STRANDED IN PATAGONIA

When the barque Europa found herself stranded in Ushuaia by the pandemic, there was nothing for it but to sail the 10,000 miles home to Holland in one leg

- NIGEL SHARP

On 15 March 2020, the 1911-built steel barque Europa arrived in the Beagle Channel at the end of a three-week voyage to Antarctica. The circumstances were almost routine. Every southern hemisphere summer since 2000, Europa has undertaken several such voyages – typically five each season and with up to 45 people on board, most of whom are charter guests. To keep on schedule towards the end of this voyage, Europa had to motor quite a bit of the way upwind across Drake Passage. “We always plan a little sail-by off Cape Horn at the end of those voyages,” Eric Kesteloo, Europa’s captain since 2006, told me, “and then we have the westerlies for the last day’s sailing. That all went well.” But as she entered the Beagle Channel, the crew heard some news on the VHF radio which was to fundamentally change Europa’s plans immediately and for the foreseeable future.

At the beginning of that voyage Covid-19 had been causing concerns, although it was not yet clear how serious it would become. Certain precautions had been taken – guests filling in a form to confirm they hadn’t recently been to China, for instance – but otherwise the voyage had gone ahead as normal. Three weeks later, however, the virus was officially a pandemic and the situation was very different. The news that the crew heard as Europa made her way up the Beagle Channel was that Puerto Williams had been closed, and when they arrived at their home port of Ushuaia about four hours later they found that they were only just in time: another six hours and the 48 guests would not have been able to disembark.