. Patagonia
Staten Island - Argentina

While it's certainly a matter of pride for the sailing community to have so many keen sailors both chartering and exploring the southern tip of America, it also must be recorded that most of them are victims of the fame of Cape Horn and nearly all of the sailboat traffic in the area is recorded between Ushuaia, Puerto Williams, Cape Horn, the Beagle glaciers, caleta Olla and Caleta Maxwell. Although certainly famous and challenging, this is but a tiny fraction of the Patagonian Coast that stretches roughly between Puerto Montt in Chile and Puerto Madryn in Argentina, following such a complicated line that it’s almost safe to affirm that many corners are still perfectly unexplored and un-surveyed, especially in the section between Puerto Eden and Puerto Natales in Chile. Just to geve you an idea, the classic Cape Horn 7-day cruise follows that tiny red diversion at the right of the following picture. It’s almost like saying that a quick tour of the Amalfi peninsula is a cruise in the Mediterranean. We will split the area in 4 sections:
- Punta Arenas to Beagle Channel;
- The Cape Horn and Glacier cruise;
- The channels between Punta Arenas and Puerto Eden are described in this story about Peel Inlet;
- Staten Island, the Falklands and Argentine Patagonia are described in the PlanetNomad website.

Punta Arenas to Beagle Channel
This is by far our favourite Patagonian route: the landscape is incredibly dramatic, the coast is packed with coves, inlets, bays and channels, many of them barely known, and the whole course meanders through a perfectly deserted, weather-beaten and gale-pestered area full of mountains and glaciers. Due to the nature of the place, a cruise between Punta Arenas and Ushuaia must be planned in good advance and one cannot expect to follow a strict schedule. It can be done in 7 days, it might take 2 weeks, and one can get lost in there forever. If one can chose, the best way to go is starting from Punta Arenas, because there are very few things more distressing than beating up 40 knots of wind and 2 knots of current in the narrow Beagle Channel. We tried one day and we managed 7 miles made good in 8 hours of hard beating. It’s frustrating to tack several times close to the same effing tree….
Punta Arenas is a lovely town. The blocks are well laid and airy – could not be otherwise, especially when the wind picks up in the afternoon and sweeps the town mercilessly– some buildings are magnificent, trees abound, the outskirts show an ordered collection of pleasant suburbs with coloured houses, streets are wide and clean, the business district and the tax free area offer all you can desire at decent prices, and people are very, very friendly. Not a bad place to live if you love incessant wind.
On water like on land, humanity is different in Patagonia. I am no judge, and cannot say if worse or better. Mariolina told me that there must be something like a filter at parallel 40ºS and assholes find it difficult to pass under sail. The mesh is not too fine, of course, and exceptions exist. But the community of sailors, like the community of people ashore, looks somehow closer. Maybe it is because the first thing you have to learn down here is to help yourself, you will find people incredibly helpful. There is an atmosphere of safety and mutual protection, a spirit of hands on the same ship. It might be the harsh climate, the long distances from everywhere else, but this cold, freezing, gloomy, godforsaken, bleakly, depressing, distressing, bleak, discouraging, dreary, dismal, squally, daunting, gusty, uninviting place is very warm indeed.
            South of Punta Arenas the hills increase in altitude and pleasant forests challenge the power of meadows and prairies. Greens are more intense, sign of increasing rainfall. Thirty miles towards Antarctica and the road ends under the old walls of the King Phillip City or, at the last crossroad of the continent, on the beach of Bahia Mansa and its moored fishing fleet.
From now on along the strait, there is nothing else. The only settler here is winter.
After few miles the Estrecho de Magallanes makes a wide bend of 120 degrees and turns northwest, entering a distinct, wilder, more majestic world. The size of things, previously lost in flatness, assumes a grander, more massive scale. When the view slowly opens to the fortunate voyager, verticality enters the scene. Rock jumps out of the liquid steely turmoil and climbs up eagerly and steeply, at first covered with courageous but battered trees, then by a thin layer of mosses, than by a sparse film of lichens before ending, when not into grey clouds, under a thick cover or ice and snow. The same vertical section moves NW, symmetrically on both sides of the channel, in endless variations of the same theme, in a succession of valleys and steep shoulders equally inhospitable, wild and majestic. The shores, previously straight and shelter-less, begin to follow this mountainous geology, bending into coves and inlets of various dimensions. Soon the Patagonian absurd geographic pattern is in full swing, with an unequalled complication of lines that, if stretched out, might well round the world a few times.
Moreover, Magellanes combines this with grandeur and size. All is big. Waves, mountains, glaciers, walls, rocks, ridges. And long. There are more than 180 miles to the end of it. The Strait of Magellan, even with water, can easily swallow the Grand and Glenn Canyon; dry it out, adding twelve hundred more metres of abyss, and there is room for a lot of nature..
 
Caleta Notch - Magellan Strait

The Magellan Strait is possibly the only ‘strait’ that one has to take care crossing even sideways, especially on passing Cabo Froward, the actual end of the South American continent, where the fetch from the W can raise distressing waves. And it’s 15 miles to shelter, a place wisely named Hope Cove, unless one enters the wrong channel, not a shameful thing to do when the weather is thick and one can barely see the mast. Caleta Hope is truly magnificent, a bombproof round cove with very high peaks around. But does not stand to its name. This is one of the places where one can learn what a williwaw is. Wind travels a long way before  reaching Patagonia, but instead of calling it a day and have some rest, it finds mountains and gets excited. For some strange and not well understood phenomenon that involves a lot of heat exchange and pressure power, the wind goes up the mountains at a certain speed, but not on a straight line. It concentrates in some places and when, thus nicely reinforced, shots down with a vengeance. Williwaws are usually thin, or at least the hole they dig in the water and the twister overhanging it are less than ten metres in diameter. Then they boom out in every direction, like an atomic mushroom, polishing out everything they meet. It is hard to measure the wind speed. Bar chats and wind meters are usually very distant, but I rarely measured shots of less than 50 knots. And up. If you are already in strong winds, it is a nasty gust. If you are in calm, it is hell. If you happen to sail, say, Canal Magdalena where it joins Magellanes, you might have canvas up. A williwaw will reduce your 8-ounce main into a collection of naïf handkerchiefs.
            Williwaws might happen in other places all around the steep sides of Patagonia. ‘Once the workers of the Estancia Primera Viedma left their wooden dinghy well into the beach and made it fast to a tree before going on their own business. When they came back they discovered with surprise that the boat was not there any more. After some research, one of them looked up and saw the dinghy on the branches of a tree. The Chileans workers were caught by some superstitious terror and flew back to the farm. After some times the owner himself went to the same beach and left the dinghy there, not before filling it half with water to avoid similar experiences. Under the awed eyes of the settler, a williwaw came, raised the dinghy up for some metres then left the prey, which fell down of the beach only to fall apart’.
Monte Sarmiento - Hieghest peak in Tierra del Fuego -
first climbed by Carlo Mauri & Clemente Maffei - Italy - 1957

After Canal Magdalena our course enters Canal Cockburn, one of the most impressive of all the Chilean Channels. Basically you start turning around the W end of Tierra del Fuego, and its highest mountain, Monte Sarmiento, that raises 2400 metres  over the Cockburn/Magdalena junction. I spent a total of more or less 3 months sailing around the area, and I’ve seen it only once, and at least I can show a picture for it.... And indeed 3 months is what it took to Carlo Mauri and Clemente Maffei to climb it for the first time in 1956. Mauri was an Himalayan veteran and he took much less to climb the Gasherbrum IV, a difficult 8000… The weather around here is simply brutal. Once into Cockburn, the curious sailors will be naturally prone to sneak into one of the amazing coves and inlets on the S side. This can be done but mixed results must be expected. In Seno Chico we were welcomed by clam waters and amazing glaciers, and we even found a stunning ice free anchorage (with 6 lines ashore) in 54 29.511'S, 71 06.791'W. Then sheer majestic landscape lured us close to Isla King in 54 23.23'S, 71 19.07'W, but we discovered at 4am that we actually let go into williwaw capital, when we saw the jib blown away when rolled!!! Beauty might sting. I know no other place where sailors are willing to turn religious to have some favourable winds more than to get out of Canal Cockburn. One has to sail 60 miles against the prevailing winds and the last are in the Milky Way, basically a huge crack in the continent where it turns E. It’s difficult to decide which way describes it best, either a series of exceedingly rough openings to the Ocean mined by abundant scattered rocks and islets, or an extensive collection of rocks and islets surrounded by a very penetrating and endless rough swell. It’s very lively here, with frequent squalls coming exactly from where one does not expect them. Usually increasing the number of tacks in rough waters necessary to get into Canal Occasion. Joshua Slocum entered this mess at night when a bad storm forced him back after his first attempt to leave South America. Milky Way comes from the impression he had from perceiving the foam of the breakers at night. Foam is not scarce around here.
All is over when one enters the Seno Occasion and its jewel cove, Caleta Brecknock… The images speak for themselves.

54 32' 41''S, 71 54' 39'' -Caleta Brecknock - Tierra del Fuego - Chile

Sailing from Occasion to Beagle along Canal Brecknock and Bahia Desolada is definitely rewarding, provided one does not hit the many obstacles along the way. For what I believe to be a stroke of luck, the area was flat as a mill pond all the four times I sailed through. There are plenty of very well sheltered anchorages well worth exploring, like Caleta Frog and Caleta Fanny, and while the whole area is far less dramatic, certain corners are so welcoming to become somewhat romantic. One can think about bringing here a mountain chalet and enjoy a perfect balance of mountains and sea, the first neither too far to lose splendour nor to close to become threatening, the sea able to induce both, desire to explore and a certain hope to do so unpunished.
Continuing west the route takes us back again close to the cordillera soon after Paso O’Brien. The Patagonian channels are a place where even a car in an empty parking lot can produce its own weather opposing its elevation to the wet wind. No wonder then that the entrance of Beagle can be often hidden in thick mucky drizzle, or incessant squalls, both having the notable effect of releasing a curtain over the world outside the lifelines. And no wonder the Chileans placed the first of their endless control stations here. Recently the navy saw the light and instead of displacing three males, decided to let a single one have a go, but with the wife. This is very cost effective (wives are not paid) and has a very pleasant effect on the passing sailors, who are often greeted by charming voices asking the usual lot of data, but in a sweet voice.
The Beagle channel certainly deserves the nickname of Glacier Highway. It is straight and the boat meets several hanging cascades of ice on the left during its voyage E. This is also where tennis might have been invented, because the wind can only blow either 0 or 40, often in the same game… er, hour. These contrasts are even amplified, if possible, when you enter the many inlets that hide a tidal glacier at the end, the most famous of which are Seno Pia and Garibaldi. True, to see the big calibers of tidal glaciering you have to be 4-500 miles north, where for example Pio XI glacier (pictured) boasts a face 5 miles wide and a never ending calving show. But to get to those corners one has to take a Sabbatical and also found a sailor sane enough to get into those channels. As the philosopher Jagger used to say, ‘You cannot always get what you want’.

Pio XI