BEST OF 2015 – “Lara Novak’s Antarctica.”

Probably, if your dream is to take a cruise to Antarctica, you would contact his father Skip Novak, who is one of the world’s foremost experts on navigating the ice. But accompanying us on this journey of words, drawings, and photographs will be Lara Novak, Skip’s daughter, who at the age of eleven is starring in an adventure in the far south of the world, among the ice of Antarctica. Six weeks on a boat from Ushuaia to the Vernadsky weather station, during which he wrote a logbook that we publish, along with his photos and drawings.

There is something special about this 11-year-old girl, when she was only two years old she traveled with her family for two months along the east coast of South America, from Brazil to Tierra del Fuego, and today through her eyes she takes us to sail with her from the extreme tip of Argentina, through the Beagle Channel to reach the Drake Passage and on to the ice of Antarctica. We will meet seals and penguins, icebergs preventing the Pelagic (Skip Dad’s 54-foot boat) from moving forward, famous shipowner Maria Cristina Rapisardi aboard her thirty-foot Royal Huisman Billy Budd, visit Port Lockroy and the Vernadsky weather station. “I started writing my own personal logbook”-Lara tells me-“because I felt that for many people what I was experiencing was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” I therefore leave the floor to your pages.

USHUAIA: THEDEPARTURE FOR ANTARCTICA
Myself, my dad (Skip Novak), and my brother, Luca, just finished a nearly two-day plane trip from Cape Town to Ushuaia, where we joined Dave and Bertie aboard the Pelagic (both of whom work on boats). My mom (Elena Caputo) will join us later because she had to finish work, and until she arrives there will be Dave in the boat to help us. We spent the first three days after our arrival galleying and buying all the supplies we needed and were joined by Amy, Daisy, Andrew, and Emma. Andrew is a filmmaker and Emma is his wife. Amy is my age and Daisy is fourteen, and they are their daughters. Andrew and his family are coming to Antarctica with us because he is to make a documentary about penguins and a film on the topic of “Children in Antarctica” starring me, Luca, Daisy and Amy for BBC Natural History.

On December 10 (2013) we passed by an office to declare our sailing departure from Argentina and started sailing along the Beagle Channel to Chile. The waves were very high, so Amy and I spent a lot of time in the bow enjoying the show. The night we arrived on the Chilean coast there was a large and elegant yacht anchored in the bay where we decided to stop. The boat’s owner, Maria Cristina Rapisardi, is a close friend of my parents, and she invited us aboard for dinner. We all immediately leapt out of the Pelagic’s portholes to board the tender and head for what we immediately dubbed the “boat with the door” (a thirty-meter steel Royal Huisman). After dinner, a crew member showed us where the TV was, it was amazing, by pressing a button the TV popped out of a piece of furniture! The next morning we went ashore to look for a Christmas tree. We found a canelo, cut it down and brought it to the boat, and to make it last until Christmas we set it up in the bow so it would stay cool.

Then came the day of departure when we would sail along the last stretch of the Beagle Channel before reaching Drake Passage: we celebrated this first important leg of the journey by eating a crab caught by Dave. But unfortunately this did not turn out to be a good idea: once we got close to the Passage, the waves got bigger and bigger and the crab began to reoccur… All of us children threw up inside green buckets. Amy in particular has been sick as hell, the crab has given her no respite so much that we thought of nicknaming her bucket “Chucky Bucky.” After the third day of sailing in the Drake Passage we finally sighted the ice of Antarctica. Our first anchorage was in Whalers Bay on Deception Island.

We got the tender, took it ashore, and set about using it as a bobsled in the snow while Andrew filmed us. Instead of sand on the beach, there was ash because the center of the island consists of a volcanic caldera. Amy and I dipped our feet in the water because there were spots near the beach where it was warm. The smell was disgusting, like that of rotten eggs or dustbin. Before returning to the boat with the tender, we were joined by the first penguins we encountered on the trip! The next morning we sailed south among icebergs that had beautiful shapes, and my dad taught us the different names icebergs took depending on their size: glowers, bergy bits, and icebergs (in order from smallest to largest). Our second stop in Antarctica was Cuverville Island, where we saw the first seal of our trip “floating” on an iceberg: the incredibly fat Weddel seal! After giving again, we went ashore with the tender, and were joined by a group of Gentoo Penguins. My dad, brother, and I watched as they climbed back up the tracks they had left in the snow, meanwhile Andrew filmed Amy and Daisy.

VERNADSKY STATION: THE SOUTHERNMOST DESTINATION
Our journey then continued toward Port Lockroy but we were hampered by ice on the sea surface that prevented us from moving forward. My dad let us take turns steering, we kept crashing and so that day we could not reach Port Lockroy but had to take refuge in a Chilean base called “Gonzalos Videla.” The next day we set out again to reach our destination. My dad allowed Luca and me to help him steer, but when we were nearing port, a large chunk of ice once again obstructed our passage. We tried to push it, but it immediately blocked us after a few seconds. “The best moments of sailing with Skip Novak“-I thought to myself. While waiting for the situation to be unblocked, we played cards, and the next morning we were finally free and were able to enter the harbor. Helen, one of the people working at Port Lockroy, gave us a tour of the base, which has now become a museum. In charge of Port Lockroy are four women-Helen, Sarah, Kristy, and Jane. Port Lockroy is really wonderful; we stayed for about two weeks and had time to do many things, such as picking up pieces of ice together with Sarah to make water. Luca and I also devoted ourselves to rescuing penguins; Luca rescued seventeen nests from predator attacks, and I rescued four. Each day our task was to take temperature, wind, barometer data, penguin behavior, how many eggs they had and whether any had hatched.

Finally on December 24, Mother also joined us aboard a ship called “Ushuaia,” it was wonderful to see her arrive the day before Christmas. On the 25th, we opened presents and then Amy and I went for a kayak ride.At one point, since we had the watertight, we decided to take a swim where the water was shallower.It was a beautiful Christmas! Two days later we climbed to the top of Damoy Point (an area 900 meters above sea level at the northern entrance to Port Lockroy) equipped with sleds and tents to spend the night. Amy and Daisy and I also did the Polar Plunge, the swimsuit swim in the ice, the water was freezing cold and I was screaming the whole time, luckily mom had prepared warm water for us to recover from the shock. Then the day of departure also came, we said goodbye to the girls at the base and resumed sailing south to reach Yalour Island where a colony of Adelie penguins live, after which we arrived at Vernadsky Station, an important site for meteorological research and studies. Right here is the southernmost store in the world, and so we bought some gifts. The locals gave us a tour of the weather station, and we were able to take a closer look at the machines that monitor the ozone layer.

THE END OF THE JOURNEY: THE RETURN TO USHUAIA

Vernadsky Station was the southernmost point we reached, from here our return journey began. Back in Port Lockroy we realized that sailing to Ushuaia would not be easy: the weather was bad: so since we had to go back to school we took the first ship to the mainland, abandoning Dad and Andrew aboard the Pelagic. The ship trip was very nice, although I missed Pelagic very much. After our last night in Ushuaia we said goodbye to Emma, Amy and Daisy and caught our flight home to Cape Town.

Taken from the February 2015 GdV