Part I
The Americas Enshrouded
Thirty nights and thirty days have we travelled under canvas-filled sails since Auckland. And again the mist closes in as I stand lookout ‘pon the fo’c’sle deck looking out t’ward sea. Antarctic fulmars now join the petrels, prions and albatross in their low gliding dance between crest and trough; appearing and disappearing between a see-sawing weave of chaotic crest lines, each subsequent swell face progressively greyer on out though the diminishing lines of perspective.
We are 120 nautical miles west of the longitude that runs through Cape Horn: 67° 15.5’ W. And we’ve slowed right down. The gale that carried us in its rough embrace over the last few days has moved on. We perambulate upon a sloppy sea. And in such a fashion, with sails increasingly set, we hope to ‘Round the Horn’ today and in so doing cross from the Realm of the Pacific to that of the Atlantic before nightfall. The Captain has assured us that the Europa’s Great Horn will sound; and that we should all gather on deck to toast in unison to our good fortunes, rain hail or shine. But we’ve to pass the small island group of Diego Ramirez first. And I cast my eyes eastward into the mist from the fo’c’sle deck once again.
My long-standing familiarity and love of The Americas is challenged. I cannot see her but I sense her enormity looming and imagine the great north-south continent of the western hemisphere lying just a few hundred kilometres to my north. Yet it is as if this permeating fog alone prevents me from seeing her; and that if it lifted I should see first hand the remnants of her glorious Andes, taller and sky-bound in their tropical and sub-tropical latitudes, now left drowning in the circuitous fjords and glacial fingers of the Patagonian south.
We are now on Bolivian Standard Time, one hour behind Chilean Summer Time and Falkland Island Time. We are already five hours ahead of Alaskan Time. The continental mass of the Americas has been pulling ever closer over these last few weeks, with a steady loss of an hour every two to three days. We are now more than half way across the traversable terrestrial time zones of the Americas.
Ship time is 0745 hours and I’ve been on watch since 0400. The sun rose at least two hours ago. At a little over 56° S the Southern Summer light pervades this fog-bound world, while the sea temperatures continue to drop. At a little over three degrees Celsius we’re still a ways off the Antarctic Convergence Zone, where the cooling Southwest Pacific Ocean waters sink alongside the denser more saline waters emanating from the southern sea ice packs.
Should indeed these pallid grey curtains lift and I indeed see the remains of the dissected Andes diminishing inexorably in size toward that one famous rocky islet at the extreme edge of the Land of Fire, might it too be possible to distinguish the amassing of her waters as they fight for space within the Drake Passage? From out here amidst the gathering steel grey waters of the circumpolar current it’s hard to manufacture an answer.
planetlars 