Happy Holidays!
15 December 2008 | Jamestown, Saint Helena

After more than a year in the high southern latitudes, Hawk and her crew have reached the warm weather and kind winds of the tropics. We arrived in Saint Helena a week ago after a 2,900-mile, 19-day passage from South Georgia, a sub-Antarctic island in the Furious Fifties of the South Atlantic. Our passage started out in snowstorms with icebergs all around the boat and ended with tropical squalls and trade winds. All three of us have been luxuriating in the warm weather, basking in the bright sun like lizards and enjoying the soft breezes wafting through the boat from bow to stern.
We have had an enjoyable and challenging year. We left Puerto Montt at the north end of the Chilean channels in December and spent two and a half months cruising south through the 1,200 miles of channels and islands that make up the Patagonian coast of Chile. We went back to the States for a short visit in April, and then we spent six weeks babysitting the Oyster 72, Billy Budd, for her crew, Clive and Laila, good friends from our first circumnavigation. We had hoped to spend the winter months cruising the Beagle Channel, but the Chilean authorities changed the regulations so that we could not get more than a 10-day cruising permit. Instead, we spent much of July through September writing, socializing and doing some local cruising.
By September we were ready to be on our way, so we provisioned and headed for the Falklands. We spent an enjoyable week in Stanley and really wished we had more time to cruise the islands. The people were very welcoming, and the wildlife was quite spectacular with penguins, albatrosses and elephant seals. But all the charter skippers had told us that October was the best time to be in South Georgia, before the fur seals arrived. The fur seals, hunted almost to extinction in the 1800s, have repopulated to an amazing extent since the 1960s. They have increasingly become a nuisance on the island, being very aggressive and covering almost every square meter of beach, making it very difficult to land once they come ashore in early to mid-November. So we left the Falklands in early October and arrived in South Georgia a week later.
South Georgia was as challenging a place as we have ever sailed. Like Chile, the island is subject to frequent gales and storms, and these bring katabatic winds or williwaws that can easily reach 70 knots. Unlike Chile, there are no trees and no protected coves where a yacht can find real shelter from these winds. The kelp in most of the anchorages is even thicker than in Chile, and since the yacht is swinging to the anchor instead of tied into one place, the anchor and chain pick up hundreds of pounds of kelp. It can easily take an hour to raise the anchor, clearing the chain of the thick kelp with a knife. And then there is the ice. We were told that it was a particularly bad ice year, and every time we ventured from an anchorage we were surrounded by huge icebergs. These were easy enough to see and avoid, but we also had to thread our way through the many small growlers, the freshwater heart of the melting icebergs that float just at sea level and are very difficult to see until you are upon them.
But the abundant wildlife more than made up for these challenges. The island is a frozen Eden with animals so tame that you can walk to within a few feet of them without causing them any concern. The only aggressive animals are the fur seals, and we were there before most of those had arrived. We were fortunate to be present through the breeding cycle of the elephant seals, to see the mothers giving birth on the beaches, to watch the babies grow from 10 pound pups to 300 pound weaners (left) in a matter of weeks, and then to see the males battling for possession of the females and breeding before returning to the sea. We also got to watch the stately king penguins molting, and the gentoos forming rookeries and laying their eggs. We saw sooty, gray-headed and black-browed albatrosses nesting in the cliffs. And, of course, the fur seals returned in the last few weeks we were on the island, the first year pups cute, playful and mock aggressive, chasing each other around the beaches and play-fighting in the shallows.
We spent six weeks in South Georgia, and by then we were both ready for some warmer weather and easier sailing. Our passage to St. Helena went better than we had any right to expect - we only had serious ice for the first 48 hours and were able to get north of the Roaring Forties without any strong winds. St. Helena was one of our favorite stops on our first circumnavigation, and we have found the island much the same. We have been surprised, though, by the steady stream of foreign yachts, all coming from South Africa. Three were in the anchorage when we arrived a week ago, and since then two have left and two more have arrived.
From here we will sail nonstop to the Caribbean, a 3,900-nautical mile passage, and we hope to arrive by mid-January. We'll spend the winter cruising the Caribbean and then make our way back to the Chesapeake, to Cypress Marina where we fit-out the boat and from where we left ten years ago. After that, our plans are very much up in the air.
We hope that this note finds you in the holiday spirit and getting ready to enjoy time with friends and family. Have a wonderful holiday season and a healthy and happy 2009.
Beth and Evans
s/v Hawk