Recent Articles in Postcards

A Line Around the Prop

One day we must tell you about our new Olfi… Olfi is an action camera the size of a matchbox which takes pictures sharp enough to pin on your wall. Videos, too. And it costs a mere fraction of the big-name brand; and it’s Made in Wales! One day, we’ll let you know all about it and share with you some of our new Olfi pics, but for today I just want to tell you about an event which occurred…

A Postcard from Ushuaia

Oosh-why-a – that’s how you pronounce it; and just the name is enough to excite curiosity. Amongst Argentinians, Ushuaia has connotations of extreme travel and grand adventure. They come here to ski and snowboard, but more than anything they come here to stand at the End of the World. Still, if it were called Martinsville or Buenas Nieves I doubt if this place would be so popular. Even before we came south, I was already eager to visit Ushuaia; but…

A Postcard from Puerto Williams

We’ve just realised that despite having arrived more than a year ago in this neck of the woods we’ve never told you much about our latest HQ, Puerto Williams. Today the sunrise was golden, and the ground sparkled. The still waters of the creek were marbled with the colours of brightly painted yachts. It’s true that the nip in the air froze my fingers so that after five minutes I could no longer work the shutter button on the camera……

Cruising the Glaciers of the Beagle Channel

Mollymawk has just returned from a six week cruise amongst the ventisqueros, or glaciers, of the Beagle Channel. Most yachts make this round trip in a fortnight or less, but — well, as you know, we like to travel very slowly… We mollymawks like to have time to get to know the places that we visit but, truth to tell, one could spend six months and more on the ventisqueros circuit and still not see everything. For this post we’ve…

A Postcard from the Snowy South

Well, we were expecting to see some snow down in Tierra del Fuego; but we weren’t expecting to see quite this much! Mind you, we didn’t even know that it was snowing until we went on deck. Some of the people from the neighbouring boats had joined us for supper, and we were all snug and cosy in the cabin. That’s an Irish fellow by the name of Fiacra in the foreground. Notice that he’s actually wearing shorts! Our little…

A Postcard from the Uttermost Part of the Earth

FINALLY – after 19 years of faffing around – MOLLYMAWK IS IN TIERRA DEL FUEGO! Wa-hoooooo…! Trrraaa… (and other strange exclamations). Well, this event certainly deserves a trumpet fanfare! Can it really be 19 years ago that we got caught out in that hurricane-force storm and rolled the boat? What a day that was…! And how far-reaching were its effects! There we were – pootling across from Argentina to the Falklands, with every hope of spending Caesar’s fifth birthday in…

A Postcard from Puerto Deseado

One of the few safe havens on the Atlantic coast of Argentina is Puerto Deseado – a bleak, wind-swept rivermouth.  Founded as a wool port for the estancias of the hinterland, its nearest neighbour lies 200km (125 miles) away. In our view, the place should be renamed Puerto Desolado, for it is certainly a desolate spot. It was christened by one Thomas Cavendish, an English explorer following in the wake of Sir Francis Drake and Ferdinand Magellan. Magellan undertook repairs…

A Postcard from the Argentine Desert

I’m not sure what we expected from the Argentine coast south of the River Plate. Certainly, we knew that it was a windswept place, and we knew that there were few settlements. Having visited it twenty years ago, we knew that Valdez – the peninsula which shelters the famous whale breeding ground – is a waterless wasteland of rock and sand; but what we hadn’t realised is that the whole of the country from this point south is similarly dry,…

A Postcard from San Blas

We spent more than a week in Mar del Plata before the weather finally changed in our favour and presented us with the opportunity to continue south – but before embarking on the tale of our next little hop, we’d like to share a couple of photos of some of the people who we met in that port. In our last postcard we mentioned an old codger who’s been fishing here since he was 14. Now aged 90, Attilo is…

A Postcard from Mar del Plata

The winds in the region of the River Plate follow a predictable pattern, swinging perpetually around the clock, but the speed with which they swing is very variable. Eager to avoid having to slog into a south-easterly, we left the estauary while the wind was still in the east and still blowing quite strongly (f6), and so we had a hard beat out into the sea. As Mollymawk galloped across the uneven plain, the greasy grey-green waters washed over our…