Interview: Claudia and Jürgen Kirchberger as charter skippers in the Antarctic

They love the ice, wild sailing and extremes, have circumnavigated North and South America on their 13-metre steel yacht "La Belle Epoque" and wintered in the ice several times. But last winter, Claudia and Jürgen Kirchberger put their ship ashore and sailed three times from Puerto Williams near Cape Horn to Antarctica and back on board the 20-metre Reinke "Santa Maria Australis" owned by German owner Wolf Kloss.

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Their job: skipper and crew on berth charter trips with guests from all over the world. In this interview, they explain how such extreme trips with complete strangers become a success, what makes sailing off Cape Horn so appealing and what they have learnt along the way.

YACHT: Claudia and Jürgen, what is more challenging, sailing into the ice as a couple with your own boat or with a large crew on a yacht full of berth charter guests?

Claudia Kirchberger: The main difference is the schedule, but of course also the discovery on land itself. If you are there privately as a couple, you stay longer in a place you like. With the charter boat, you'll be travelling every day to see a lot.

Jürgen Kirchberger: With scheduled sailing, you can postpone your departure and arrival by a maximum of two days. You have to make sure that your guests return on time, otherwise they will miss their flights. In other words, you sail even if the weather forecast is bad, when in private you would say: "Nah, no way."

Claudia: Another big difference is that when you arrive in Puerto Williams on your own keel, you already have sea legs and know this area a bit. As a charter guest, you have heard of the Drake Passage and know that it is a difficult sea area. But you don't know what it's really like to sail there.

What is it like?

Jürgen: From Cape Horn via the Drake Passage to Antarctica is almost exactly 500 nautical miles, or about three days.

Claudia: Most of the guests then get very seasick. It's stuffy in the boat, everyone needs help somehow.

How did you manage to sail according to schedule despite the unpredictable weather?

Jürgen: The only strategy is the right ship: it works if you have a big ship with two engines (laughs). With a ship of 20 metres in length, you can steam against the wind and waves. That wouldn't work at all with our "La Belle", which has 60 hp and weighs 20 tonnes. You sail according to nature and not according to a schedule.

What are the weather conditions like?

Jürgen: It's relatively easy to predict around Cape Horn or in the Southern Ocean. A depression moves through and brings three days of strong winds. The front passes through for one day, usually with 40 to 60 knots of wind. That lasts ten to 20 hours, and then you usually have a constant 35 or 40 knots from a westerly direction. After that it's calm for two or three days, then it starts again. So it's often enough to wait a day.

That sounds quite predictable.

Jürgen: Yes. It's relatively easy down to the Antarctic, where you have a half-wind, often even aft winds. It's particularly important to plan your arrival so that you don't arrive in the ice at night or in a storm. But the return journey is difficult, mostly upwind. That's just part of it. You know you're going to get hit again at Cape Horn. Fortunately, the crew is a little used to rough sailing by then.

How many berth charter guests are travelling on the trips?

Jürgen: Seven to eight people from all over the world. Spaniards, Australians, many French, but also Germans and Chileans. The language on board is English.

What drives them? Do they want to improve their sailing skills or see Antarctica?

Jürgen: That is extremely different. For example, there was a teacher on sabbatical who saved up for years for the trip and prepared for it with sailing courses. And then there are top managers and company owners who can afford it in between. Some book this trip, pay a fortune, get there and don't even know where we're going.

How does this colourful mix of people function under extreme conditions?

Claudia: That's right, it's extreme. There are also people who don't speak any English and can't join in the conversation. Some only realise when they get there that they have to share cabins and that things are simpler on board. That water is saved and showers are only taken once a week. For some, that's an introductory hardship, then comes the Drake Passage and it goes from strength to strength.

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How long does a trip like this take?

Claudia: We are in Antarctica for a total of three weeks, of which we are there for around ten to 14 days. There are so many impressions every day that you can hardly process them. You quickly realise how this bonds people together. And how little things on board become something special.

What, for example?

Claudia: When we arrived, I always made a roast lamb or a great meal. Accompanied by a good Chilean wine. That was something special, even for those who are used to it. You notice how everyone downsizes and enjoys life on board.

How did you distribute the tasks and roles on board?

Claudia: Jürgen and I were skipper and crew. Owner Wolf Kloss was also on board, and Jürgen and he always worked closely together. We communicated right from the start that we were a sailing crew and that everyone would do the washing up. We even had people on board who had never done the dishes in their lives. They were almost a bit proud of themselves (laughs). Some guests really excelled themselves, especially in storms and bad weather.

You knew the area from a previous trip. How did you prepare yourselves?

Jürgen: I checked out the ship for myself because I didn't know it. The owner, Wolf, was responsible for planning the route. He is a very experienced charter captain who has been doing this for 30 years. Charter sailing was the real novelty for us, not sailing in the ice.

Claudia: The overall preparation for a trip like this is quite a challenge. The provisioning alone for the tour with ten people for three weeks is quite a challenge.

Jürgen: For me, it was the technology on board. I already have experience with ships, but a 20-metre charter ship with two engines, generator, water maker, all electric, three toilet systems with vacuum, chopper, two fridges, freezer, battery bank ... It takes a bit of time before you know your way around and can make repairs in rough seas.

Claudia: We also did an IAATO tour guide training course in preparation.

What is that?

Claudia: The IAATO is an association of tourism companies. The qualification is about nature and rules of behaviour towards wildlife. It's an online test with 120 questions, which we took on board in Puerto Williams.

How did you get this exciting job in the first place?

Claudia: We moored our boat next to the "Santa Maria Australis" in the Falkland Islands in 2017. Jürgen helped Wolf with an engine repair. He was due to go on a charter trip to South Georgia with a BBC film crew, but his crew had cancelled on the way to the Falkland Islands due to seasickness. So he asked us if we would come along and we spontaneously said yes. That worked out really well. We've known each other ever since and are friends. He trusts us and that's super cool.

What was it like to accompany a film team to Antarctica?

Jürgen: That was amazing, really very exciting. They had chartered the ship for six weeks to film a documentary. The people were really nice, we were allowed to look over their shoulders and learnt a lot about photography and filming during that time. The effort involved in a production like this is enormous. The team had a crazy amount of energy. They worked from three in the morning until eight or nine in the evening, regardless of whether there were snowstorms overhead.

How did the trip go with the private berth charter guests?

Jürgen: First comes the three-day crossing. In the Antarctic, the anchorage is then changed every day and the distance travelled. The shortest distance was 35 nautical miles, the longest 110 nautical miles, usually an average of 50 to 70 per day.

And everyday life on board?

Claudia: We get up at 6.30 a.m., then we have breakfast, and the anchor is up by eight o'clock at the latest. Depending on the daily distance, we usually arrive between four and seven in the evening. Then we went ashore for an hour. After that, we had dinner, made ourselves a little cosy and then went to bed.

With such a tight programme, was there even enough time to go ashore and marvel at nature and wildlife?

Claudia: It all depended on how much the guests wanted to experience. Sometimes we took the dinghy ashore again in the morning before we left. With some amateur photographers, we were ashore every free minute when we weren't sailing. Others really had to be persuaded to leave the boat. This made us realise that it's not so easy to process all these impressions so quickly.

Have you noticed any changes in Antarctica since you were last there in 2017? In terms of tourism or nature?

Jürgen: In any case. The number of cruise ships has doubled. Charter yachts, on the other hand, have become slightly fewer. I think they have chosen new areas since corona, such as Greenland and Alaska, where many are travelling. However, this time we didn't see the really big cruise ships with 2,000 guests. Now you mainly see these small, exclusive cruise yachts with a length of around 30 to 70 metres, ten to 50 guests on board and lots of toys.

What kind of toys?

Jürgen: Small submarines, some helicopters, stand-up paddleboards and kayaks.

Claudia: In fact, I once got seasick in an anchorage bay from the swell of the many Zodiacs that were travelling around there. I didn't go ashore with them because I was preparing a roast for a nice arrival party in the evening. That's when it happened. I thought, there's no such thing ...

You said that the return journey to Chile via the Drake Passage is a tough one. How do you manage to ensure that guests leave the ship with positive memories after the crossing?

Jürgen: Most guests even want to experience a storm there. They think it's an experience, a great thing that you can tell a great story about afterwards. We actually had hurricane-force winds once and it was okay for most of the people on board. Because if you as the crew radiate competence and say: "Hey, guys, that's fine, no problem, we'll take it easy", they're happy to believe you. If you were to radiate fear yourself, they would get scared.

You sailed to Antarctica and back three times last winter, which must have been exhausting. Will you be doing it again?

Claudia: We would certainly sail like this again for a season, yes. But not planned every winter. It was a great experience, but we're also looking forward to going sailing on our own boat again soon.