it was soon obvious there’d be a lot of work to do. Not only
was Infi nity not designed for ice, but she’d barely been out
of the tropics in her almost 40 years. Clemens assured me
she was in good shape but admitted there were a few
projects remaining.
Looking around I quickly realised something was amiss.
The engine room was minus a fairly critical component:
the engine. I was confused by this – Clemens had told me
they had a new engine. It transpired there was a new
engine, of course, it just wasn’t installed. Sometimes
details are important.
We worked around the clock. A rudimentary heating
system and insulation was installed. A lorry load of pasta
arrived, enough to last three months for our motley crew
of 16. Next was the fuel truck and lastly, we installed our
new to us, but not exactly new, engine.
With everything in as satisfactory a
state as it was going to get, and crew
visas expiring in a matter of hours, it
was time to leave. Carb-loaded, under a
bright starry sky, we slipped our lines
late one January evening.
Any vessel venturing into the deep
south must be self-suffi cient. One of
the biggest dangers on any ocean
crossing is crew health. Ideally, we’d
have taken a doctor but our budget
didn’t stretch that far so we settled for
Pascale, a volunteer French vet.
He wasn’t worried. Not only did he
have experience in all manner of
operations, births and even
euthanasia, but he’d worked on avariety of creatures from hamsters to monkeys. Humans
are just another animal, he explained. I took solace in not
being pregnant and hoped his euthanasia skills wouldn’t
be tested.
As the days went by we got increasingly further south.
The days got longer, the temperature dropped and the
frequency of gales increased. We still went for the odd
swim but no one could stay in for long. We experienced
snowstorms and made a snowman.Southern Ocean challenges
By the time we were in the ‘Screaming Sixties’ they were
living up to their name. We experienced our fi rst severe
gale in which we hove-to, reducing the stress on both
yacht and crew. One of the challenges of the Southern
Ocean is sailing in light winds after storms have passed
but with large, often confused, seas remaining.
During one of these lulls, we were struggling to sail and
just discussing taking down the sails to motor when the
mainsail violently backfi lled and exploded. Within
seconds we had the main down. The stitching had failed
from luff to leech between two panels. We were now
roughly 2,000 miles from safety with no main.
Thankfully, Infi nity is ketch rigged, and the route was
mainly downwind in high winds meaning a reduced
sailplan wasn’t catastrophic. Fixing the main became an
all-consuming project with two people often working
around the clock. One person would be inside the sail and
another on the outside pushing the needle back and forth.
The repair involved completing three rows of double
stitching. All in, we estimated it took about 100,
tedious, hours to complete.
A few days later, whilst asleep, I heard cries ofExpedition leader
Clemens Oestreich
and some of the
Infinity crewBig seas: exactly
what you’d
expect to find in
the spectacular
but fearsome
Southern Ocean‘the engine room was minus a fairly
critical component: the engine’
i
ADVENTURE
60 December 2017