May 9, 2011
The 10-member crew of M/Y Big Fish, the 45m yacht built specially for a polar circumnavigation, is back in South Florida this month after six weeks at the bottom of the world.
And despite the logistics hassles, the winds, the storms, the ice and the temperatures, they accomplished what they set out to do: give the owner and charter guests incredible experiences and prove to the world that the most spectacular places on Earth aren’t reserved for mammoth ships.
“It’s all about life experiences: Carnaval in Rio, landing a blue marlin, night diving in the Galapagos,” Capt. Winston Joyce-Clarke said. “It’s all about living a life extraordinaire. With the owner, we set out to prove we could do it on a boat like this, on a boat that’s not Octopus. You can build a boat that’s 45m with enough savvy in it to go to these places.
“It was worth it,” he said. “What an amazing experience.”
The yacht explored the Antarctic peninsula for nearly six weeks, which Joyce-Clarke said was the main reason his experience was positive.
“Coming in for just 10 days, you run the risk of having only bad weather,” he said.
In six weeks, though, they saw some amazingly clear, sunny days. So much so that the crew went for a swim. In bikinis and swim trunks.
But to make sure they didn’t take it for granted, Mother Nature reminded them where they were. On one of those sunny days in a protected cove, with guests in the Jacuzzi, the winds changed and within two hours, the yacht was completely surrounded in ice. It took them all morning to wiggle from one open patch of water to the next, but eventually they got free.
Even so, Joyce-Clarke said the trip was magnificent.
“Clearly, you can understand why tour operators go back year after year,” he said. “It’s addictively beautiful.”
The crew agreed, and learned quickly to depend on each other.
“It felt like stepping into another world,” said newly promoted Purser Jordan McDonough. “You’ve completely stepped out of your life. There’s no Internet and rare phone calls home; it’s so expensive. We learned real fast we were a great crew.”
They needed to be, with two-hour turn-arounds.
“With guests flying out and in on the same plane, we were ironing the sheets on the bed,” said Chief Stew Cath Carlson. “It was very full on.”
“If we didn’t love working with each other, we couldn’t have pulled it off,” McDonough said.
Yachts have the be self sufficient
Capt. Joyce-Clarke learned a few things on this trip. First is that Big Fish can run from Panama to Cape Horn on a tank of gas. (There was 27 percent of her holdings in the tank when they got to Ushuaia.)
Long liners in South America have gotten creative in their use of sinkers. He discovered that when Big Fish ran over a long line late one night. A crew member dove overboard off Ecuador to figure it out and came back with a piece of rebar, bent into a loop to hang on the line.
And a yacht has to be pretty self-sufficient down there, which makes running charters a bit tricky. It’s not easy (or reliable) getting fresh produce shipped in, as he discovered on the final charter of the trip, which fell at the end of a month of non-stop guests aboard.
When his produce order got stranded at the airport in the midst of political unrest, he called on a neighboring vessel, a small cruise ship, to trade eggs and vegetables for cases of wine and beer.
“If it was just weather, you’d be alright,” Capt. Joyce-Clarke said. “It’s the politics on land that you can’t do anything about that can cause you problems.”
But the key thing he learned was to manage expectations. In lots of ways.
“With guests, it’s difficult to keep them entertained,” he said.
Unlike Alaska, Antarctica doesn’t have as much shore-based wildlife. Though mountainous, the land is pretty barren, he said. So other than sea life -- and, of course, the stunning landscape -- there wasn’t much to look at.
The challenge for the guests was to simply appreciate the place, which can be hard.
“There’s nothing on the planet that you don’t see on television,” Joyce-Clarke said. “[Guests] can’t work into it because [they] are flown into it. The crew worked into it on the passage. It took crew a month to get there; it takes guests a day.”
And agents aren’t quite sure what to do with yachts, he said. Though less than 500 tons, Big Fish is registered commercial for its charter purposes, and that put it in the same category as cruise ships to the agents.
It was charged cruise-ship prices to call into port. And while it might not have been much considering what some yachts pay to dock in Monaco or St. Barths, it does seem like a lot in an isolated little town at the bottom of the world.
“If you ask for assistance, they’ll willingly give it, but at a price unusual for yachts, even in Eurpoean ports,” Capt. Joyce-Clarke said. “That’s not backhanders or anything unethical; it’s just the regular port costs.”
For example, it cost $30,000 for the pilots that helped them along the protected inside passage from Puerto Montt to Ushuaia; it was $12,000 to get in/out of Ushuaia. The charter flight to get to the yacht was $100,000, “just for the airfare,” he said.
Ice pilot a must in Drake Passage
Big FIsh’s trip down South America’s Pacific coast was uneventful, Joyce-Clarke said. Reaching the bottom of Chile, the weather grows rough so, similar to Alaska’s inside passage, the path to Ushuaia involves a meandering route on the inside in the Strait of Magellan.
“It was spectacular,” he said, filled with quiet, seemingly deserted fishing towns. “We only saw one other boat each day.”
They investigated a few glaciers on the way that he said were comparable to any he’s seen in Alaska’s Tracy Arm or Glacier Bay. And though it was blowing 70 knots inside, the seas were just 2 meters because of protection from the mountains, he said.
Crossing the Drake Passage to Antarctica requires patience, an ice pilot and an environmentalist (the latter two compulsory).
And the charters involved more driving than one would expect. On a 10-day charter, the yacht moved 800 miles. There is no place to dock, and not many places to anchor because of the depth of the water.
In shallower water, it’s not the best idea to drop anchor, considering how fast the ice can move. Usually, even during the dusky night, the yacht was simply meandering around, taking in the scenery.
A few of the rules for cruising in Antarctica added issues that yachts don’t deal with in the Caribbean or Med, he said.
For example, the tender has to be able to carry everyone aboard in one trip. The idea is that if the crew and guests are ashore and the weather turns, you only get one chance to get back to the yacht.
Big Fish’s inflatable wasn’t that big, so Joyce-Clarke had to rent a larger one.
“You don’t want to know what that cost.”
And you can’t simply use the water. Visiting yachts need separate permits to do things such as snorkel, dive, or even kayak. That’s as a commercial vessel, Joyce-Clarke noted.
“As a private vessel, I suspect you can do what you like.”
More exploring to do
Big Fish leaves South Florida this month after a short haul out and reprovisioning for Scandinavia, through the Baltic Sea and to the White Sea to see if the Northeast Passage over Russia is possible this summer.
[Editor's note: Since this story was published in the May issue of The Triton, the owner of Big Fish issued a statement noting that the yacht would not attempt the Northeast Passage this summer as it could not do that and appear in the Monaco Yacht Show in late September. To read the statement, click here.]
Adventures like these are what the yacht was built for. But that doesn’t mean her voyages are hers alone.
“It depends on your expectations,” Capt. Joyce-Clarke said. “You can go down there, but if you’re not set up to do six weeks, the weather can be crappy for four weeks. It’s like that perfect golf shot -- it can be absolutely spectacular and that outweighs everything else.
“For all the hassle, it was infinitely worth it. With logistics, you kind of have to enjoy the fact that you are in a place where there’s no other yachts around for thousands of miles.”
To see a gallery of photos from the crew of Antarctica and the yacht, click here.
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