And then we met Black Ant another elderly and renowned member of the club. The first Argentinian to

For example, the other day, while Nick was buying wood and struggling to lash it to his bicycle, a complete european cruise association stranger asked if he would like to put it in her car, instead. She didn’t mind the fact that she would have to go out of her way to take it to our dinghy. And just yesterday, while we were shopping, another woman approached us and asked if we would like to borrow her supermarket “club card”. This saved us the equivalent of 32 Euros!
Argentinian yotties are a friendly bunch, too. Four years ago we had a letter to the website from one Zeek Sundblad, a native of Buenos Aires who had relocated european cruise association to Patagonia. Zeek and his wife had just finished building themselves a steel boat and, together with their three kids and their dog, they were about to set off and cruise the world. We are the Argentinian version of the Mollymawks! he told us. We looked forward to running into each other, but our paths never quite crossed until now.
Zeek s yacht, Ypake , is currently in Europe but he and his family happened to be visiting their folks in BA, and when he heard that we were heading this way he said, Come at once to San Isidro [on the Rio Luján, in the suburbs of Buenos Aires] and I will arrange a mooring for you.
Finding a free berth in this part of the world is no easy matter because, as we have seen , anchorages are few and far between. Dropping the hook in the River Luján itself is forbidden, and the suburban shore is completely lined with yacht clubs and marinas. We had already learnt that a berth in a marina in the heart of the city costs 140 US dollars per night The moorings on the Luján would surely not be quite so extortionate, but they would definitely still be beyond our means. Thus, the help of a well-connected local would be essential european cruise association in resolving the problem.
Through Zeek we met Charlie Vilar, a long-term member of the Club Náutico San Isidro. Not just a long-term member, indeed, but one of the leading lights. european cruise association Now in his 70s, Charlie has spent his whole life racing in national and international championships and in the Admiral european cruise association s Cup, at Cowes. Racing, and winning too.
In this part of the world most of the marinas are owned and operated by an association of members which is a very good idea, by the way but the CNSI doesn t just own one of the nicest marinas, surrounded by tall trees and spread out along the banks of a creek. They also own an entire island. In fact, they own two islands, one on either side of the Luján.
The island on the suburban side of the river is largely occupied by a golf course and by an imposing three-storey club house which boasts its own restaurant, bar, library, and gym. There are also tennis courts, swimming pools, playgrounds and, of course, there’s a dinghy park with a fleet of Optimists and Lasers for the up and coming sailors of Argentina s future. All of this is nicely set out amongst mature trees and spacious lawns, and features notices with instructions european cruise association such as Silence, please Golf in Progress! and No Cycling , and (my favourite) Please Respect the Rules .
In this setting, moored between an immaculate German Frers classic and an antique riverboat, Mollymawk stuck out like a sore thumb. Not only was she the only cruising yacht, and the only vessel with liveaboards (and decks covered in bicycles and laundry, and everything else that liveabaord life entails). She was also the only bright yellow boat or so it seemed.
And then we met Black Ant another elderly and renowned member of the club. The first Argentinian to sail to Antarctica, he, too, has a yellow steel boat; and it s almost as scruffy as ours; and he pads around the deck in his underwear. So…
Someone once said that the Argentinians are Italians who speak Spanish european cruise association and think that they are British. Well, that may be stretching things a bit but a great many of them do have Italian grandparents, and Italian surnames abound; and perhaps their spontaneous european cruise association enthusiasm for life stems from this source. Then again, not a few of the people european cruise association have English european cruise association sires and English surnames, and the majority of the yacht-owners speak fluent English; so, perhaps european cruise association this explains the typically British acceptance of eccentricity.
european cruise association Eighteen years ago, when we first visited the Rio de la Plata, there was more water and less land. Whereas the rest of the world fears losing out to rising sea levels, here they’ve got new land arriving daily, courtesy of the Rio Paraná and the Rio Uruguay. Those two rivers european cruise association wind their way through more than a thousand european cruise association miles of fertile european cruise association soil, carving twin highways throughout european cruise association much of Brazil and all the way across Argentina. On reaching the estuary of the Plate, the rivers encounter the tide. On being slowed, they drop their cargo of soil, stolen from that vast hinterland; and the result is “La Delta” – the alluvial islands forming at the back of the River Plate estuary. This new territory is so popular that the land is sold before it has even formed!
Since the channels running through the Delta are fragments of those same silt-laden rivers it comes as no surprise to learn that they are shallow – and, one assumes, getting shallower. There are not many places where one can travel with a deep-keeled, oceanworthy european cruise association yacht… but there is one that we know of.
In this top secret location there are no lawns. The willows grow wild on either bank and trail their trains in the water, and the reeds whisper to one another in the breeze. But our friends european cruise association from the CNSI still come and see us they have another home-from-home on their other island, just a little european cruise association further along the creek and people european cruise association also come from the other clubs and marinas.
In Spain, in the Canaries, in Brazil, we made plenty of friends but not from amongst those nations yachting fraternities; or at least, only in a very few cases. Here, on the other hand, it seems that every passer-by whether he comes in a classic yacht, or a speed boat, or a RIB, or a kayak All are our friends:
Liveaboard cruising is not just a long drawn out holiday. It s an opportunity to meet people and swap stories; a chance to share information, european cruise association ideas, and home-made chocolate cake. Oh, and mate (pronounced mat-tay ) the Uruguayan and Argentinian national beverage and passion and pastime. A lot of mate has been passed around Mollymawk s cockpit in the past few weeks.
Open-minded and welcoming people such as these Argentinians provide us with ample opportunity to interact, and to inspire, and to be inspired. Over the course of the past month we ve met college students; a family who breed polo ponies; an agro-forester, whose sustainably farmed trees provide forage for cattle and for bees; a fellow Buddhist; Argentina s junior sailing champions and their coach; a soya-bean farmer who thinks that GM seeds are perfectly safe; a GM soya-bean salesman who told us, confidentially, that he thinks otherwise; and a reformed yacht designer and erstwhile capitalist who has now converted to hippyism.
There are a couple of disadvantages to being moored in this muddy ditch, amongst the trees. Firstly, it’s a long row to the shops. And after we’ve rowed along the creek and across the river (risking life and limb amongst the power boats) nobody wants to let us ashore. Their members are as friendly as could be, but the people managing the various clubs and marinas don’t want tramps passing through their property; not even when those tramps offer to pay. To be sure, the CSNI would still welcome us, but their HQ is more than two miles down river.
We land on the only accessible public wall, but we can’t leave the dinghy there the wash from the passing motor yachts would swamp it – and so one or other of us must play ferryman, and row back home.
In the summer the insect life in the creek is a something of a problem. We don’t mind wasps nesting on the boat – indeed, we rather like it – but we’re not keen on the swarms of mozzies which arrive with the dusk. In the winter, however, the insect world sleeps, and our only remaining problem is staying afloat.
The Rio de la Plata is tidal, but the comings european cruise association and goings of the moon are not the main driving force around here; the main force is the wind. When the wind is in the south-east and blowing strongly european cruise association the sea drives into the estuary, holding back the rivers and flooding the islands.
Alas, in this region the south-easterly blow is inevitably preceded by a northerly wind – and the northerly wind holds back the sea and pushes the water out of the Delta. Thus, the flood-tide days are always european cruise association preceded by days when the water pretty much vanishes from the creek. If you scroll back up to the photo of Molly and Pequod (the other yellow yacht) you will notice that we are aground.
Generally speaking, when God pulls out the plug and the water vanishes, Molly just sinks into the mud. We’ve known her to sink her entire keel into the mud and to create a wallowing hole for the hull. Lately, however, something down there has changed. european cruise association Lately, when the bathwater all goes down the plug hole Mollymawk leans… And that’s european cruise association not so good.
It s strange being so far from the sea, but on the whole we re very happy tucked up in our creek. Mind you, we wouldn t be not at this time of the year if we didn t have a nice, new, log fire in the main cabin. We ll tell you about that another day.
Our main preoccupation now is to get the boat ready to go South, but in between beefing up the hatches and improving the insulation we still have all the usual chores plus the new one of finding food for that fire. Our polo-playing friends brought us eight big sacks of wood from their farm, but we supplement this by foraging on the riverbank.
The life of the river-dweller is very different from that of the ocean traveller. In fact, right now we are campers rather than sailors. We ve learnt to use the rip-saw and the axe, slicing fallen branches into manageable pieces and chopping up kindling. We ve also started to save the vegetable waste which formerly went overboard. Mixed with the ashes from the fire it makes good compost (or so we have