Over My Head: Journeys in Leaky Boats from the Strait of Magellan to Cape Horn and Beyond

By Margaret Winslow

a pioneering female geologist explores the topography of South America and the shifting landscape of women in the sciencesA satisfying journey through 1970s sexual politics and the lands of the southernmost part of the Earth.
Kirkus Reviews

Somewhere near the bottom edge of the earth, a young woman attempts to balance on a slippery rock ledge. With her back pressed against an overhanging cliff face, her arms too weak to climb, and the tide rising at an alarming rate, there is nowhere to go. So how did she come to be alone on a sinking knife edge in Tierra del Fuego, halfway between the Beagle Channel and Cape Horn, seven thousand miles from New York?

In her fascinating travel memoir, Margaret Winslow offers a compelling glimpse into her misadventures as an inexperienced geologist as she begins pioneering field research in southern South America. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Winslow details her unforgettable experiences that include clinging to a ledge alone as the tide rises over her boot tops, facing near-death experiences with killer whales, and encountering an antediluvian creature with a cavernous mouth and yellow teethall while tracing her evolution from an ill-prepared beginner to a competent leader.

Over My Head captures one womans historic journeys into uncharted fjords and trackless forests as she attempts to navigate through the almost exclusively male world of field geology and discovers she must learn to rely on her own inner compass in order to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475954333

Margaret Winslow

Margaret Winslow is a field geologist with over thirty years experience in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean, where a fascination with donkeys in rural areas evolved into a quest to fulfill a long-forgotten childhood dream of owning one. She holds a PhD in geological sciences from Columbia University and have published over thirty papers in international scientific journals. Her National Geographic–funded fieldwork on earthquake hazards and archaeological settlement patterns in Alaska and Chile is featured in the award-winning PBS series “Fire on the Rim.” Winslow has been interviewed on NPR’s “West Coast Live,” CBS News Radio, and WABC Eyewitness News. She has written two travel memoirs, Over My Head: Journeys in Leaky Boats from the Strait of Magellan to Cape Horn and Beyond(2012),andThe Cusp of Dreadfulness(2016).Winslow is professor emerita of earth sciences at the City College of New York and live in the lower Hudson valley of New York with her oceanographer husband, Joe Stennett. Her donkey, Caleb, boards nearby with fifty horses and ponies, where he continues to steal the show every day.

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Copyright © 2012 by Margaret Winslow

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Cover photograph and all imagery are courtesy of the author or R. A. Baroody, as noted.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-5431-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-5432-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-5433-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012918640

iUniverse rev. date: 10/08/2012

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Prologue

PART I: VOYAGE OF THE HERO

Chapter 1 Falling Off The Edge

Chapter 2 The Uttermost Part Of The Earth

Chapter 3 Baptism By Zodiac

Chapter 4 Over My Head

Chapter 5 Hero On The Rocks

Chapter 6 Swimming To Cape Horn

Chapter 7 The End Of The Road

PART II: VIKINGS I

Chapter 8 Vikings In The Strait

Chapter 9 Losing Claudio

Chapter 10 Exploring The Strait

Chapter 11 The Keystone

Chapter 12 Storm On The Strait

Chapter 13 Where Is Claudio?

Chapter 14 The Admiral Meets The Vikings

PART III VIKINGS II

Chapter 15 Seno Almirantazgo

Chapter 16 Killer Glacier

Chapter 17 No Refuge

PART IV: VIKINGS III

Chapter 18 Three Women In A Tub

Chapter 19 Christmas In Bahia Snug

Chapter 20 Tortuous Pass

Chapter 21 The Six Magi

Chapter 22 The Lost Connection

PART V: ANTARCTICA

Chapter 23 South To Antarctica

Chapter 24 The Big Chill

Chapter 25 A Long Way From Home

Epilogue: The Earth Is Flat

About The Author

Author’s Note

Bibliography And Recommended Reading

For George K. Winslow, my father—

my first hero and fellow adventurer

You have set sail on another ocean

Without star or compass

Going where the argument leads

Shattering the certainties of centuries.

—Janet Kalven, Respectable Outlaw

Illustrations

Cover Image: Winter Sunset in the Beagle Channel (courtesy of the author)

MAPS (all maps courtesy of the author)

MAP 1: The Americas and location of Tierra del Fuego

MAP 2: Localities in Tierra del Fuego

MAP 3: Map area covered on the voyage of the Hero

MAP 4: Map area covered on the three voyages of the Vikings

PHOTOGRAPHS (1–6, 10, 11a, and 12–15 courtesy of the author; 7–9, 11b, 12, 16, and 17 courtesy of R. A. Baroody)

1 Antarctic research vessel Hero

2 Boarding the Zodiac from the deck of the Hero in stormy seas

3a Chilean torpedo boat Guacolda rescuing the Hero near Cape Horn

3b The Guacolda leaves the Hero

4 South face of Cape Horn

5 The Vikings in the Strait of Magellan

6 Killer whales frolicking in the Strait of Magellan

7 Vikings in Seno Almirantazgo near Cordillera Darwin

8 Marinelli Glacier in Seno Almirantazgo

9 Eric and the author search for lost equipment in Bahia Parry

10 Chilean crew on foredeck of Vikings in front of collapsed glacier. From Left: Luis, Samuel, Captain Luis Oyarzo, and Alberto

11a Terry and Lucy in Tierra del Fuego’s impenetrable rainforest

11b Author steering the Zodiac to shore

12 Hero in pack ice, Bransfield Strait, Antarctica

13 Hero arrives at Palmer Station, Antarctica

14 Camp on Livingston Island, Antarctica, with chinstrap penguin and elephant seal neighbors

15 Roger hiking with pack to new camp, Livingston Island

16 Chinstrap penguin comes to visit

17 Author in field, Antarctica

Preface

W hen I started geological fieldwork in southern South America in 1974, elevation and landform maps of the region resembled the mostly blank nineteenth-century maps of the western United States. There was no satellite imagery or GPS. Few people had telephones or electricity. Knowledge of the geology and natural resources was equally sparse. In both Chile and Argentina, access to topographic maps, aerial photographs, and even basic tide tables involved complex diplomacy between relevant government agencies and the military. During the five sea voyages recounted in this book, two small ships, the Hero and Vikings, retraced many of Darwin’s and Magellan’s ships’ wakes into this tempest-blasted corner of the world.

Moreover, there were no guidebooks, no Women’s Guide to Success in the Field. Nor did maps or compasses exist to help navigate the minefields of prejudice against women in the field; no sense of a True North for women. Armed with decades of adventure and survival reading, plus several solo backpacking trips under my belt, I plunged into true wilderness before I had time to think or prepare. The why seemed obvious to me: here was an opportunity to prove myself in the exclusively male world of field geology. Because I chose to test myself under some of the wildest conditions on Earth, however, tests of courage, of physical strength, and of survival all but eclipsed challenges to my scientific knowledge.

During the last thirty-eight years, I have made fifteen expeditions to Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, and Antarctica. At the same time, I have taught geology full-time and worked in other countries. During the first five years in Tierra del Fuego, most of the exploration took place on ships. Although 80 percent of my mapping occurred on land over the next three decades, the sea stories formed their own universe. They all involve my earliest explorations of the stormy coasts of southernmost Chile. Several initiations, including a baptism by Zodiac, set the stage for the person I would become.

M. W., NEW YORK, 2012

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Map area covered on the voyage of the Hero.

mw417279map4.jpg

Map area covered on the three voyages of the Vikings.

Acknowledgments

M y journeys in life would never have been possible without the inspiration of my father, George K. Winslow, who encouraged me to reach for the stars. He never doubted I could achieve what I strove so hard to attain, despite the realities regarding gender bias at the time —not to mention the obstacles I often threw into my own path. My doctoral advisor at Columbia University, Ian W. D. Dalziel, suggested that I could expand my horizons and graciously provided funding for the first six expeditions to the Southern Hemisphere. While working in Chile, the Empresa Nacional del Petroleo (ENAP) provided office space and navigated through the jungles of bureaucratic red tape, risking the wrath—or worse—of the military dictatorship. Without the efforts of the directors of Exploraciones at ENAP—Raul Cortes, Antonio Cañon, and Bernardo Bergmann—I wouldn’t have gotten out the door.

Portions of the earlier drafts of this book benefited greatly from class discussions with the students and faculty—especially Deborah Emin—at the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York. And Sarah Saffian, writer and editor, suffered through my premature attempts to edit what was only one or two steps beyond an unwieldy pile of field trip notes, stories, and letters. Participants in creative writing workshops led by Abigail Thomas at the Omega Institute and Mary Carroll Moore at the Hudson Valley Writers Center inspired me to improve my writing style and to find my own voice as a memoirist.

Noël Barstow typed and helped edit an early draft of the book. Roger Baroody, who participated during some of the wild and chaotic field trips, deserves my greatest gratitude. He graciously permitted inclusion of some of his own photographs for this book. Noël, together with my husband, Joe Stennett, and another dear friend, Bev Houghton, read early drafts of the manuscript. None of them lost faith with my halting efforts to switch from scientific writing to memoir writing. They cheered me on over several years and through many edits of this book.

My heartfelt thanks go to my publishing team at iUniverse, especially Kathi Wittkamper, whose professionalism, advice, and support helped design this book.

Prologue

S omewhere near the bottom edge of the earth, I was trying to balance on a slippery rock ledge. My back pressed hard against an overhanging cliff face. My arms were too weak to climb the cliff; there was nowhere to go. I didn’t have the radio—the boatman had sped off with it—and he was miles away in the sheltered lee of the mother ship, Hero , no doubt enjoying a nice hot lunch and a nap. The tide was rising at an alarming rate. Soon the frigid seawater would reach the top of my leather boots.

Damn these boots!

My favorites from many hiking trips, they were not waterproof and the soles were too rigid to grip the slime-covered rocks. I should have picked up rubber fisherman’s boots back in port. Port was two days’ sail from this island.

Out in the bay, a stiff wind stirred up a frothy green surf in waters deep enough for two cavorting killer whales to leap and turn. Fortunately, a wide, underwater curtain of kelp fronds damped the waves to a low swash before the whales’ splash-created tsunami washed me off the rock. There was no sound other than from the waves gently lapping my shoes: no birds, no chattering colleagues, and no sound of a boat engine bringing the launch back.

How did I come to be here: alone on a sinking knife edge in Tierra del Fuego, halfway between the Beagle Channel and Cape Horn, seven thousand miles from New York?

Oh, come on, you wanted to come more than anything. You leaped at the chance. I flinched at the sudden sound of my own voice, bobbled on my perch, and grabbed the rock wall to regain my balance.

I had flown down to the Beagle Channel with several fellow geologists from Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin, all of whom had previous experience in remote regions. An opportunity of a lifetime, it was my chance to sail into the channels and land on the islands Charles Darwin had revealed to the world in his Voyage of the Beagle, and to explore the forests and coves that E. Lucas Bridges spent a lifetime documenting in The Uttermost Part of the Earth, two of my all-time favorite books. My doctoral advisor, Ian Dalziel, a veteran of many Antarctic expeditions, told me that if I proved myself capable of working in wilderness, I could start collecting field data for my thesis: creating a new geological map of both sides of the Strait of Magellan.

The stakes were higher for me than for the others: I needed to prove myself as a woman scientist in the male-dominated world of geology—the last redoubt of male exclusivity in the sciences—in the most macho specialty within the subject: field geology. And that didn’t mean fieldwork like I had already done in the Appalachians, where I had driven around to road outcrops or hiked a mile or two in stream beds or across open fields. Geologic mapping in Tierra del Fuego meant penetration of trackless wilderness in foul weather, with no rescue squad or any other safety net. Indeed, outside of a few isolated towns of a few thousand souls in a land the size of New England, nothing much had changed in Tierra del Fuego since Darwin’s visit a century and a half before. After we flew down to the Beagle Channel, even our mode of transport was much the same as Darwin’s, a 125-foot wooden ship with a big sail, although the Hero did have sonar and a radio. And two puny-looking diesel engines.

Here I stood, in the fabled place called Tierra del Fuego, trembling from head to foot, too paralyzed to move or think. Until this moment I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge the fierce battle going on inside between my father’s brave fantasies and my mother’s jumpy neurochemistry. A shadow of recognition brought sudden tears, which I pushed away with a muddy glove.

Before I slid into panic, I tried to give myself a boost. In my heartiest voice, I said, Hey, didn’t you backpack alone two hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail? No bears or armed rednecks to worry about here!

An idea sprang into my head. If the men didn’t return, I could swim over to Navarino Island and hike to Puerto Williams, couldn’t I? Sure. How long would I last in thirty-four-degree water? Maybe fifteen minutes?

Channeling all the Antarctic heroes’ voices stored in my head, I said in a booming voice, We’re all in this together, mates.

Speaking of mates—where the hell were they? The last I saw of them were four muddy rumps wriggling for butt-holds fifty feet up the cliff. Pressed against the same cliff I had failed to shimmy up, cold green slime running inside the collar of my rain suit, I started to hum, I whistle a happy tune …

A shower of rocks and uprooted bushes announced the return of one of the guys. Ron landed on his feet and slipped a little as he turned to face me. Aren’t you coming?

Was he teasing me again? Even though we had shared an office in New York for a year, I could never tell. I shot back in an overloud but squeaky voice, You mean up that two hundred-foot cliff?

He shrugged. We can’t get inland from the cliff top, anyway. Too much brush, he said. Maarten contacted the boat.

More rock slides and grunts accompanied the arrivals of Maarten de Witt, Bob Dott, and Bob Winn. We teetered and sloshed about on the slippery submerged rocks, jostling each other to find stable footholds big enough for all of us. Even without their bulky clothes and packs, three out of the four guys were built like linebackers.

In a few minutes, the buzz of an outboard engine grew louder, and the Zodiac cut through the kelp and angled toward us. As soon as the rubber bow bumped against the rock ledge, I dived in head first and crawled through the swill and boat gear to a sheltered spot under the bow. The guys jumped and fell in after me. We sorted out the complicated tangle of rubber-clad legs, ropes, and spare engine parts to the muttered curses of the boatman and braced ourselves for the bouncing roller-coaster ride back to the Hero and sanctuary.

PART I: VOYAGE OF THE HERO

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Antarctic Research Vessel Hero

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Boarding the Zodiac from the deck of the Hero in stormy seas

Chapter 1

Falling off the Edge

O n my first flight to South America, an oft-repeated childhood nightmare seemed to come to life: I was looking at an antique map of the Western Hemisphere when suddenly I felt myself sliding southward, down the sheet toward the earth’s corpulent waist. There I teetered at the brink, feet flailing in the air, before tumbling down through darker and darker latitudes, until I soared past the bleakly lit Antarctic ice cap into deepest space. To make things worse, as the jet zigzagged southward from New York to Buenos Aires, the odd jogs in the route (Miami to Panama to Rio) disoriented my inner compass, which was set for due south. Over the dark southern continent in the middle of the night, the flickering pinpoints of civilization grew dimmer and farther apart, like tiny campfires bravely holding back the rainforest.

For my first tumble from the belt, so to speak, I met up with two geologists and two other geology graduate students in May of 1974 for a southern Hemisphere winter expedition to the islands south of the Beagle Channel. My doctoral advisor, Ian Dalziel, had made an arrangement with the US Antarctic Research Program (USARP) for us to use their research ship, the R/V (research vessel) Hero. Normally the Hero, the supply ship for Palmer Station in Antarctica, lay in port in Ushuaia, Argentina, during the long austral winter, when pack ice made the Antarctic station inaccessible by sea. Permission to use this ship presented a rare opportunity for us to navigate the spidery channels of Tierra del Fuego. The downside: it was winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and we would have only three to five hours of arctic twilight in which to examine and collect rock samples.

Back in New York, I had latched on to Ron Bruhn, a great bear of a man from Alaska. He had recently wrapped up his geological mapping the north side of the Beagle Channel. Maarten De Witt, a Dutch postdoctoral fellow, was traveling alone via Brazil and Paraguay. Maarten, Ron, and I were officemates at Columbia University. Bob Dott, an eminent geology professor, and his graduate student Bob Winn, both from the University of Wisconsin, met us in Miami. All veterans of geological explorations in remote regions, they tossed around wry remarks about the tribulations to come, such as killer whales upending boats and spilling us into the icy waters.

I can hardly wait! I said, trying to imitate the dry wit of my cohorts.

The next morning, the plane landed at Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires, where we were greeted by—no one, not even an exit staircase. We waited in the airless cabin far from the terminal for a half hour until an outside stairway crept toward us, pushed by two frowning men in blue business suits. Outside on the tarmac, we waited as a cargo handler climbed into the underbelly of the plane and dropped the bags fifteen feet to the ground. No luggage carts or helpers in sight, we schlepped our heavy duffels and backpacks to the terminal. Where was everyone? Inside the terminal, lines snaked back and forth from previously unprocessed arrivals.

From increasing grumbles, Ron picked up what we hadn’t been told before we left New York. He whispered to me, There’s a national strike on. Peron’s dying, and everyone is at the demonstrations, both pro- and anti-Peron. Oh, and they’re all worked up about Chile’s claims to some of the islands, the same ones we’re hoping to land on.

Great, I said. A long trip to see no more than the inside of the terminal.

Bob Dott turned around and added, The whole cruise may be off.

Two suffocating hours later, two shipping agents turned up and whisked us around the lines and out a side door, to the muttered protests of the other passengers. Bundled into three taxis, we sped into the city, careening around streets full of protesters, bumping curbs, and skirting ruined fountains. Buenos Aires resembled Hollywood’s version of Paris between the Great Wars. Ornate architecture, sidewalk cafes, and stores displaying elegant women’s fashions mixed with dreary, metal-shuttered buildings. White marble-carved arches, hundreds of bronze statues, and algae-clogged fountains detoured traffic at many intersections. Ghostly stone mansions and Colonial-style hotels sat behind weedy parks, peering out through layers of grime. Long, wrought iron balconies, lined with shuttered French doors, suggested romantic encounters within. Nearby, piles of construction debris clogged the sidewalks around partially finished Soviet-style concrete apartment blocks. Everywhere, the streets and sidewalks were torn up, and wounds from broken water mains seeped rusty water onto the streets. Buses fueled by crude oil spewed black fumes and stirred the construction dust that lay all over the city. So many signs of fitful vigor, yet the city appeared to be in perpetual decline, despite heroic efforts to recover some lost dream of glory.

In the hotel’s tiny lobby, I reluctantly surrendered my brand-new passport to the shipping agents—a gnome-shaped grandmother with a pronounced Swedish accent and her gaunt Italian husband—who told us it would take three days to have the visas changed from turista to tripolante (seaman), a regulation no one had warned us about. (The full-page Argentine tripolante stamp would cause no end of misunderstandings when I began my work in Chile later that year.)

I dumped my duffel bags in my stuffy room and attempted to open a window, only to find the metal security shutters bent and stuck shut. I turned off the air conditioner, which belched smoker’s breath, and returned to the sunny lobby, only to find that the guys had already set off to explore the city. I delayed leaving the tiny lobby by ordering a beer and an omeleta con queso (cheese omelet). I dawdled over the newspapers, looking up words in my dictionary. Okay, Winslow, get out there and explore.

Passport-less and conspicuous in my short corduroy field pants and T-shirt, but desperate to get some circulation in my legs, I set forth. I slipped around a few corners, dodging streets choked with demonstrators. Back in New York a friend had suggested that I supplement six weeks of Introductory Spanish with some children’s books, which she supplied. Armed with useful phrases such as, There is a troll in the moat, I found my way to the pedestrian mall, La Florida. I sat down at an outdoor table and ordered a cup of tea. All around