“It’s the most remote we’ve ever been. There were literally no visible signs of human life”

Despite purchasing 43-metre stee-hulled Marcato in March 2016, Jack and Mary McClurg are not your typical explorervessel owners. They are the first to admit they enjoy “bouncing around the Caribbean and the Bahamas” and although a trip to the Galápagos had been on their bucket list for years, a 5,000-nautical mile detour south to the untouched fjords of Chilean Patagonia was never on their yachting agenda. However, a chance meeting with South American Super Yacht Support’s Carlos Miquel saw them lured to an icy adventure south.

Captain Jason Halvorsen, who has been with the owners since February 2014, remembers the seed being planted. “We were doing the refit at Rybovich in 2017 and Jack and Mary were on board and Carlos asked if he could meet us for a chat,” he recalls. “Over lunch Carlos showed all these beautiful pictures and incredible stuff we could do. After he left, we were all, like, ‘Where the hell is Patagonia?’ but that was really enough to light the fire.”

The McClurgs decided to take the embarked on an epic, 10-month, 16,000-mile voyage from Fort Lauderdale. The route saw the yacht go through the Panama Canal, down South America’s western coast to Patagonia and back again, via Robinson Crusoe Island, the Galápagos and Costa Rica. With the working couple short on time they planned the route so that they could fly in for the highlights with friends. “We spent about a week a month on board on average for the whole trip,” says Mary. “We let the crew do all the really heavy sailing and then we would just meet them at a destination. When we loosely knew our itinerary, I sent out a blanket email invitation to our friends with the general dates of each trip and said it was first come, first served.”