Eye of the Storm
An ocean voyage not soon forgotten
Robbis Storm

A former Lampasan, Robbis Storm is a world traveler and restaurateur. He can be contacted via e-mail at RStorm453@aol.com.

You don't often hear about Punta Arenas, Chile, which sits at Tierra del Fuego -- the very bottom tip of South America.

But, if you follow the news, you've heard about the Explorer, an Antarctic Cruise ship that recently hit an iceberg and sank. The 154 passengers and crew were rescued and flown to the southernmost town in the world.

The story brought back a few memories. Thirteen years ago I too found myself in Punta Arenas after an Antarctic cruise that came to grief.

But our ship didn't hit an iceberg. Our ship didn't founder in icy seas. Our ship didn't sink.

No. Our ship met a different fate.

It was March 1994 -- late summer in the Antarctic and the last voyage of the season for the Akademic Ioffe. I was part of a group of Americans, Canadians and Brits who had sailed out of Ushuaia, Argentina, on the Russian icebreaker, hired by a Canadian firm to double as a research vessel and a tourist conveyance.

Except for a couple of days in Drake's Passage, the voyage itself had been uneventful. The Passage, located between 56 and 60 degrees south latitude, is notorious as one of the roughest bodies of water in the world.

We were told that old-time sailors used to say, "Below 40 degrees, there is no law; below 50, there is no God."

There was also no grub for my cabin mate Kurt Soo -- at least none that the rough seas and fickle weather would let him keep down. After 48 hours feeling our ship buffeted and battered by 40-foot waves, I have an idea of what it must be like to ride a Brahma bull.

Below 60 degrees south, we hit the much calmer Southern Ocean, and it was here that we began to spot the occasional whale and a host of interesting sea birds.

The closer we got to land, the more ice we saw. Even though I'd seen many bergs in Greenland, I was still surprised at how beautiful ice can be. With shades of blue you've never seen before, contrasted with the purest of whites, you feel like you're in a wonderland, perhaps on a different planet.

We put ashore in a number of places where we explored old whaling stations, met several species of penguins, and had close encounters with seals.

You'll find that in the wild, penguins are even cuter than they are in zoos. But seals? Well, let me tell you...when you're around seals, better watch your back. They consider you an intruder and they're big, they're mean and they have no fear.

Our passage back was much calmer. We made good time and decided to overnight at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. Big mistake!

This is one of the remotest English speaking settlements in the world. It's very interesting to anchor in the cold, rough seas of the South Atlantic, take an inflatable Zodiac boat into port, and find yourself in what feels like a quaint English village complete with cottage gardens and a couple of pubs. We felt right at home.

But the next morning, when the crew readied the ship to leave, we found ourselves unable to sail. Our ship was confined to port. It seemed that its sister ship -- another Russian ice breaker -- had failed to pay for dry dock services in Germany, and as a consequence, our ship was arrested.

So we were stuck in the Falklands. What made it worse was that in 1994, only a dozen years after the 1982 war, relations between the islands and Argentina were strained. We were not allowed to fly to Argentina, our ship couldn't sail, and it was way too far (and too cold) to swim.

But we didn't suffer. We could still stay on the ship, using our cabins as a hotel. The people of Port Stanley took us into their hearts. I think we made friends with virtually everyone in town.

I'll never forget one night when a British Navy vessel came to port. Some of the sailors, a bunch of our guys, and a group of local blokes decided to enter a karaoke contest at one of the pubs.

Since we were technically under arrest, the number I chose was Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock." To my surprise, I won first place and brought back my prize -- a bottle of champagne.

Then the country of Chile came to our rescue.

I don't know how long the Akademic Ioffe and her crew had to stay cooped up in Port Stanley, but after we'd been there almost a week, we passengers were allowed to fly to Punta Arenas.

From there, we took buses across the Patagonia Desert into Argentina, and finally to Buenos Aires.

As I said, I don't hear about Punta Arenas very often. When I do, I have a flood of memories -- most of them good.