Antarctica

Season: November to March
Length: Around three weeks
Party: Eight guests or fewer
Held in the arrangement: The yacht and her crew, a guide ashore, every meal aboard, and every landing the ice allows

The place

Nothing here was built for you. That is why you cross an ocean to stand in it.

The Peninsula reaches north from the continent, a line of mountains sunk to the shoulders in ice. Between it and its islands run channels narrow enough for a small yacht to feel the walls.

Most people come by sea, three or four days across open water. Some would rather fly the crossing and step straight into the quiet. We will talk through which suits you.

A sculpted iceberg adrift in dark, still water off the Antarctic Peninsula

The days

Dinner waits for the whales.

Mornings begin on deck with something hot in your hands. By ten you might be ashore, on a beach the penguins reached first. Afternoons are for the ice at water level, or for a book in the wheelhouse. The light stays late this far south, and so, you will find, do you.

Four gentoo penguins climbing a snow slope in single file on Danco Island, an ice front and mountains in cloud behind them — You keep five metres from the gentoos. They have agreed to nothing of the kind.

A leopard seal yawning on an ice floe — A leopard seal, mid-yawn. You are not the main event.

The tail flukes of a humpback whale lifting clear of calm grey water as it dives in Fournier Bay, snow mountains behind

Go below the iceHalf of this place is under water.A humpback diving, Fournier Bay, Antarctic Peninsula

A snow mountain half in cloud above dark water, in low evening light

Watch the midnight skyIn December the sun barely sets.

A wall of snow and dark rock rising straight from the sea in the Gerlache Strait, cloud along its crest

The voyage

Three weeks, written in pencil.

Days one to fourSouth

You board in Ushuaia in the afternoon, and by the time the Beagle Channel has turned gold your bags are unpacked. Then the Drake Passage: three or four days of open ocean under sail, with albatross riding the air astern and nothing to do but read, sleep and take a turn in the wheelhouse. On the third day, sixty degrees south, the first ice.

Days five to sevenFirst ice

If the sea is kind you sail into Deception Island, a drowned volcano with a doorway just wide enough, and anchor in Whalers Bay. A day later, the Gerlache Strait: gentoos on the beaches, humpbacks feeding alongside, and your first landing, taken at your own pace.

Still water full of small ice between dark snow-streaked cliffs, one peak lit rose by a low sun and mirrored in the channel — The Lemaire Channel, Antarctic Peninsula

Days eight to twelveThe far south

At Paradise Harbour you step onto the continent itself. Where the ice allows, the yacht’s pair of kayaks goes over the side, out among floes that fizz quietly as they melt. Port Lockroy has an old British base and a post office, so you send a card home.

Then the Lemaire Channel, eleven kilometres between cliffs, with everyone on deck and very little said. Around the twelfth day you turn for the Circle, for as long as the ice allows. Some summers it lets you through and some it does not. It is the best day either way.

The third weekNorth again

A few unhurried days back up the Peninsula, by anchorages you passed on the way down. Then the Drake again, three or four days of it, sorting photographs and comparing whales. Ushuaia after breakfast, a little quieter than you arrived.

The real plan is drawn with you, then redrawn by the ice.

Sail the crossing

Thinking about it already? Plan your journey

Life aboard

A snow mountain lit orange by a low sun above a dark sea, a small iceberg at the right edge — Last light on the Antarctic Peninsula

A warm wheelhouse, and the ice going by.

The yacht is small enough to slip into bays the ships pass, and quiet enough that you hear the ice before you see it.

With eight of you at most, the day bends easily. Stay out with the whales. Come in early and warm up in the wheelhouse. If the light turns pink after dinner, ask whether the boat might go out again.

A two-masted steel sailing yacht with a sand-coloured hull lying broadside off a high wall of blue glacier ice, small ice on the water

Step aboardOne yacht, one party, and the bay to yourselves.A small yacht off Damoy Point, Antarctic Peninsula

Where conditions allow, there is sometimes a night ashore: a bivvy bag on the snow, no light but the sky, and the yacht at anchor in the bay.

Field notesThe figures and the chart.

Daylight there today
Daylight at the December solstice
Paradise Harbour: 64°51′S 062°54′W
Ushuaia to the Circle, one way along the track: 922 NM
The Drake Passage, at about seven knots: Three to four days
In season: November to March

Open the navigation chart Turn the sun through a polar day

A blue-white iceberg adrift below snow mountains off Cuverville Island, under low cloud

Your invitation

Which southern summer?

November for clean snow and courting penguins. December for the longest light. January for chicks underfoot. February for whales. March for sunsets that take all evening.

Plan your journey

Eight short questions, about two minutes. Then a letter in your own words.