Escape Expeditions 21 April 2013
Not too much to report today.  It's been raining off and on for two days so we've been taking advantage of the down time to stow things a little better on the boat and to explore some of the local areas with the dinghy.  I'm getting much better with the dinghy and I'm very happy with the Suzuki 20 hp motor we bought.  It's probably more power than we need, but I can just idle along and still make very good progress.

Yesterday, since it was raining, Elaine gave me a haircut.  I really needed it since I've been down here since 15 March already.  We didn't have any clippers, but she did a good job with just scissors and a comb.

 After the haircut, the rain let up a bit so Jay and I took the dinghy down river to do some exploring closer to shore than we can go with the catamaran, since it is a lot shallower out of the  channel marked by the red and green buoys.  There's an old ship wreck about half way down the river from where we're staying and the exit of Rio Valdivia to the sea.  This ship was washed ashore during the major earthquake in 1960 that sunk the whole Valdivia basin by about two meters.  It was too big to raise and move out of the channel so the markers have been placed to route the traffic around it.  Here you can see some cormorants have built nests atop the masts on the sunken ship.

The cormorants are everywhere here.  They dive for fish in the river near our marina too and then they climb out on a log or, in this case, a part of the shipwreck that sticks out of the water to dry their feathers.

 Along the way to the shipwreck, we investigated a place that we were wondering what it was every time we came by it on the way up the river.  We thought it was a mining operation because there always seemed to be a boat there loading or unloading something.  When we got close to it, we could see that it was a fish farm.  They raise salmon here and then load them into the trucks.  In this picture, you can see one of the trucks and the yellow hose that they suck up the fish with to load into the trucks.

In this next photo, you can see the barge they use to carry the trucks that the fish are in to market.  It's quite an operation and there are many fish farms here in Chile.  In fact some of the cruisers down here are complaining that all of the good anchorages are being taken up by the fish farms.

Today, Heather and I took the dinghy out for a spin and went the other way up the river towards Valdivia.  I practiced rowing the dinghy instead of using the motor to see how it goes without the motor.  I was very impressed with the maneuverability of the dinghy and am glad it works so well because if we need to pull the the ropes ashore to tie to trees from the aft deck, we may need to do it with oars to prevent the ropes from getting in the props.  Heather and I found a place down stream where a small row boat was hidden under some branches on a rocky beach about 30 feet long so we landed there to investigate.  There was a trail heading up through the forrest so we followed that for about a quarter of a mile to see where it went.  Unfortunately, it was a bit steep for Heather and kind of slippery too so she went back to the dinghy to wait for me while I continued to explore.  About 100 yards farther up the trail, I met some guys headed down the trail with fishing gear so I turned around too and went with them because I didn't want Heather to be left alone.  Those guys said they usually catch good fish right there so we may have to try it if we can get some fishing gear.

As we were sitting around the table watching Les Miserables on our computer from a CD, Jay surprised us by whipping up this crepe with nice frosting and raspberry jam on it.  It tasted fantastic, and as you can see, it looked very good too.  Jay's really good at making things from scratch.  

Tomorrow we should learn what the solution is to getting new springs for our injector pump on our starboard diesel engine.  If it's going to take a few days, we may rent a car and head north to investigate some of the lake area of Chile.  

That's all for tonight.