Micalvi Stories

Sailing round the corner.

Rituals mean something to humans. They mean something more to sailors. Pick up one of them, soak him thoroughly and salt him down for some thousand of miles of rough waters as far S as latitude 55. It might take months. Sometimes years. Steal him good harbours and shelters for weeks. Hide him warm waters and sunny beaches for a long, long while. Even the toughest will be ready to stop and rest for a while.
Now give him a ducked, small and safe little cove, view on snowy peaks, cheap moorage and jolly good company. Give him a shower and a bar. He will be ready to follow the rituals of Club de Yates Micalvi, wherever they might lead.
After all, it's only an old steamer with a long story, beached to rest in a tiny bay at Puerto Williams, Chile, the southernmost town in the planet. It was once the only link with the world for the inhabitants of military bases, estancias, fishing camps and all the various settlements dotting this maze of islands, bays, straits, coves, channels and sounds meandering between glaciers and mountain ranges of impressive class. Now there it lies. A short gangway and you are on the deck, looking at that pilothouse strangely leaning to port, wandering what is hidden by the dark of those portholes, sealed by decades of grey paint.
Now, the boats that know, the locals, the regulars, the old-timers, try to get there at a decent hour. Mooring after mid-night would be a bummer. It's spoiling the ritual, a day lost. Let’s get there, westerlies permitting, say, at teatime. The sailboat moves in, all hands on deck, like owls on the prey. Other boats! Humans! Life! Different Faces! The boat moors, usually fast and efficiently, with some excess of zeal on charter crews. Ready to jump ashore after the immigration papers are cleared, with impatience. Eyes are shooting around, spotting friends, old acquaintances, RTW sailors, flags, names of stems. The boat is soon forgotten. Land, walking, talking to people.
Papers are cleared fast, the ritual begins. Shower.
Most of the boats are coming from Cape Horn, Beagle Channel, The Southern Oceans. Last dip in fresh warm liquids ranges between 7 and 45 days. Micalvi offers one shower. Not the cleanest, but spacious. Couples love it. Last contact might date back to the last shower. This creates some delay, not always accepted. There may be some knocking, a bit of nervousness, but sooner or later it is washed away.
Now clean, how nice to plunge into social life! Apart from the main international airports, Micalvi could claim a record in language variety. French is the bull, too often shouted. But wait fro a while. Silent whispers in Swedish, Finnish, Latvian, Russian and Danish. English accents from Hobart, London, Vancouver, Sidney, Christchurch, Durban. Strong voices in German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch. Swiss and Belgian tones... It's Babel.
The idioms mingle on decks, fly from mast to mast, mix within the same sentence. The chat frenzy clears the bilges of beer and wine. Gales blow in every language and strengthen as the sun goes down.
Wind is blowing in the shrouds. No one cares. Night moves in, boats arrive and raft to one another. Crews help each other in galley exploitation. Some boats are empty, other are jolly noisy and lower in the water.
Stomachs are full around tennish. The yacht club opens, sailors pour in. The show must go on.
The Micalvi is a warm place. Couches and chairs surround low tables. A small fire in a corner. Bark covered walls report a decade of sailing around Cape Horn, roaring 60 miles south of here. Icy pictures, shredded flags, broken paddles, yellow charts, oily logbooks, whispered vows.
The noise increases. Pisco-sour, a deadly mixture of "eau-de-vie", sugar, eggs and lemon, is a must. Glasses upon glasses are polished off by lips of any age. That damn floor leaning to port gets trickier at every sip.

Some nights are quite. Some aren't. I remember one. Giorgio, an oltimer, five years of channels and coves, at last decides to blow into the sax. Mariolina, his partner, shining eyes in adoration and leaning head (to port), like himself tiny and skinny, does not look a rough waters sailor at all. Five boats in harbour. A Swiss charter back from Antarctica provides the only available single woman (even if another crew from the same boat has doubts about the availability): she dances two French skippers to madness. You humble writer dances with Mariolina, still too ecstatic, while his crew lie pisco-stoned in the couches. An English group is in full fight with the leaning floor and underlines the discomfort with coloured cockney expressions. Bermuda shorts, white socks, deck shoes, merry laughter. In their words, pissed.
The sax keeps going. For hours. Are their lights? Shining merry eyes and sweating dances. A Cuban club, jugs of pisco drying out, thick smoke, powerful laughter. And a damn floor even trickier.
Most of the people do not remember exactly what happens later; somehow sailors find their way to the bunk, noisily, and mechanically wake up in the morning to sail hangovers for anonymous destinations. Cape Horn, Strait of Magellan, the South Pacific, South Africa.
Rituals are important. Never light a cigarette with a candle, or a sailor will die.
And now off you go mariner. You survived the Micalvi, tougher than the Horn. Go and sail the windswept archipelagos, anchor between barren islands, surf on bloody cold waters, swear against horizontal rain, slalom between tricky icebergs. After all that pisco must be processed. And come on, look at a globe, the Micalvi is just around the corner.

Most of the members sail away. Others stay. Some for days, some for years. The Micalvi is warm and safe.
BiribiB is now a local boat. Eleven years around. Sabine, a Swiss iron lady, single-handed the world until she found Mani, Finnish, five years ago. She skies downhill, he skies Nordic. She speaks English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. He speaks Finnish and attempts some Spanish. They have a different theory about nearly every detail of the mooring mooring art. They sail, explore, discover. They usually anchor and explore further, hiking up unnamed peaks lost in the fast-moving mist of the south western archipelago. Where many fjords are still blank. Where most go for days, they go for weeks. Time is definitely relative here, a Magic Mountain subsidiary where people get cured from “civilization”.
They do not wear a watch and do not sail for the sake of it. They sail to travel.

And that is it. The Micalvi. An old wreck leaning to port with a bar and a shower inside and surrounded by boats of every continent. A club of sailors trapped in the spider web of freedom, mixing up the heroic and the drunkard side of the heart. They are just humans. Maybe a little bit more conscient of being so.

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