night heron hide-out

There is a horse trail that runs through the forest bordering the Junco wetlands and town.  Walking this route always gets us into a quiet spot away from the wind and elements. We often see wild horses, Chimango Caracara, and get an unusual daylight sighting of the Black-Crowned night herons who sit like sentinals in the tree tops.

Raivo looks up at the sentinal-like herons on guard in the canopy.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Black-crowned night heron.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena

Chimango caracara
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena

frozen jewels

Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Diamond
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

beagle backyard

Under the old Navy pier at low tide.
Beagle Channel, Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Pearl & the red dinghy.
Beagle Channel, Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

winter teeth

The best part of stepping outside the boat every day is seeing these beautiful mountains.
Los Dientes de Navarino, Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

winter solstice commute

As we approached the Winter Soltice, Tormentina's morning commute to school came well before the sunrise. This meant getting the head-lamps on before stepping through the companion-way, crossing a raft of boats to get to the land, then making the 1.5 km trip (one-way) to get from the Club Naval de Yates to the center of town in the dark.  This girl is a trooper, going regardless of the weather in the rain, snow, or moonshine. 

The massive projects of road construction and new infrastructure in Puerto Williams meant no school bus running for most of the winter season.  She is in "Primero Basico" (1st Grade) at the Liceo Donald McIntyre Griffiths and is the only English-speaking & foreign student in her school.

Tormentina (age 6) on the companion-way steps getting on her "action suit" for her commute to school.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

the peak of navarino winter

Anasazi Girl tranformed into an igloo as the peak of winter arrived this season.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

James clearing the foredeck.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Ice forms in the Seno Lauta Harbour as the fjord (a mix of salt & fresh water) freezes over.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Expedition boats rafted together waiting for the next sailing season.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

dismasted - auckland to puerto williams: part two

Story/Photos by Somira Sao

Below is another excerpt from my story about Anasazi Girl getting dismasted in March 2014. A shorter version is featured in the September 2015 issue of Yachting World (UK).  Part One of the original story can be read HERE.

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Amazingly, we were in motion again.

I got up slowly, stabilizing my body against the starboard ballast tank and the navigation seat.  Before I did anything – walk through the cabin, use the toilet, or put a pitcher on the stove to heat water – I sat down next to James to see where we were and what kind of conditions we were sailing. Sea state determines what we can and can’t do underway. In this case, we had stable NW breeze, were making good Easting, and seas were moderate. We were just over a thousand miles out of New Zealand.  The forecast showed that we would get a SW wind shift in 4-6 hours. Right now, it was safe to be active and get some things done inside the cabin.  

We commented on the temperature drop and discussed turning on the Eberspächer heater for the first time.  It would instantly take off the edge until the sun warmed the boat, but we decided to wait. The kids were asleep, warm inside the cocoon of a giant down sleeping bag.  In the meantime, hot drinks and staying layered in technical clothing would do the trick for the two of us.

We left port with 53 gallons of diesel and were guarding our fuel, which we needed to run the heater and the engine-driven alternator that charged our house batteries. Using minimal fuel was critical for keeping all our electronics running.  Careful conservation of all our resources on board while simultaneously not carrying too little or too much of anything was a key factor for successfully making all our long distance passages.

Sailing offshore often pulls forgotten memories to the surface for me.  Seeing our breaths as we spoke and our cups of tea steaming, I was brought far away from Anasazi Girl and back in time to our lives three years prior.

In March 2011, we were living in South America in a Peugeot Boxer cargo van (fitted out with a living interior) with our two oldest kids Tormentina and Raivo (ages 2 ½ and 6 months at the time).

Van Life / River Rats / Land Yacht
Puenta Bandera, Provincia de Santa Cruz - ARGENTINA (January 2011)

At that time, we had just fulfilled a dream project of making an unsupported descent of Argentina’s Rio Santa Cruz with the kids. The seeds for this dream were planted with a Google Earth map and a few trips over the river on the Charles Fuhr Bridge (Ruta 40) while were cycle touring this region.  

Seeds for dreams often begin here...
Google Earth view of the Rio Santa Cruz, Provincia de Santa Cruz - ARGENTINA

The river was an other-worldly blue, fed by the glacial melt of the Patagonian Ice cap and ran 400 kms from Lago Argentino to the Atlantic. The float was in a 15 foot hard shell canoe and lasted nine days. Alone in the wilderness, with very remote road access, we drank pure unfiltered water and passed landscapes of wind-blown pampas, abandoned estancias, basalt rock formations, saw guanaco & condor, and found Tehuelche artifacts.

Lago Argentino, a glacier-fed lake just outside of El Calafate - ARGENTINA

Tormentina (age 2) with the pampas, wind-blown sand dunes, and guanaco tracks.
Rio Santa Cruz, Provincia de Santa Cruz - ARGENTINA (January 2011)

Tormentina (2) and Raivo (3 months) and our simple living"scene" for 9 days on the river.
Rio Santa Cruz, Provincia de Santa Cruz - ARGENTINA (January 2011)

Our days of "basic" training for sailing long distance...
Everything we needed to survive unsupported for 400 kms are inside this 15' hard shell canoe.
Rio Santa Cruz, Provincia de Santa Cruz - ARGENTINA (January 2011)

After floating the Santa Cruz, we lived between southern Argentina and Chile so I could work shooting images. We spent time at the crag with an international tribe of climbers. That season, we met and re-connected with world-class athletes – like Rolando Garibotti, Sean Villanueva-O’Driscoll, Nico Favresse, Joel Kauffman, Daniel Jung, Sylvia Vidal, Tommy Caldwell, and the Huber Brothers.

Fidel Martinez Guirado highling above the Rio de Las Vueltas
El Chalten, Parque Nacional los Glaciares, Provincia de Santa Cruz - ARGENTINA (February 2011)

Sylvia Vidal  / sport climbing at La Platea
Parque Nacional los Glaciares, Provincia de Santa Cruz - ARGENTINA (February 2011)

L to R:  Daniel Jung, James & Raivo (age 4 months), Paulita Jones Volonte, & Nico Favresse
Parque Nacional los Glaciares, Provincia de Santa Cruz - ARGENITNA (February 2011)

Daniel Jung (on the wall) & Thomas Englbach / sport climbing at Commission
El Calafate, Provincia de Santa Cruz - ARGENTINA (February 2011)

We took road trips along desolate dirt roads, James always with one eye searching for undeveloped climbing areas and hidden crags of granite among thousands of sheep and the lone gauchos.

Joel Kauffman taking in the clean air on an idyllic run along the lake.
Lago San Martin, Provincia de Santa Cruz - ARGENTINA (February 2011)

Rocks, pampas and moody clouds.
Lago San Martin, Provincia de Santa Cruz - ARGENTINA (February 2011)

Jose in the kitchen of Senora Andretti.  Before leaving the "scene" in El Chalten for life on an estancia,
Jose carried loads for Kurt Albert on the first ascent of Royal Flush (44-pitch 5.12c, A2 Royal Flush, on the east pillar of FitzRoy).  We met him in celebration mode after he had fnished a project shearing 15,000 sheep.
Estancia Puesto Chacabucu, Lago San Martin - ARGENTINA (February 2011)

We eventually made our way south to the “end of the road” of Tierra de Fuego, to the port of Ushuaia, Argentina. The season was winding down and James found day work on foreign flagged expedition boats chartering Cape Horn & Antarctica.

We lived in the van at the yacht club, urban camping, paying for the use of the club’s facilities.

Then the first freezing cold nights arrived.

We slept layered in all our technical gear, surrounded in the morning by a cave of frost, breaths visible in the cold air. By the second morning like this, we knew it was time to head north.

This moment was a major turning point for us. As a family, life together was not about an existence of just living & working in a place. Neither was it just about being a tourist having a look around. What drove us to live was to go somewhere to DO something, to make friendships and deep human connections.

Always we strove to keep a healthy balance between working enough to live a simple life, while doing it in such a way that allowed us to be together as a family, to raise & teach our kids ourselves.

At this point, the river poject was over, our tribe had left Patagonia with the seasonal shift, and we were burned out on being on the road. It was hard for us to be around the expedition boats without the freedom to be on the water ourselves.

It was time to start a new life program.

We headed north & returned to El Chalten to store our canoe & river gear at Alejandro Capparo's house (the head park ranger at Parque Nacional Los Glaciares).

A couple weeks later we were in the big city of Santiago, camped out at the Herrara-Bravo house, trying to sell the van.  Once we found a buyer, we then moved into a small room at the Hotel Paris, located in the old cobble-stoned Iglesia San Francisco district of Santiago. We then sold everything else we owned (climbing & camping gear) to the young Chilean climbers.

We booked tickets to Panama and spent a week there looking for work.

Two weeks after that, we were in Maine, preparing to re-launch Anasazi Girl. By the middle of July 2011 we made our first offshore passage with the family, crossing the Atlantic in 21 days from Maine to France. Three years and three children later, we had made over 20,000 ocean miles together, crossed the North & South Atlantic, the equator, and made East-bound voyages through the Southern Ocean to the point where we were today.

Tormentina (2 1/2 years) and Raivo (9 months) on a Transatlantic voyage from Maine to France. (June 2011)

I felt a little choked up with the realization of how far we had come as a family since planning & provisioning for our small trip on the river. It had been a good exercise in risk management and expedition planning that helped shape the voyages we were to late rmake.

I thought about how those frosty mornings in the van had become such a pivotal moment in the course of our lives, and here we were again, about to cross that region where the idea to go sailing with the family had started.

We did turn the heat on that day, and the days that followed fell into a steady routine.  These were not the sunny, warm days of sitting in the cockpit with the kids, making sail changes together, and watching for dolphins, birds, and whales like in the Atlantic. The Southern Ocean was a completely different game altogether. This type of sailing was an intensive risk management program where being smart was vital for everyone’s safety and even the smallest actions of everyone aboard were carefully calculated.

(To be continued.)

snow & ice

Pearl in the frozen Junco wetlands.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Air bubbles.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Air & Nothofagus suspended in ice.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

martial sunrise

View of Argentina's Martial Range from Anasazi Girl.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

hand in hand

Hand-in-hand, headed home to Anasazi Girl.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

winter playground

Climbing the orange dinghy.
 Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Harvesting icicles.
 Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

teeth of navarino

Los Dientes de Navarino
 Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

yachting world, september 2015 issue

A few months ago (approximately a year after the actual events took place) I was finally able to write the story about our last passage from New Zealand.  The slimmed-down/edited version is published as an 8-page feature in the September 2015 issue of Yachting World (UK). This issue will be available on newsstands in the UK by the middle of August 2015 and an electronic version can be downloaded through the iTunes App Store shortly after.

Below is an excerpt from my original manuscript...

September 2015 issue Yachting World / Cruising Section

"Dismasted!" Yachting World (UK) September 2015 issue
Story & Photos by Somira Sao

 

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It was early morning aboard Anasazi Girl.  As I exhaled, I could see my breath curl like smoke through the cold air. I was lying with our three children in the starboard quarter berth.  James sat at the navigation station, looking at our latest GRIB file, updating charts, and watching the boat’s performance.  I could hear the sound of the ocean through the carbon hull as the boat surfed through the water.

I craned my neck so I could peek at the instruments.  Then I carefully shifted my weight so I could crawl out of the berth without waking anyone. Getting out of a space intended for one person, then stepping out over the ballast plumbing was tricky.  Gravity was pushing us to the lowest side of the berth, matching our angle of heel, with me at the bottom of the kid pile. The arrangement was uncomfortable, but it was the safest place to be on the boat. My intense love for my kids and the happiness felt having them close always worked to counter-balance any discomfort.

It was February 2014 and we were starting day 5 of our passage out of Auckland.  With 60 days of provisions on board, our plan was to sail non-stop to Lorient, France.  This was the first offshore passage for our one-year-old daughter Pearl. With many ocean miles under their belts, our daughter Tormentina (age 5) and son Raivo (age 3) were now well-seasoned sailors.  If we made it to Lorient, it would complete an east-bound family circumnavigation via the three Great Capes.

We were trying to maintain a maximum boat speed of 10-12 knots while staying on an efficient and comfortable East-bound course toward the Drake.  For this section of the Southern Ocean, the plan was simple – sail fast, sail smart, keep the lows on starboard, the highs on port, and above all else, do not get hurt or break anything!

As our position shifted southeast in latitude, we left our previous lives & the warm temperatures of New Zealand further behind. We had arrived in Auckland 14 months prior, in October 2012, after sailing from Cape Town, Fremantle, and Melbourne while I was pregnant.  Our time in New Zealand had been quite special.  For James and I, the place held a lot of personal history for us, going back before we had kids.

In 2007, James and I sailed Anasazi Girl across Cook Strait from Nelson to Wellington, then along the east coast of North Island from Wellington to Tauranga.  We spent several months in Auckland, working on the boat in the Viaduct, on the hard stand by the old America’s Cup sheds on Halsey Street. James was preparing for a non-stop Eastward passage from Auckland to Cape Town and it was during this period that we decided to start a family.

This recent stop in New Zealand, we had given birth to our third child and I finally said “Yes” seven years after he asked me.  We got married with a simple civil ceremony and celebrated with a memorable party afterwards.  We taught our kids how to swim at the Tepid Baths and lived a completely pedestrian lifestyle. Our kids ran wild & barefoot, tearing it up on the waterfront, wharfs, and docks on scooters and skateboards.  We made deep connections with friends, both old and new and also experienced America’s Cup madness as we cheered on Emirates Team New Zealand with the Kiwis for the 34th edition.

All of these things made our departure one of the hardest goodbyes ever leaving port.  With the addition of one more crew-member, we cleared out of the country.  Freed from the land, we were excited about making an epic voyage, and eager to see what would come next for our family....

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winter shoreline of the beagle

My kids at play on the shore of the Beagle Channel in winter.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Raivo cutting me a strand of kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera).
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Art in nature.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Crab on its way to the tide.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

ice on the river bank

Women at work.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Sending ice rafts downstream to the ocean.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)

Broken ice on the river bank.
Isla Navarino - CHILE / XII Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena (junio de 2015)