In the first post, I tried to give you an idea of what the boat was like. In the second I attempted to paint a picture of what the local life in Valdivia, Chile was like. In this post I will add a little to both of those and provide an overview of the adventure itinerary.
For the past three days it's been raining very hard with strong gusty winds. The winds were over 20 knots here in the harbor at times, but out on the open seas it was 35 knots at times with 25 foot swells. Not a good time to sail. Fortunately, we had lots of work to do on our SSB radio, which besides our satellite phone is our primary source of weather and e-mail when we're at sea or away from Wi Fi internet. The problem has been that the feedback of radio frequency (RF) power radiated from the SSB antenna over all of the other wires has been interfering with our auto-pilot and some of the instruments. We spent three days tracing down the problems. We pulled new wires through the conduits on the boat, put new copper ribbon grounding wires on, moved components around, replaced the antenna, and many other things. We finally solved the problem earlier today and have now been able to download weather reports and e-mails so we believe that problem is behind us. I've been able to broadcast as far as Panama from here in Valdivia, Chile so we have plenty of range.
We filled the fuel tanks today and tomorrow we will fill up the water tank and get a few more groceries to prepare for the first leg of the journey. From Valdivia, wich is at about 39˚ 50' S, we intend to go farther south about 120 nautical miles to Puerto Montt, which is at about 42˚ S. It's in a huge bay, kind of like the San Francisco Bay, but about 150 miles long and 50 miles wide. This stretch of ocean is notoriously treacherous, and nicknamed the the roaring forties, so it's important to pick a period with good weather. The forecast right now shows good weather for several days starting Saturday so we plan to go then. Puerto Montt is right at the north end of that bay. My wife and daughter plan to meet us in Puerto Montt. From there we intend to sail south through a series of islands, farmlands, and fishing villages, and then cross over the bay and visit two picturesque fiords. We had originally intended to spend more time down there, but winter is rapidly approaching here in southern Chile and we dare not linger. Even now, it's very cold at night. The mornings are usually foggy and it frequently rains. But when the sun comes out, it is beautiful here and we're hoping we get a couple of weeks with good visibility down south.
I've been running the diesel heaters early in the morning to take the chill off as we prepare breakfast and prepare for the day ahead. As you can see from the two pictures below, the bridge deck is pretty comfortable and if we have to sail from inside the bridge deck, we can. I suspect much of the sailing around the fishing villages and in the fiords will be by motor because the room for maneuver is limited, but very scenic.
A couple of weeks ago, we took escape up the river to the Valdivia Fish Market. The navigable channel is pretty narrow in spots and along many parts of the shore, there were people working or playing who stopped to look at our boat as we went along, and they cheered and waved at us. When we finally got just adjacent to the fish market, which is about in the middle of town, we could not go any farther because there is a bridge across the river that is too low to go under. So with one engine in forward and one in reverse, I did a 180˚ turn, the people at the fish market cheered and we hoisted the sails and went back down the river. Here's are a couple of pictures showing what it was like going up the river to Valdivia.
Along the river we saw this old submarine with two gigantic sea lions on it. Well, one was on it and the other one was trying to get on it. These were huge sea lions that must have weight over 600 pounds.
Not all days are as fun as these. Some days we have to stop what we're doing and take advantage of the sunshine to do our laundry. I bought a funnel shaped thing on a stick that was advertised as a hand washing machine. You put your dirty clothes in a 5 gallon bucket of hot water and soap and use it like a plunger to force the water through the clothes and to rotate them around. It works really well. Then I throw them in the bottom of the shower to rince them off and hand wring them before hanging them on the lifelines around the deck. Here's a picture of the laundry hanging out to dry. The trick is to make sure you have a good grip on them when hanging them up or taking them down, because if you drop something, it's gone.
We've been eating very good once we got pots and pans and enough utinsels to cook with. Jay is a fantastic cook and can make just about anything from scratch. After we cooked some hamburgers on the stove, he used the ingredients left in the pan as the base to make some onion soup. It was delicious. Here's a picture of the onion soup and of Jay cooking some local Valdivian sausages on the BBQ on the back deck.
It's getting late now and I have much to do tomorrow to get ready to go south. I'll try to send a movie or two in the e-mail announcing the update to this blog.
Chan
Sounds like you're working out the kinks and are ready for the first leg of your journey. Look forward to some videos posted to YouTube.
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