44 08.0′ S
175 56.5′ W
Sure enough, we’re all well aware that the 3200kms we’ve sailed so far amount to little more than a shake-down cruise compared to the passage we’ve now begun. The tiny island group of the Fourty-Fours are off to port, the last bits of land we’ll see for the next month. Our bow’s pointed due-east on a heading of 090T and we’re cruising along riding the bottom of a friendly high-pressure system.
We’re intending to follow the wind between 42 and 45 S, and then make a turn towards the south when we get to 100 W in about three weeks. This isn’t the most direct route to Ushuaia, which is down around 57 S, but it should increase our odds of avoiding the nasty Southern Ocean storms and stray Antarctic icebergs. Along our intended flightplan, we’ve got a little over 8000km to go.
Our last few days in the Chathams were good and casual. One of the fishermen in Port Hutt agreed to lend us his truck so we were able to drive in to Waitangi and load up on fresh food. While we were at the store a generous lady offered us produce from her garden for our trip, so we stopped by and are now carrying a half-dozen head of very fresh bok choi and silverbeet. After our run-in with Betty T., the runaway fishing boat that unapologetically rammed us on the weekend, it was a positive way to end our stay on the Islands. Things are looking good on the water, and Josep’s about to cook us up an octopus dinner. I’m skeptical about this one – it looks like a puddle of unidentifiable chilled jelly in a tupperware at the moment – but I figure it’s worth a try.
Hi Yan,
Hope you didn’t think I had given up following your adventure — no way — I’m addicted!
It must feel very strange to know that you will not see land for such a long time — this will be a very big test of your endurance — but I’m sure you will find it highly rewarding. Just keep safe and keep that camera working — your photographs are wonderful — just don’t drop the camera overboard!
Many thanks, Yan, for keeping all your fans so entertained and in tune with your life.
By: Joan in Montreal on October 19, 2006
at 3:24 am
You got another fan here, dude.
Ever since that conversation I overheard the night before our sailing trip, and reading these comments “Do I really need this? Is it all about fuelling my ego? Being able to say I did it?”, I’ve struggled with the same questions to justify my own unquenchable thirst for meandering. They’re really good questions, and I find it particularly difficult to find compelling answers these days. “At what point does this feeling of global citizenship and infinite possibility turn into a sense of entitlement?”
The One World Film Festival is going on in Ottawa, 4 nights of documentaries on Global Issues, and I find myself understanding the ramifications of such an elegantly-posed question, and relating more closely to socio-ecological idealist role models such as my brother and yourself.
I think an interesting aspect of this leg of your trip is the fact that, according to your passport, you are nowhere – you have left New Zealand, and you haven’t arrived in Argentina. For a few weeks, you are as free a man in today’s society of nations as one can imagine. (I only had that experience for an hour, driving between the border posts of Chile and Argentina). You are not guided (or misguided) by any governments, media, corporations, whether international, provincial, or municipal. You are subject only to the laws of physics, nature, and human interaction on a beautifully small scale. Think about that for a minute (or two, or twenty thousand… you certainly have them!) What better backdrop for introspection can you wish for? What clearer context is there to determine where you fit in a world of labels?
You’re an inspiring guy Yan, and maybe that’s justification enough. I’m honoured to have grown up in the same neighbourhood as one of our world’s future leaders, and to be recognized for having taught him the incontestably important and insightfully educational social interaction known as ‘psychologist’.
Buen viaje, amigo.
By: Zingaro on October 19, 2006
at 7:14 pm