BEAUTIFUL SOUTH
Sailing and skiing in Antarctica
GO BIG OR GO HOME?
Moody DS48 on test
BEST NEW BOATS FOR
2024
It has been another bumper year for the boatbuilding industry. Sam Jefferson casts his eye over the latest launches
BEAUTIFUL SOUTH
Michael Brooks narrates an ambitious cruise to the snow elds of Antarctica in search of pristine skiing conditions
Aquest to discover the untamed outdoors and leave behind the everyday to encounter heavy pack ice, ski unclimbed peaks, and experience amazing wildlife, provided the driving force to head o on a new adventure into the unknown. e primary objective of this voyage was the far south of the Antarctic Peninsula near the Bellinghausen Sea, where we were likely to nd those extraordinarily beautiful and pristine silent unclimbed peaks.
We set sail from Ushuaia to Antarctica on 31 December 2023. Our first destination was Puerto Williams, Chile to await a weather window for the Drake Passage. There was a New Year’s Eve party on the Micalvi, an old tug grounded in the port acting as a jetty for yachts. With views of the waterways of Tierra del Fuego and the surrounding mountain peaks, this seemed a fitting tribute for the start of a new year and the challenge of facing Mother Nature in Antarctica.
Departure from Cape Horn
The sail through the Drake Passage across the Southern Ocean was planned to take four days. We sailed early morning of 1 January with a few tired eyes after the previous evening. A fair WNW wind forged us onwards across Bahia Nassau. To starboard at around midnight we noted Cape Horn Light, the last navigational marker we would see until arriving back at Cape Horn weeks later. Into the Southern Ocean, the swell increased as did the wind, but nothing too extreme. With the yacht making 10kts a third reef was put into the sails. Miles, hours and days disappeared in a familiar watch pattern of four hours on eight off. The crew were enjoying the start of the expedition and were enthralled to sight the first large iceberg at 58° South. These huge icebergs calve from the main glaciers of Antarctica and slowly melt and calve themselves. Passing them to windward is a good strategy thus avoiding the wind shadow and bergy bits that break off and stream to leeward.
We aimed for our first anchorage near Old Palmer Station, a decommissioned American scientific base. Threading our way through the outlying islands, icebergs and brash ice, we anchored in a cove north of the Adelie penguin colony on Humble Island. Adelie penguins are bold and inquisitive penguins, but the warming climate is wreaking havoc with their breeding cycles and their numbers are decreasing. Sitting out on deck at anchor, gaws of penguins and barks of elephant seals were a fantastic reminder of where we were.
GO BIG OR GO HOME?
Moody Yachts has been producing deck saloon yachts for many years now. The company’s new DS=48 proves it know precisely what it’s doing
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Sam Jefferson narrates a delivery trip from Lefkas in Greece to Catania in Sicily via the rugged coast of southern Italy
