In the first post, I tried to give you an overview of our boat Escape and some of her most prominent features and capabilities. I'll add more to that in the next post, but in this post I wanted to give you a flavor of what it's like in Valdivia, Chile where the boat is being made. My son Jay and I have been living on the boat since 15 March and it's now 8 April. We had a rental car for the first week or two, but once we made a lot of trips to the local hardware, department, and grocery stores to get basic supplies to equip the boat with things like dishes, linnens, blankets, pots and pans, fuel and water cans, tools, electrical tape, etc., we turned in our rental car and just started using the local bus service like the local folks around here. Bus number 20 runs past Alwoplast where we have the boat anchored about every ten minutes and goes to most of the places in Valdivia where we need to go. It costs about a dollar to ride the bus. I'll get a picture of the bus the next time we ride it so you can see what it looks like.
This is really a cool town. It has lots of really good restaurants. They have awesome sea food and there is a heavy German influence here. There are two crafts microbrewries (Salsberg and Kuntzmann) within walking distance of where we are. We ate there a lot when we first got here, but the last couple of weeks we're eating most of our meals on board. Jay is an awesome cook. Here's a picture of one of his sandwiches. It was made with one of the local Valdivia sausages, cheese, tomatoes, and other good stuff. The beer is from Kuntzmann right down the street.
We usually run the diesel heaters when we first get up to take the chill off the air while we make breakfast and prepare for whatever work is being done on the boat that day. A couple of days ago we saw a Chilean Navy boat pull up to the dock at the end of our pier and we saw the owner of Alwoplast running down from the shop to meet it. We saw a couple officers step off and a lot of pointing at us and lots of hand waving and then Alex Wopper (the builder of our boat) brought the two officers and another gentleman over to our boat and asked to come aboard. Of course we said yes and thought we might have done something wrong during one of our sea trials. It turned out the third gentleman was Manuel Cofré (Governor of the region), the ranking officer was Admiral Osvaldo Schwartzenberg (Commander of the Region), and the third guy was CPT De Corbetalt (Port Captain of Valdivia). They were doing inspections of the area and asked Alex Wopper if they could see our boat since it is somewhat unique. So we took the opportunity to show them around and to demonstrate how to operate the mast foils. Here is a picture of the Admiral, the Captain and Alex Wopper with me on the back deck of Escape.
In town, you see stray dogs everywhere. Many of them look like they haven't been getting much grub so we give them a handout when we can. This one particularly caught my eye because he had two eyes of different colors. It reminded me of the story "Little House on the Prairie". In that story, they had a dog named Jack and he had eyes like that. They came across a band of hostile indians one day, but the indians left them alone because they believed such a dog had special powers. This dog's powers was to bark at any other dogs that came into his territory.
It's hard to find a lot of the things we just take for granted in the U.S. For example, I needed to find some wooden plugs in case one of the through hull fittings on the boat springs a leak while we're at sea. So, I took a break from other work, cut a few chunks out of a limb on a tree and sat up above the harbor for an hour or so while I whittled three different sized wooden plugs and stowed them in my maintenance bag. Here's the whittling spot.
In order to provide some means of transportation during our adventure, we bought a couple of folding mountain bikes. They're awesome. They're almost as good as my mountain bike at home with front end suspension and lots of gears. They run really smoothly and are easy to pedal. A couple days ago, Jay and I took a ride along the road above the river towards Niebla. Here's a shot of Jay at one of the pullouts along the river. It's very scenic here. We also saw this cool water wheel along the road. We haven't taken any more rides though because it's pretty treacherous. The roads don't have a shoulder and there are quite a few really narrow places where the road goes across bridges. Most cars give you a little room, but when there is a bus coming each way, there's not much room for you. I figured if I wanted to become an old adventurer, I better wait until I get somewhere where the roads aren't quite so busy or the cars go slower to ride my bike. Since then, we've been walking or riding the bus.
Well, that's about it for tonight. It's getting time to go to bed. We need to get up in time to get breakfast overwith before the electrician gets here around 8 AM to finish wiring up the SSB radio in the new location we picked for it. I hope you all are enjoying this adventure. I think it will get a lot better once we get the remaining few technical problems worked out and get under sail. I'll add a few more pictures of the boat in the next log.
You sure are living large on your new adventure
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