Just add Water ...

 Falkland Islands Expedition 2009 Successfully Finished

639 Miles in 22 Days

"Travel is glamorous only in retrospect."

                                                                       Paul Theroux

Sea Lion colony on a small Tussock Island North of Lively Island

Trip Statistics:

Duration: 22 Days, with 4 days off (Jan 5th to Jan 26th, 2009)

Distance covered: 639 Miles

Average Mileage/Paddling Day: 35.5 Miles

Average Mileage/Day: 29.1 Miles

Capizes: One

Gelcoat Repairs: 4

I am happy being back in Stanley, after paddling 22 days in strong winds and seas around the Falkland Islands. It was a very hard trip due to many challenges, such as constant high winds, large kelp fields, and some mine fields, which sometimes made landings impossible for many Miles. During some stages of the trip, I had to kayak with 2 charts: The nautical chart and the mine field chart supplied by the British Forces in order to avoid landing on beaches which are still full of mines, placed by the Argentiniens during the Falkland War.

The Falkland Islands are an archipelago full of wildlife in the South Atlantic Ocean located 300 miles east of Cape Horn, and 584 miles north of Antarctica. Previous attempts to circumnavigate this windy and sparsely inhabited Archipelago by kayak were unsuccessful, with some even suffering casualties due to the many challenges which await the paddler in this remote part of the earth. The local shipping company in the Falklands initially refused to ship my kayak to the Falklands, describing my plans to circumnavigate the Falklands in a kayak as "suicidal and plain stupid." One year later, with the help of the British Ministry of Defense, a kayak was finally shipped from Great Britain to the Falklands, helping to realize the circumnavigation the Falkland Islands in January of 2009.

Getting up daily before dawn in order to avoid the strongest winds during the day sometimes required launching through, or landing in, high surf in total darkness. Paddling 22 days into strong headwinds and thick kelp fields, left its toll.

Williwaws, or "Wallies", descending down cliffs in strong gusts

In addition to the strong winds, there were so-called 'Wallies', a certain kind of katabatic gusts which blow down steep cliffs, then wosh over the water and threw up masses of water up in the air. These Wallies look almost unreal, like an animation, but the gusts and the violence of these wallies were real and violent.

Today, I am incredibly tired and feel like if a gang of Manchester United hooligans has beaten me up and then locked me for a week in the trunk of an Italian compact car.

 South Coast

The Capsize

The unhappy moment of the trip was my attempt to cross King George Bay, an appr. 20 Miles, 4-5 hours crossing. The swell from the previous night's gale was still high on the morning I set out intending to cross King George Bay, but after looking for a good 30 minutes at the sea from 2 different angles and hilltops, I finally decided to attempt the crossing. It was a tough decision, since the winds in the Falklands blow at an average of 26 Miles/hr, means waiting for little, or no winds in the Falkland Islands is like waiting for Godot. 

Unfortunately, 90 minutes into the crossing, the winds increased again to storm force strength (the wind was measured at 65 Miles/hr. at Roy Cove, appr. 20 Miles away), just like 5-6 hours before, and started to let the top of the waves of the swell break. Before I could decide what to do (turn around, change course, ...) a larger wave (15 feet, 20 feet? No idea, it felt huge and very steep), almost vertical in its approach and shape appeared on my left side and made me capsize despite my attempt to brace and lean into it. 

I capsized and tried to set up the paddle for a roll, but was unable to get the paddle 'up', to set up for my roll. I felt I was still 'inside' the wave and too deep under water surface to set up for a roll, and after a few unsuccessful attempts to get the paddle up, I run out of air and wet-exited.

Since I was tethered to my boat as suggested by Nigel Dennis, and used a paddle leash for the first time on a trip, and also tied my spare paddles to the kayak (after my experience in Iceland where I lost my spare paddles in surf), I only lost everything which was stored inside my cockpit: All my water bags and water bottles. And I saw the foam seat flying away (the seat I epoxied in). I was able to get back first on, and then into the kayak, now sitting in the fully flooded cockpit. I was able to pump some water out the cockpit despite breaking waves going over me and hauling winds by protecting most of the cockpit with the loose spray skirt. I felt that I had to pump for my life, and yes, the water level in the cockpit went down, if slowly. I then paddled (or "drifted"?) sitting low in the kayak without a seat, and with a cockpit still 2/3rds full of water - with the luckily onshore blowing gale - towards the next island, Hammock Island, where I stayed for the next 24 hours without any water, which was quite a humbling experience. Until that day, I was never before really thirsty in my life, and unable to get drinking water.

The following early morning I was able to paddle, now sitting on my ThermaRest mattress as my new kayak seat replacement, to the closest settlement, Roy Cove, where I woke up Dan, the owner of the only remaining inhabited building. A sleepy, but very friendly and helpful Dan provided me a breakfast, water, filled in 2 empty whiskey bottles, an empty 3 liter cooking oil can, and 2 plastic Coke bottles. 

I left Dan and Roy Cove with course NW to finally leave behind King George Bay.

The Settlements

The highlights of the trip was to see the amazing wildlife of the Falklands from close-up and to meet the friendly families in the 'camps', (farms) on the outer islands, which were usually 3-5 houses, but usually only inhabited by one remaining family. These families knew about my trip through the local paper 'The Penguin News' which covered the trip in several editions on its front page. Most families invited me in for tea, cookies, offered a bed to sleep (which I usually declined in order to make more mileage on that day), and offered valuable advice about the next section of coast.

Anthony, British Antarctic Plane Pilot, now Helicopter Pilot, repairing the skeg cable and inserting parts into the skeg box he tooled himself on Saunders Island. The skeg, and with it the tooled parts made of hard wood, worked perfectly throughout the remainder of the trip. 

Here an example about the hospitality I experienced in the camps: On my food drop stop on Saunders Island, the 2 local families took care of:

- my chafing (which became more and more a bloody and very painful affair under both arms) by supplying ointments and medication,

- the repair of the kayak's skeg box with custom made wooden parts, machined on a router

- printed out and laminated more detailed nautical charts for the coast line lying still ahead,

- fed me with 2 dinners,

- offered me their guesthouse for free for 2 nights (I stayed a full day on Saunders Island),

- provided me with 1/2 a rack of lamb for the remainder of the trip,

- etc. ... I will stop here, the list would be too long ...

I will stay another 2 days here at Kay's Bed & Breakfast in Stanley, and will then fly out to Saunders Island with a little twin engine FIGAS plane to Biffo, Anthony, Suzan and Dave, where I will stay for a week helping to sort & castrate sheep, something I did for a few hours on my day off on Saunders Island last week, and will then return to NYC mid February.

FIGAS' "Islander" landing on Saunders Island                Albatrosses landing on Saunders Island

My thanks go to:

- Suzan and Dave Pole-Evans on Saunders Island

- Biffo and Anthony on Saunders Island

- Deirdre and Gavin Marsh in Fox Bay East

- Dan in Roy Cove

- Robert on Bleaker Island

- Jeanette on West Point Island

- Kay in Stanley

- Nigel Dennis for supplying and shipping the kayak down from Wales to Stanley, and last not least

- Kayaker and sailor Leiv Poncet from Beaver Island. Without Leiv's help and advice, the trip would not have been possible.

Thank you all for your kind help, support and enthusiasm about the trip around your beautiful islands! 

As J.F. Kennedy would have said: "I am a Falklander!"

The Falkland Islands

The Falkland Islands consist of two main islands, together with 776 smaller islands. Stanley, located on the Eastern main island of Falkland, is the capital. The islands are a self-governing Overseas Territory of the United Kingdon, but have been the subject of a claim of souvereignity by Argentina.

In pursuit of this claim in 1982, the islands were invaded by Argentina. precipitating the two-month-long undeclared Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom, which resulted in the defeat and withdrawal of Argentine forces.

Much of the land is part of the two main islands separated by the Falkland Sound, home to the capital of Stanley, where 2,100 of the total population of 2,500 Falklanders live.

Although there's some evidence that Patagonian Indians reached the Falklands in rudimentary canoes, the islands were uninhabited when Europeans began to frequent the South Atlantic in the 17th century. A British expedition made the first documented landing in 1690, claiming the islands for the crown and naming the sound between the two main islands after a British naval officer, Viscount Falkland. The name was later applied to the whole island group.

No European power established a settlement on the islands until France landed a garrison at Port Louis on East Falkland in 1764. (A small community of fishermen from St Malo lent the islands their French name, Îles Malouines, from which the Spanish Islas Malvinas derives.)

When Spain caught wind of the settlers presence, they pressured the French government to remove the garrison by citing the papal Treaty of Tordesillas, which had divided the New World between Spain and Portugal. The French complied, and in 1767 the Spanish went on to oust a British settlement at West Falkland's Port Egmont (on Saunders Island) too. (Under threat of war, Spain restored the settlement the following year; the British gave it up of their own accord in 1774, though they held tight to their territorial claims.) The Spanish erected a penal colony at Port Louis, only to abandon it in the early 18th century as the town's ranks swelled with maverick whalers and sealers.

In the late 1820s, nearly a decade after Buenos Aires declared its independence from Spain, a government-backed entrepreneur from Buenos Aires, Louis Vernet, moved to the Falklands and asserted himself as its governor. In 1831, his seizure of three American sealing ships triggered reprisals from a hot-headed US naval officer, whose retaliatory attack left Port Louis beyond restoration. Vernet scampered back to Buenos Aires, leaving a token Argentine force in Port Louis until 1833, when they were expelled by the returning British.

Under the Brits, the Falklands languished in isolation until the mid-19th century, when sheep ranching replaced cattle and wool became an important export commodity. The English-owned Falkland Islands Company swallowed most of the islands best land, and all remaining pastoral land was occupied by immigrant shepherds by the 1870s. With each succeeding generation, more and more landowners retreated to Britain and ran their businesses as absentees. The UK granted the islands colonial status in 1892.

Modern History

In the 1970s, the local government began encouraging the sale and subdivision of large landholdings to slow high rates of emigration, and nearly every unit was snapped up by local family farmers. Other major changes to the economy came with the expansion of deep-sea fishing in the surrounding South Atlantic and with the Falklands War.

Since their departure in 1833, no Argentine government had given up claims of sovereignty over the Falklands. Though the British were slow to publicly acknowledge Argentina's seriousness, by the late 1960s they began to view the distant islands as a politically burdensome anachronism to be discarded with all judicious speed. Britain's alliances with Argentina's military government - giving the latter a significant voice in issues of the Falklands transportation, fuel supplies, shipping and immigration - began to worry the pro-British islanders. Argentina's brutal Dirty War in 1976 did little to alleviate their concerns.

The waiting period for an official handover proved too lengthy for Argentina's itchy-fingered military junta, and in April 1982 they invaded the Falklands and set up outposts in South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. It was an incredibly badly-timed move - British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was going into an election year and faltering badly in the popularity polls. A little war and tabloid patriotism was just what her campaign needed. The seizure briefly rallied Argentines behind their government, until Britain sent a naval task force to retake the islands which included 36 Klepper folding kayaks. These Klepper folding kayaks, paddled by the British Forces Special Boat Squadron, was the first wave of soldiers reaching the Falklands.

After 72 days and nearly 1000 casualties (three-quarters of whom were Argentine), the war ended with Argentina's surrender and its president's resignation. Following the war, most Falklanders wanted little to do with Argentina, preferring to emphasize their ties with Britain and build upon their relationship with Chile.