Hola! Ask anyone down here, and they'll tell you it's all but impossible to get anything shipped internationally to Ushuaia. Parts shipped to Argentina disappear in the dark expanses of Customs warehouses for weeks or months on end, and sometimes never emerge again. Chilean officials keep much better track of things, but are less willing than Argentina to allow 'yachts in transit' to import parts duty-free, so customs must often be paid to get a package released from Santiago. From there, bulky items are sent by air freight to Punta Arenas and then physically transferred by someone to the ferry that comes to Puerto Williams.

So who would be crazy enough to try to get three 100+pound (50+kg) anchors to a yacht in the Beagle channel?

It's a bit of a long story. It starts in Puerto Montt back in November when we sent our Bruce anchor in to be re-galvanized and the galvanizer somehow or other broke it. We hadn't thought that was even possible, but when the Bruce was delivered back to us it had a deep crack all the way around the base of the shank. We carry a backup anchor for just such a situation - a 55-pound Delta - and we would have been comfortable using that almost anywhere in the world. But not cruising the Chilean channels where an anchor has to be able to set on rocky, kelp-covered bottoms and hold in gale- and storm-force winds.

The original Bruce is no longer made, a victim of less expensive knock-offs and poor anchor test reviews. We contacted several anchor manufacturers, but no one could figure out how to get us an anchor in the three weeks before we planned to head down the channels. With no other good alternative, we found a Chilean machine shop which made a quite good copy of the Manson Supreme anchor. We have been using that anchor since. But even before leaving Puerto Montt, we both wanted to figure out how to get a 'genuine' anchor, and so we asked Manson and ROCNA to continue to look into ways to get an anchor to us, and we figured out how to get payments to New Zealand.

Both companies are located in New Zealand, which should have been discouraging enough to stop the discussion. But to their credit, neither company gave up. We had met ROCNA's inventor, Pete Smith, when we were in New Zealand, and even then he had been planning on sailing to Chile. Those plans finally came to fruition in January, and when he left New Zealand aboard his tough 50-foot aluminum cutter Kiwi Roa, a 50kg ROCNA with Hawk's name on it was stowed securely aboard. When Pete arrived in Puerto Montt in February, he passed the anchor along to Betty and Luis, friends of ours on a 35-foot Van de Stadt Falcon, Ave del Mar, that we met in the Gambier Island in August of last year. The ROCNA got dubbed "Rocky" and rode down the channels lashed to a heavy stanchion near the stern of the boat, giving Ave del Mar a bit of a list until Betty and Luis emptied a water tank on that side. They arrived in Puerto Williams two weeks ago, just a few days before we made the 30-mile run down the Beagle from Ushuaia. After more than five months and 6,000 sea miles, Rocky now sits happily on Hawk's bow waiting for the opportunity to do what he was made to do.

Manson also came through for us. Despite our repeated warnings of the difficulties and challenges of shipping anything to Puerto Williams, they made it happen. When we arrived here, not one but two anchors were waiting for us, stowed in an abandoned fish factory by a friend who runs the local express mail office. They had been there since April after a record ten-day run from New Zealand to Puerto Williams. One anchor was a 50kg Bruce look-alike called the Manson Ray. The other was their 55kg Manson Supreme. When we got those back to the boat, we weighed and measured all of the anchors in preparation for a major anchor test, a battle of the titans for the heavyweight championship of the world.

A few days ago, we held the first round of the championship bout, taking all three anchors ashore at low tide on an ugly rocky beach that also happened to be frozen. Betty and Luis from Ave del Mar helped out, with Evans and Luis manhandling the anchors on the beach while Betty and I worked the windlass on Hawk's bow. We hadn't really expected to be able to get any of the anchors to set in what to our mind was a very difficult bottom - a layer of tennis- to soccer-ball sized rocks over pea-sized gravel and frozen sand. But to our surprise, all three anchors set and held 1,000 pounds of pressure, though there were differences in how quickly they started to engage the bottom and how long it took them to set.

We plan to do some real world anchor testing when we leave her for a two-month winter cruise of the Beagle. This will be the first time in our cruising career that we'll be actively looking for the very worst anchorages with the very poorest holding. We have always carried over-sized anchors and they've always seemed to suit Hawk, but even she is looking a bit weighed down with more than 350 pounds of galvanized steel stowed on her foredeck.

Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk