Ystafell

The Roaring Forties

Fanch, Cathy, Isabelle and Arnaud, the crew of Ystafell, are continuing their exploration of the Patagonian coast and getting to grips with the harsh weather conditions of the Roaring Forties.

Ystafell

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Published 09/08/2024

By Gilles Ruffet

Issue: 197

Published: sept. / oct. 2024

Discover this issue

Who : Fanch and Cathy, Isabelle and Arnaud
Where: Patagonia
Multihull: Katalu 42
Blog : www.ystafell.fr

End of January: we set sail to take advantage of a fairly favorable weather window, which we hoped would give us some uncomfortable but speedy crosswind sailing. The first part of the night was pleasant, with us making over 8 knots. The forecast for the day was for north-westerly winds of 25 knots, but in the end we got northerly winds of 25 to 40 knots, which produced seas the likes of which I’ve never seen before: a veritable witch’s cauldron. The sea was boiling, bristling with vertical spikes, creating very short, choppy 10-foot (3 m) seas. Ystafell climbed them one by one and fell back down as soon as the crest was passed, and each time our hearts were in our mouths. We felt like we were falling into a void each time, and that lasted all night. I reduced the speed to minimize the impact of the plunge into the troughs of the waves, but it was still violent and made our hearts ache for Ystafell, who was bravely facing up to this nasty sea. On board, it became impossible to sleep as the boat was moving so violently. We returned to the bunk, with all of our senses on high alert! We could feel Ystafell’s acceleration, the gusts increasing in strength, and we waited for the fall, brutal and vertiginous. Cathy and I spent a sleepless night, I think for the first time since 2017. I now know exactly what Nicole van de Kerchove means when she describes the roaring forties as the devil’s skin. For me it was just a notion of wind, but that’s a big mistake: here, it’s the sea that we fear. The wind and therefore the sea died down in the morning and we had our first meal since the day before.
After a short stopover at Caleta Hornos, we continued on to Camarones, some twenty miles away. It’s very small: a cove, a pebble beach on one side and a high dock wall fifty meters long (160 feet) on the other, and that’s it. The village was deserted, everything was closed! Wide, straight avenues run through the village. They were laid out in the 19th century, when the sheep wool industry was flourishing in Camarones and the huge flocks had to be transported to the factory where they were shorn. Today, there’s not a bistro or a moped to be seen! What happened to the thousand people who used to live here? We saw them arrive in the afternoon, heading for the beach where they swam for ages. The water was a fresh 62°F (17°C) but the kids seemed to enjoy it and spent hours in it. Ystafell was the attraction of the day, and everyone circled around it, passing underneath it and between the hulls. The guys at the harbor were lovely. They tinkered with a nozzle to connect my hose to the fire hydrant, and it worked really well. You only had to turn it on just a little! The water was very good, it’s not desalinated water like in Puerto Deseado because it comes from a source tapped into the water table. And they even delivered on board the four drums of diesel that I’d entrusted to them. Cathy and I were delighted, the tanks were full, we slept like logs, all we have to do now is find a weather window with light winds in this permanent north-easterly flow that’s blocking our route to Mar del Plata. We have to get our calculations right, because the next port is very tidal. It has a 0.30 m (1 foot) bar at the entrance to the river, so you can only enter at high water…

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