Anxious Passage
10 March 2011 | Committee Bay, Keppel Island, Falkland Islands
Chris
We were up bright and early this morning to move the boat over to Pebble Island to collect Paul's wife Sally and their children Meredith and Dean who were flying in from Stanley to join us for the weekend. Shipping was busy in Pebble sound today as the Concordia Bay was calling at Pebble Island to collect a cargo of wool and later in the day we passed another workboat belonging to Golding Island.
We departed from Pebble Island about 1030am and slowly cruised across the sound then through a labyrinth of channels; Deep Channel, The Woolly Gut, Golding Channel, Rock Harbour, Anxious Passage, and Island Channel to Committee Bay at Keppel Island. We needed a flood tide to enter Rock Harbour from the east and an ebb tide to leave to the west so we anchored between October and November Islands to wait for the tide to change; we were anchored half way between the two so presumably were anchored at about midnight on the 31st October. J
The weather today wasn't particularly nice with a light south easterly bringing rain later in the day. The south easterly wind did allow us to actually sail, rather than motor, the bulk of the journey today which was nice.
We plan to visit Keppel settlement tomorrow morning. Keppel is important historically in this region, as it was the base of the South American Missionary Society (SAMS) who were trying to civilise the Indians of Tierra Del Fuego. I am not sure who was more savage, the Indians or the missionaries, but my heart lies with the Indians. The mission base here was used to train Indians in the ways of the civilised world and teach them the word of god, but looking back you have to say that they were really used as slave labour on the farm. The Bridges family, who worked here, eventually founded a very successful satellite mission in what is now Ushuaia in Argentina and later still farmed Estancia Harberton where their descendents still live. Lucas Bridges wrote the standard reference work on the early history of Tierra del Fuego The Uttermost Part of the Earth; which is a must read for anybody interested in the area