In the conclusion of Patagonian Misadventures,
Talkeetna resident Willi Prittie tells how he and Ellie
continued on their bicycle trip,
eventually finding themselves on another ferry in yet another storm.
We left off last time delayed in South America just outside the small regional town of Chaitén in Patagonia in southern Chile by washed out bridges and highway sections after a severe storm. This same storm, along with more than a bit of human incompetence, had ripped off the loading ramp from the bow of or our ferry boat causing an unanticipated 24-hour delay before we could be off-loaded to continue our bicycle tour.
Oftentimes, unanticipated events and chance happenings while traveling will create opportunities. This can lead to some of the best and most interesting experiences of the journey, if one is open to changing “the plan” and taking advantage of those opportunities. I have always enjoyed journeying with only a rough idea of where I wanted to go and a very loose time estimate, rather than an “itinerary” set in stone. Taking up that new acquaintance’s offer to come and visit and do something completely different for a day or two, for instance, is to me an integral part of traveling.
The day or so delay we had spent on the broken ferry was a kind of enforced version of that kind of change of plan. It had been great fun to sit and play cards with all the Chilean truck drivers also stuck on the ferry. Sharing far-ranging discussions along with their wine had made the time pass rapidly.
Back at the beginning of the damaged road section, I thought “Well, the road may be a mess and the bridges may be out, but at least it was sunny with lots of blue sky, finally!” I was more than ready to get back to bicycling! We had our mountain bikes loaded with front and rear panniers and provisions for at least 5 days, so I figured we should just go and not worry about the road. I figured it would be at least partly bike-able and we could ford the streams now missing their bridges.
And so it proved to be. We had no real problems negotiating the damaged road, and we spent a couple of days leap-froging our new Chilean truck driver friends at various bad places on the road and washed out bridges. We were offered rides across several rivers with our bikes securely tucked inside front-loader buckets of the heavy equipment sent out to re-open the road.
And so, we eventually found ourselves in Puerto Natales, a small regional town and the Chilean gateway to visiting Torres del Paine National Park. It was time to head home, and I’m here to tell you that returning from Natales to Santiago is a very, long trip crossing half a continent, unless you fly. Flying would prove not financially feasible given the bicycles and camping gear that we were traveling with. Thus we had two choices: A very long road trip through Argentinean Patagonia via bus or a sea route back north through Chilean Patagonia. The former we had already done once. While this is well worth doing once, and South American busses have to be experienced for one to fully understand how comfortable they are, once is enough! So, we booked passage on the vessel Puerto Edén back north to Puerto Montt.
The Puerto Edén is a combination passenger, vehicle, and cargo vessel about 450 feet in length and around 85 feet in beam. She has 2 internal vehicle decks holding 7 lines of vehicles each. She is equipped with two common bunk rooms for foot passengers each with 25 or so bunks for the budget-conscious, and a variety of 2-person and 4-person state rooms. There is also a cafeteria, a common sitting room with comfortable couches all around and large observation windows, and an open-air observation deck. In size and capacity, this vessel compares favorably to the larger Alaska Marine Highway ferries, but she was retro-fitted as a passenger ferry after many years of service as a cargo vessel. This retro-fit simply plunked a couple of extra decks on top of the originally designed plan. Since, I believe this vessel has been completely rebuilt or perhaps replaced. This additional height above water level magnifies movement in heavy seas and becomes a significant factor in passenger comfort in heavy weather.
This route back north is similar to the Inside Passage from Washington to Southeast Alaska. It is around 5 days, with the ship threading a complicated route through a beautiful archipelago of islands and with snowcapped mountains and tide-water glaciers putting in appearances. Oh, and meals are provided as part of the fare! Much like the Inside Passage, there is one long, unprotected crossing open to the stormy ocean with no islands to hide behind.
We loaded ourselves and our bicycles up, got settled into a shared stateroom, and began to enjoy the passing scenery in comfort and with the ability to move around freely. We enjoyed beautiful weather to start, but oh it was not to last!
Collectively, the Indian, the South Atlantic, and the South Pacific Oceans are sometimes referred to as the “Southern Ocean.” This is because below about 56° south latitude, all of the oceans connect together to circle the globe without any land masses in the way. This combination yields by far the world’s largest ocean waves to go along with the bad weather that high-latitude climates always breed. Wave size is directly proportional to both the strength of wind and duration of time it blows, as well as the distance across uninterrupted water that the wind blows across, known as “fetch”. As we enjoyed our first day of beautiful weather aboard, half an ocean away, a gigantic low-pressure system had already birthed a large and violent storm headed our way. . .
Two days later as we approached the 12-hour crossing of the open Golfo de Penas or “Gulf of Grief”, the sunset had been obscured by towering black clouds, rain, and increasing wind. I watched with interest as the crew battened down the boat for the crossing. As I am not much affected by motion or “sea sickness”, I prepared for what I was sure would be an interesting night by eating a hearty meal. Being as the sea was already getting rough, the cafeteria was not well attended, so food was plentiful!
By midnight and into the thick of the storm as well the most exposed to ocean swells, we were taking up to 30° rolls to each side, and taking solid green water at times over our quarters. I was even getting spray and splash as I stood enjoying the sheer power of the storm from the wing decks along the side of the ship’s bridge, a good 50 feet above water line! The captain and first officer, both on duty that night, invited me into the bridge for a while. Since I speak good Spanish, it was a great opportunity to check out their piloting and navigating as well as dry off for a bit.
After this visit, I stopped by our state room and checked in with Ellie. She was having her own trouble: Being as the bunks had been designed crossways to the ship, she had to hook her toes over the end of the bunk to avoid sliding completely off the upper bunk and onto the floor when the ship rolled all the way to “port” or the left side. It was also quite a challenge just walking around with the floor going through 30° to 60° of variation with every roll of the ship. Imagine, for instance, the simple act of going down a set of stairs set athwart-ship or crossways to the width or beam of the vessel: When rolled one way, you were presented with a very low-angle stairway with not-flat treads; when rolled the other way, the stairway seemed near vertical, also with out-sloping treads!
And then there was the traverse through the observation lounge area: Remember when I mentioned the room lined with comfortable couches all around? Well, those pieces of furniture were simply wedged in and not bolted to the floor. In this heavy weather they had all slid loose, and traversing this space was an exercise in avoiding heavy pieces of furniture sliding along the tile floor on their way to piling up along one side or the other of the room!
And then there was the strange booming noise I kept hearing coming from lower down in the ship. My curiosity finally got the best of me, and I went below to investigate: The ships maintenance crew had removed a very large water-tight steel access hatch from a companionway or set of stairs going below into the engine room. During the previous day, they had been grinding rust spots away with rotary grinders in preparation for a new coat of paint. Apparently prepping our vessel for heavy weather had not included replacing the hatch or securing it in any way, and it was merrily sliding across seventy feet or so from one side of the vehicle deck to the other and crashing into the steel sides. This hatch had to weigh several hundred pounds, and it was a good thing there were no vehicles in this part of the deck! Not to mention, here we were in a big storm with seas running more than 50 feet, and the ship is missing a water-tight hatch? There is a reason ships are designed with water-tight hatches, right?
The sea slowly calmed as we sailed back into the protection of more islands to windward at the end of our open crossing. I went up to the open air observation deck to greet the ominous-looking sunrise, only to find that all of the plastic “lawn furniture” that had been arranged on this deck, also had not been secured or put away, and was now reduced to so many broken plastic pieces and shards.
Seeing this kind of lack of attention to proper vessel preparations and lack of professionalism in a few visible details always makes me think about the huge number of important mechanical maintenance details that must go into maintaining a ship safely. What other jobs aboard were done poorly or not at all? How many ships over the years have gone down without a trace because of an equipment or structural failure in the middle of a storm? That ominous morning while sailing back into protected, calm waters, I appreciated all the more our own Alaska Marine Highway system ferries and their crews! And, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that just perhaps, just perhaps, I had accidentally cheated death again. . .
This has been Willi Prittie for Writer’s Voice on KTNA Talkeetna.
