We made it all the way around Tierra del Fuego!! It’s very exciting to be back in Ushuaia after paddling about 800 miles around this wild and beautiful part of the world. Some statistics:
Leg 1: Punta Arenas – Punta Maria (near Rio Grande): 8 days paddling in 2011
Leg 2: Punta Maria – Ushuaia: 13 days (paddling every day) in 2012
Leg 3: Punta Arenas – Ushuaia: 17 days (paddling every day) in 2012
Total paddling days was 38. Longest paddling day was about 42 nautical miles exiting the Magallenes Canal last year. Shortest day was on the Brecknock peninsula where we battled a mere 1.5 miles into the wind to find a more sheltered campsite.
We expected the strong winds to be our biggest challenge around Tierra del Fuego but this year’s weather was very strange and we had quite a lot of fairly calm days. We had our share of battling into headwinds but it wasn’t an every day occurrence as we had expected when heading towards the west. This also meant that we didn’t get to whoop and yee-hah our way back to Ushuaia when we started heading east. We would have welcomed a strong blast on our backs to give us a helpful push in the right direction, but more often than not the few yachts we saw had their motors on, and we could even seen our reflections on several occasions!
The challenges were different to what we expected. It was often hard to find a campsite in amongst the impenetrable steep cliffs or walls of bushes that rose from the top of beaches. The day of our strongest winds, we paddled about 8 miles into the wind before finding a place that we could put a tent that wasn’t blasted by the wind, on a slope, in the intertidal zone, or on sharp rocks. Due to the many islands and channels here, we could sometimes stay out of the main blasts but had to brave the full force of the wind around headlands and crossing bays.
The cold was an unexpected challenge. Last year on the East coast the sun shone quite a lot, even when the wind howled almost constantly. I wore a thin set of thermals under my drysuit and don’t remember being cold. I wondered how there could be glaciers down to sea level here but now I know! The stretch besides the high Darwin mountains can be REALLY cold! The thermometer on my watch often said 5 degrees while we were paddling, and one day read 3 degrees. It didn’t rain, it hailed on us every time a squall passed (which was frequently). I wore 2 thermal tops and was still cold when I stopped paddling for more than 5 minutes.
About 50 miles west of Ushuaia is perhaps the most spectacular stretch of coastline. We enjoyed a rare blue sky day as we paddled alongside blue glaciers that pour into the sea, or hang precipitously hundreds of metres above the water, impossibly perched on vertical rock faces. We took a 16 mile detour up the spectacular Seno Pia, at the end of which we were promised ‘one of the most spectacular views in Tierra del Fuego’. The paddle to get there was exciting as 5 miles in we were surrounded by small bits of ice which gradually got thicker and thicker until we had to nudge them aside to make our way forwards. The reward at the end was 3 glaciers – 2 of which reach the sea. Loud heart-stopping cracks stopped us in whatever we were doing every 20 minutes or so as an unseen part of the glacier fell off and crashed down.
Overall paddling around Tierra del Fuego has been a wonderful experience. The stunning scenery, plentiful marine life, wild remoteness & the friendly and kind people we have met combine to make it a very special place to paddle and visit. I think Barry and I are the first people to kayak the entire coastline of Tierra del Fuego, although the first continuous circumnavigation is still unclaimed! Having said that, let’s not forget that over 100 years ago, men, women & children were navigating these channels is bark canoes wearing nothing more than an animal skin which barely covered them – so we are not so tough!
Big thanks to Karel Visel for sending us daily weather forecasts to our Iridium satellite phone. Thanks to Sarah Outen and Iridium for use of the satellite phone. Thanks to my mum for updating the blog every day. Our trip map was made possible by our SPOT tracker and Trackleaders.com, who make great interactive maps for trips and events.
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