Drake, o Drake, thy reputation confirmed once more. A Passage with an identity crisis for sure. So many faces, no wonder very often the weather gets depressed. Yesterday our estimated time of arrival would have been February 10 if the engines would have failed and we would have been totally dependent on the wind.

During the initial 24 hours with very little wind we actually witnessed the Lake Drake phenomenon. It provided time to get accustomed to the oceans movements again. Within
half a day we saw the wind shift to headwind. The one-engine assistance was upgraded to both engines. We lowered sails, set them again, Europa changed her course several times to keep wind in the sails. The wind increased to 30 plus knots. Waves built up and kept on trying to come aboard. Europa listed heavily at times. People coming on watch grinning at each other, having dressed after unsuccessful tries.

The listing also provided hilarious scenes at breakfast of people under various angles
and food sliding off plates to the definitely lower side. You probably wouldn´t want to live your life under a 30 degrees angle, but it´s great fun trying.

We salute thee Drake with a respectful ´wow´!

Joop

This night our passage north across the Drake nears its end! We had big waves and for this sea not too much wind - max. 8Bft, but on the nose from NW, so it was mostly motorsailing, which was some relief for the few seasick.

At 18:30 we saw it finally thru rainy clouds: Cape Horn! Passing Cape Horn safely is one of the finest experiences in the life of most sailors. Passing Cape Horn thankfully in the companionship of a nice and competent crew returning fromAntarctica with a bunch of new experiences and memories is all most travellers can dream of.

Passing Cape Horn on board of this wonderful tall ship Bark Europa simply makes us happy. And happy we look forward to the last three days of our journey through Tierra de Fuego...

Rupert
 

Aage Karup Nielsen was a Danish doctor who in 1922, together with a colleague, signed on as a ship’s doctor on the Norwegian whaling fleet for the Antarctic. He wrote a book about it, illustrated with 50 autotypes, a predecessor of the modern day digital flood of photographs.
He describes preparations and start from three Norwegian towns (Larvik, Tønsberg, Sandefjord) that sponsored this 30 million crowns enterprise.
The fleet consisted of 7 mother ship steamers (7000-10.000 tons) with each 3-4 whale hunting vessels aboard. Combined they were 1100 men. This fleet got 6 months to carry the loot from the South Shetlands area. The loot should consist of 4000 blue whales that would provide many tons of oil for European lamps and stoves.

Steamers need coal which was going to be taken in in Cardiff. The workers there went on strike after loading 50 tons of coal. Hastily by telegrams more expensive coal had to be ordered in Dakar and Rio de Janeiro. This meant a costly delay, but the author relishes in descriptions of the African Negro (whom he does not spare), and of the good life in Rio.

What does all this have to do with Bark Europa? I happen to be the ship’s doctor now, and I’m reading this book while on Deception Island, the primary base of operation of the Norwegian fleet. You can read how harpoons are fired and one of the pictures shows a harpoon exploding in a whale. The whale is dragged alongside the ship, or they plant a flag and insert a tube in the whale and inflate air to prevent it sinking, and then rush off to catch the next one. Later they will come and collect the whale. Floating alongside the ship the whale is skinned and the blubber is removed from the skin. Looking around here I realise what
happened: all around I see remains of whales. Today we are dealing with whales in a quite different way: we look for whales too, but at a ‘whale-alarm’ we are all on deck armed with cameras that are just softly clicking.

Nielsens description of penguin villages could have also been written
nowadays: there have been and are still very many, whereby I think there may be more digital Penguins than real penguins. The way Nielsen pictures the games they played with skuas wouldn’t fit Bark Europas behaviour: they would tie 2 pieces of blubber on either side of a piece of string and present that to the skuas. Shortlytwo skuas would fly through the air attached to one another by the string until one of them would let go of the blubber. Fun? Then it was anyway.

Up to now my medical knowledge is minimally called upon, may it stay that way. Nielsen does not report great dramas either, although he does mention the graveyard on Deception Island where many men lie who met with an accident. Now the burial ground only shows two crosses and one coffin.

He stresses the necessity of a doctor by pointing at the experiences that the ships captains passed onwhen they had to deal with such matters. For the sake of simplicity all medication had been stowed away in numbered pots, the names were too complicated for this captain. For example pot no. 1 was for nausea, no.2 for headache and so on. One day he needed no.11, but it was empty. Some creativity should be attributed to his captain: he gave his patient 4 and 7, which makes 11 doesn’t it?
To be perfectly clear: those were different times, I really don’t suppose our captain Klaas Gaastra would really do the same. All the crew are very professional, hospitable, hardworking and radiant with enthusiasm.

Having read Nielsens stories I’m glad I sail with Bark Europa on this trip in 2012 and not 90 years earlier when she was still a lightship. Although, it might have been interesting to see all the activity, the ships, the people, and maybe smell the stench for a bit. On the other hand I wouldn’t care to see all these dead whales floating in red waters. I rather see them blow.

Dirk Branbergen