In the first part of this saga we were introduced to the Yaghan, the hunter-gatherer people who dwelt on the shores of Tierra del Fuego. We now follow the story of how they came to be considered not just as objects of pity but as souls to be saved; and, in this matter, no one played a more important role than Robert FitzRoy. With only 24 years to his back, Robert FitzRoy was an unlikely candidate for command of a…
In June, in the middle of the southern winter, we set out from Puerto Williams with the object of passing through the Murray Strait and into Ponsonby Sound. This body of water lies between the Beagle Channel and the Cape Horn archipelago, and it would be a splendid cruising ground but for the fact that the Chilean navy has declared the whole area off-limits to all foreign vessels. To get round this difficulty we arranged to make the voyage with…
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…
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…
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,…
This is the fourth and final article in our series about the traditional boats we saw in our time in Brazil. See also the previous articles: Dug-Out Canoes on the Bahia, Modern Canoe Building in Brazil, and Bluewater Rafting (traditional Brazilian ‘Jangadas’). The thing about dug-outs is that every one is unique. They aren’t built to a plan, they’re built according to the size of the tree. Still, each builder does set out with an image in his mind of…
What would make you really happy? Maybe you’re already as happy as could be, but it seems that a lot of people aren’t. A lot of people have their eyes set on attaining or achieving a certain something which will make their life complete. When we’re small that something might be a shiny new bicycle, but as we grow up we get more ambitious: we want a house, we want a car, we want a holiday in the sun… In…
They say that the first man to cross the river probably used a log, but I’m not so sure. If you’ve ever tried stepping onto a floating log then you’ll know that it’s not easy; as soon as you put a foot aboard, it starts to spin around. Myself, I think that the first palaeolithic sailor used half a dozen logs which he lashed tightly together – and in northern Brazil there are people who still put to sea aboard…
One hundred and fifty miles from here, on the far side of a forest, 40,000 people are cheering and jeering at 22 others whose job it is to run after a ball. Further still to the north, much the same sort of scene is taking place in a brand new stadium which stands alongside a crowded favela; and there’s another game getting underway to the south, or so we’ve been told. No doubt the widescreen tellies in the bars in…
For the past six months we’ve been hanging out on the Rio de la Plata, or River Plate, exploring the estuary and – more importantly – getting the boat ready to go south. There’s a lot of work involved in preparing to face the Southern Ocean. 18 years ago when we went south with our previous boat we were capsized in storm force winds and the vessel began to fall apart. The hatches were torn off, so that the waves…