Time to Shove Off…

January 26 - We were at ou sothern-most point now, just North of the Antarctic circle, and were ready to come home. As two other Canadians that were on board had jumped ship a week earlier (They transferred to a cruise ship that was heading back sooner, some nonsense about having to get back to “work” – can’t imagine…) our watch rotation going home was 3 hours of sailing and only a 4 hour break. Again, the rotation ensured that there was at least one experienced person on, along with two others, at all times. If it was “calm” (only 2-3 metre swells) and little wind, then we would be motoring at about 5 knots (about 10 km per hour) and things would be pretty straight forward. We might have the main sail out for decoration as much as anything.

As the wind picked up, we would add, or adjust sails. In total, we used only three sails (main sail, genoa, and the stay-sail). They had other sails (storm sails, spinnaker, etc.) but they were never brought out. Since the yacht was designed to be sailed by a single person, the winches required to raise, lower, and adjust the sails were all in the stern under cover, and generally a sail change was pretty straight forward (albeit physically tiring depending on the sail and the speed at which the changes had to be made).

For three full days we again had limited wind. There was a “light” swell and we motored and sailed our way back north, similar to our trip south… then the wind changed...