet below the keel.

It was a day to talk about such stuff, to ruminate on possibilities. Our newest crewmember is our latest onboard scientist, Warren Buck, a nuclear physicist by vocation with a world view that is, to put it mildly, fascinating. Warren’s particular area of expertise is neutrons and protons, and the dynamic interaction thereof. To be honest, when the talk heads in that direction, I’m not sure I’m registering high marks on the comprehension scale. But I can state with absolute certainty that as of today, my knowledge and understanding of neutrinos — they’re tiny, but active! – has expanded tenfold.

Warren is also an accomplished African-American sailor, which in the world of sailing, frankly and puzzlingly, is all too rare. He’s owned several boats, including an engineless 31-foot trimaran aboard which he cruised up and down the Atlantic, a challenge that’s even harder than it sounds. The odd thing about the lack of black American sailors (Warren correctly notes that there’s no lack of great black sailors in the Caribbean) is that the ones I’ve met – offshore racer Frank Savage, who’s won everything worth winning in the Swan class, and intrepid solo sailor Bill Pinckney, who sailed around the world, not coincidentally, in one of Ocean Watch skipper Mark Schrader’s former race boats – aren’t only passionate, they’re talented and instinctive.

So add Warren Buck to that list. Warren also underscored my Two Degrees of Separation theory about sailors, as we share mutual friends and acquaintances like accomplished multihull designers Chris White and Dick Newick, and the late, great solo racer, Phil Weld. After my blank stares about physics, it was good to shoot the breeze with Warren on a topic I could keep up with. He’s fit right in with my fellow lunatics on our floating asylum.

The other day, in the midst of the gale, skipper Schrader looked at the chart and said, “Yup, once we’ve hit the Falklands, we’ll be out of the Roaring Forties and into the Screaming Fifties. At least there you’re not hopeful about decent conditions. You know the weather’s going to be awful.”

But that was before the Roaring Forties became the Fantastic ones, before the weather gods served up one of those days you could repeat a thousand times. Yes, that was before the happy crew of Ocean Watch enjoyed an afternoon we won’t soon forget, for the weather, for the camaraderie, and for the birds.

- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos