Escape Adventure 4-5 May 2013 Exploring at Last
We've spent a lot of time sitting out rain storms over the past couple of weeks, but last Saturday and Sunday, we got a break in the weather so we got to spend the night out away from the docks and do our first real exploration.  We left the marina about 1:30 PM after the fog cleared and I've posted a movie of our departure from dock on You Tube at http://youtu.be/e36iT8I5nDc so you can kind of share the excitement of the moment with us.  Some of you have asked that I show a picture of the whole boat because, although I've shown pictures of the inside etc. I guess I didn't show a picture of the whole boat, so here is a picture of Escape under full sail.

We first sailed down the river and turned out to sea so we could test the water maker again because it hadn't been working yet.  Here is a picture of Heather pondering the expedition and Elaine and Heather lending moral and steering support as we went down the river.

It's very important to have the water maker working before we set off on a long passage such as the one coming up to the Galapagos Islands.  Fortunately, the water maker worked fine so I think it is fixed now.  After testing the water maker and some of our navigation software (which is still not working quite right) we sailed another mile or two out to sea and then turned back toward the bay at the mouth of the Valdivia River and pretended we were arriving after a long passage from some exciting place.  We rounded the green buoy that is the channel marker showing the entrance to the channel to go up the Valdivia River and then steered south out of the channel along the East coast of Isla Mancera which is a small scenic Island about 0.7 miles long and a half mile wide.  It's wooded and has houses on it and an old fort that was built around 1544.  We circled around the anchorage site a time or two and finally headed into the wind and dropped the anchor in about 12 feet of water.  I put Escape in reverse as Jay dropped the hook and we fed out about 50 feet of chain before locking the windless and then pushing the throttles up to set the anchor in the mud below.  The anchor was holding at 1500 rpm on both engines so I eased off on the throttles and Jay fed out more rode (rope tied to the end of the anchor chain) until we had about 70 feet out.  By this time, the sun was going down, the sea was pretty quiet, and we could see some of the small fishing boats returning to the village by the docks about 300 meters away.  It was a very scenic site and I took a movie of it as the first anchor point for Escape.  I posted that movie on You Tube at http://youtu.be/9djR-1_Qvyg  so you can see it too.  Here's a still shot of the anchor spot.

As the fog rolled in and the temperature began to drop, I sat out on the front deck and leaned back against the windows on the front of the bridge deck with a beer to savor the moment of our first over night anchorage and the anticipation of going ashore to explore the fort on Isla Mancera the next morning.  Heather joined me on the front deck while Jay and Elaine cooked supper in the galley inside.

We set the depth alarm to seven feet so if the anchor pulled out and we began drifting toward shore, it would go off and we could hop up to reset the anchor.  Remember the water was only about 12 feet deep to begin with and Escape has a draught of about 3.5 feet.  The bottom was just mud, but we really didn't want to be sitting on the bottom in the morning.  Later that night, I woke up to the sound of the depth alarm going off.  I jumped up and ran up to the bridge deck and saw that the depth was 7 feet.  I checked the chart plotter and it showed that Escape was still in the same spot as when we went to bed.  I went outside to make sure.  It was really foggy, but I could make out the lights on the peer and from the buoy to our west that I memorized before I went to bed.  Those confirmed that Escape was still in the same place and the anchor was holding, but the tide was going out and it was getting shallower.  We set the alarm for 6 feet and went back to bed.    About an hour later, the alarm went off again.  Again the chart plotter showed Escape was holding at anchor, but the depth sounder was for sure at 6 feet and it was still another couple of hours before low tide.  We set the alarm for 4.5 feet and I went outside to check our position.  I couldn't see shore because of the fog even though it was only a couple hundred yards away.  I could still make out the lights on the pier though, so I was pretty sure we weren't dragging the anchor.  The wind was picking up though and the current was flowing pretty strong because we were near the mouth of the Valdivia River.  We went back to bed and later I got up just to check and the depth was now up to 6 feet, but the chart plotter showed the boat had moved about 50 feet.  I thought, "oh crap, the anchor is dragging because the current has swung it around and must have pulled the anchor loose and we're headed out to sea."  But I watched it for a few minutes, and it didn't move, so I concluded that the anchor wasn't dragging, but rather it had just swung around due to the tide now going the other way.  So, I went back to bed.
The next morning, we still couldn't see the shore because of the fog, so I made a good breakfast with coffee, bacon (which Elaine had found at a market down town), and fried eggs.  By the time we finished breakfast, the fog was starting to lift so Jay and I lowered the dinghy and put the outboard motor on it in preparation for going ashore.  Here's a picture of us as we pulled away from Escape.

First we circled around Escape while Jay took a video of it and then we headed off toward the north end of the island where the pier was.  We went around the pier and out around the north end of the island and then on around the rest of the island.  It was really cool to just be gliding along and scoping out the island while we decided where we wanted to go ashore and what we wanted to see.  We saw lots of birds and sea lions etc. as we drove the dinghy around the island.  I posted a video on You Tube of part of the dinghy ride around the island for you to see at http://youtu.be/83gLgmpW8mQ.   After we got back to Escape we passed by it and pulled the dinghy up on shore near the foot path up to the old fort.  Here is a picture at the bottom of the foot path and a sign saying it is the evacuation route in case of a tsunami.  They did have a very bad earthquake and tsunami in 1960  in which the whole Valdiva basin sank two meters and the 30 foot tsunami destroyed almost everything.  The last picture is from the top of the trail looking back down toward where we started, so you can see that if you ran up this path you probably would be safe from a tsunami.

On the way up the path, we came across this old house which is reminiscent of the how the houses looked back around the early 1900's.  We also saw this fantastic wood carving of some of the fish that are indigenous to this area and some of the birds that normally hunt them.  

At the top of the hill, we came to the fort we had come to explore.  It was initially built around 1544 and there are signs around the grounds that talk about the important battles it was a part of and how important it was to Chile.  It was interesting to think that this fort was already in service two hundred years before our country was even born.  Here are some scenes of the fort as we walked around it.

 I liked this picture of the two buzzards sitting on the canon barrel overlooking the bay.  In this case, I got to check both the "explorer" and the "wildlife photographer" boxes.

After touring the fort for a couple of hours we found a road that was more of a foot path than a road that appeared to be going around the top of the island so we decided to at least follow that path for a ways.  Here are a couple pictures of the path we followed.

After about half a mile, we came across an old man and his son working on a fence. Well, not old compared to me, but old compared to most of you.  He didn't speak any English and we didn't speak much Spanish, but he said some words and we said some words, and then the son asked where we were from in English.  We told him California, and then the old guy made a motion that seemed to ask if we had a camera.  I showed him my camera and he started off down the road and motioned for us to follow him.  We went about two hundred yards with both of us talking and neither of us understanding much about what the other one was saying, but thinking something good was about to happen.  He took us to his house and then started showing us some paths he had hacked through the forest  that took us to a whole bunch of these beautiful flowers (Lapageria rosea, or copihue) which are the Chilean national flowers.  He was obviously very proud of them, and we were very appreciative for him showing them to us.  Here are a series of pictures showing our new friend and some of the flowers he showed us.

He shook our hands about 50 times indicating he was happy to see us, and I got the idea that not many tourists came this way.  We were the only two people at the fort for the couple of hours we were there, so I'm thinking that there just aren't many tourists here, even though this is a very beautiful and friendly place.  Of course it is about as far out of season as you can get.  On the way out of his yard we passed by his garden and I noticed this tree with bottles on the branches to help scare off the birds.  He also had old CDs hanging on strings from tree branches to help scare the birds away.  I don't know if either of those things worked, but he also pointed to a huge hawk sitting in a tree above his house, and that seemed to be pretty effective at keeping smaller birds away.  

Farther around the path, we came to a clearing from which we could see Escape anchored below.  It was really scenic so we dwelled there for a few minutes.  Here are a few pictures to help you appreciate the view.

It was still fairly foggy so the pictures aren't as clear as I would like, but I hope you can see well enough to get the idea of how beautiful it is here and how cool this concept of sailing to some place, dropping the anchor, and then exploring around that area can be.  You can't be in a hurry using this method, because you have to hunker down when there's bad weather, but if you can do that, it can be a lot of fun.  Heather and Elaine stayed on the boat, because they weren't sure they could make it on and off the dinghy and Elaine wasn't sure she could make it up to the fort with the cast still on her foot.  Here's Heather giving her decision not to go on the expedition ashore a second thought and her and Elaine downtown in Valdivia the next day.  There's also a picture of me and Heather serving beer at Kuntsmann's which is a brewery and restaurant down the road from our marina.  

Well, this post is already too long, but at least we're getting to the exploration phase of the adventure.  I hope to do more in the next few days, but there is another storm coming in tonight so we're hunkered down.  Elaine and Heather took the bus over to Niebla today to sit in the restaurant where we had fish soup before and to practice their painting skills.  They've been doing water color paintings of some of the more scenic areas on the trip.