'Escape' needs a courier to bring supplies to Chile. If you or someone you know who is trustworthy would be willing to transport some electronics and other critical items to our sailboat we might be willing to pay for your transport to Chile. Additionally if you would like to join us on our sail to Galapagos and up the Mexican coast to Baja, you would have free room and board while aboard the sailboat. There will be lots of opportunities for sailing, hiking, biking, diving, sightseeing etc. Don't miss this once in a lifetime opportunity!

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Escape Expeditions 23 May 2013
This post will add to some of the processes we've described earlier regarding the building of the Atlantic 47 series of catamarans and will bring you along on some of our local adventures and events in the Valdivia area.  We continue to be entranced by the beauty of the local area and by the people who are so friendly and welcoming to us.  We haven't been on anymore overnight anchorages since our last post, mostly because of the weather, but we have been out to sail a couple of times to test some modifications to the mast foil controls.  Even though we've been here since the 15th of March living on the same boat in the same marina, it's still really pleasant because it's so peaceful and it looks different each day as the weather changes.  Here are a couple of shots from Escape as it looked yesterday morning.

There's also always some activity going on, whether it's from the wildlife in the area, such as cormorants diving to catch a fish or sitting on local trees to dry out their plumage, or the local fishermen such as in the photos below.  In the first picture, the guy motoring across the river had just been fishing off to the right.  He spread out a big net with small floats on it and then flailed the water with a big rope with a knot on the end to scare the fish towards the net.  Then he pulled the two open ends together and hauled in the net.  From where I was watching, it didn't look like he caught anything, but I've seen others in the same area come back to the docks with quite a few fish.  The other boat in the background in the first picture and in the second picture seemed to be his partner because I could hear them talking back and forth as they moved to a better spot.  We observed the fishing boat was going straight across the river to the small island on the other side so we decided to lower the dinghy and follow him to see where he went.  I posted a movie of the dinghy ride at http://youtu.be/VJ6qQLXORKc.  The water is so smooth that in the first part of the movie, it doesn't look like we're moving, but we are.  Anyway, on the other side of the small island in the movie, there is a cluster of houses and the smoke you see above the island is smoke coming from the chimney of one of those houses.

 Another landmark that has caught my eye as I move around Valdivia on the bus or on foot is the graffiti.  It's not just some gang putting their logo on the wall to mark their territory, it seems to be  telling a story about some part of the local life and the struggles they go through.  Here are a couple of examples.  I saw some of this in Ecuador when I was there a couple years ago as well.  There are some areas that are devoted to school children depicting their favorite animals in Mindo, Ecuador and we see some evidence of that here too.  My wife, Elaine, was particularly interested in the graffiti here and took a lot of pictures to write about later.

On the 20th of May, we heard a banging on the hull of the boat and it was Alex, who heads up Alwoplast Corporation here in Valdivia, and he had  Navy Admiral (two star) Felipe Garcia-Huidobro and a Captain with him and wanted to come aboard to look at Escape.  Of course we invited them on and gave them a tour and an explanation of the unique features of this catamaran.  The admiral is responsible for all of the maintenance of the Chilean fleet and the Captain is the local Governor.  The Governor had been on our boat before when he came aboard with Admiral Schwartzberg a couple weeks ago.  At the end of the tour, the Governor turned to Alex and said, "You should bring these two gentlemen with you to the Naval Glory Days Parade".  I'm not sure if Alex was planning on going to the parade or not because he's really jumping through hoops trying to get the second in the Atlantic 47 series ready to go.  Anyway, Alex assured the admiral that it was a great idea and told us to meet him in his office at 11 AM the next day so we did.  

The next day at 11 AM we all hopped in Alex's Mercedes (the couple from Bomika, the boat behind us, Jay and I, and Alex) and sped off to Valdivia.  Alex took a few back roads and explained that there would be no parking downtown because of the parade so we were going to park on the other side of the river, take one of the solar taxis (river boats built by Alwoplast that are propelled by solar power) across the river and land right at the reviewing stand where we would have reserved seats.  We parked at the museum we had gone to when Elaine was here and walked down the stairs where the river taxis were and the men who ran the operation welcomed Alex like a long lost brother.  We hopped on one of the taxis and headed across the river.  Here's a couple pictures of the solar powered river taxi.  In the first picture, you can see that it can hold 10 to 15 people and you can see the solar panels on the roof.  It was totally foggy and drizzling so we weren't getting much solar power, but the boats are plugged in when not on a mission.  On board the boat are Charlie and Lisa from the boat Bomika, Alex, and Jay.  The second shot is out the window toward the Fish Market across the river.  The reviewing stand is just to the right of the Fish Market.  

For the Naval Glory Day Celebration, the Navy had tied one of their boats and an old submarine to the dock right behind the reviewing stand.  Here are a couple of pictures of the old submarine as we got off of the solar taxi to walk up the stairs to the reviewing stand.  I also posted a movie on You Tube of the river taxi ride at http://youtu.be/xQP-O3OWobI and you can see the Navy ship and the old submarine in that movie as well.

Once we got up the stairs, Alex went under the rope to keep the crowds at bay and found our seats in the covered stands.  It was nice that it was covered because it was drizzling all during the parade.  From my West Point and Army days, I could relate to the poor troops who were standing out in the rain thinking what a bunch of toads we were standing under the tent looking at them getting drenched.  Here are a few still shots of the festivities.  The first is of me and Alex in the reviewing stands and the next couple are of Admiral Garcia-Huidobro  reviewing the troops.  In Chile, it's OK if the Admiral's wife joins him in reviewing the troops and she appeared to be thoroughly enjoying herself.

I also posted a video of a portion of the ceremony on You Tube at http://youtu.be/w8AJwI4AOw0 for those of you who like such things.  I took a few more stills of some of the major events as best I could understand them throughout the ceremony.  This first picture was of a couple of dignitaries who went forward to be recognized by the Admiral.  I'm not sure what they did to warrant such recognition or what their jobs were, but their uniforms and helmets were sufficiently different and unique that I thought it was worthy of taking a picture.  The second picture below is of the color guard.  Notice the amazing metal necklace worn by the national flag bearer.  I asked Alex what the significance of that was, but he didn't know either.  It was impressive though.  The third picture is of a real hero.  He jumped in the water and saved eight people from drowning so he definitely deserved an award from the Admiral.

At the end of the ceremony, the troops went through a few drills including fixing their bayonets, presenting arms, and singing the national anthem.  Overall, I thought they did a great job and although, in the picture of me and Alex in one of the pictures above it looks like no one came, by the end of the parade, the place was crowded and the stands were full of people.  There were probably two or three thousand people along the streets and in the stands, and given that the weather was so bad, I think it showed a great deal of patriotism.  After the troops marched off, this dance group came out in the street and danced some of their native dances.  I posted a video of the dance on You Tube at http://youtu.be/Rju8aCZ6PUQ.  Notice in the movie that the local stray dogs are intermingling with the dancers and at least one of them is barking at them as if to say, "you are in my spot and would you kindly move on."  

Back at the marina, work continued on the Atlantic 47 fleet of boats being built.  Our boat, Escape, is the first in the series.  Number 2, named Pounce, was launched a few days ago and we moved out to an end slip so she could be close to the hangers so the crews had better access to her.  Here's a picture of Pounce and Escape sitting side by side with another motor catamaran named Molly that was also built by Alwoplast.  The owner of Pounce arrived in town yesterday along with two other seasoned sailors who will be his crew on the way back to Hampton, VA.  Two of their wives came too, but they plan to fly back while the men sail straight from Valdivia to Panama, through the canal and up to Hampton in an effort to beat the hurricane season.  They all came aboard Escape yesterday and we showed them some of the improvements we've made on our boat over the past couple of months and that they now are beneficiaries of since our boat is a prototype for the rest of the fleet.  I posted a couple of movies of Pounce as she was getting launched into the water and of her getting her masts put on.  You can see these at http://youtu.be/k9DHejP6sA0 and http://youtu.be/WsOfDEgPLTY on You Tube.  We invited them to sail with us while they wait for their boat to get finished and they all agreed that they would like to do it in order to get as much experience as they can with the rig before they set out.

Finally, we were also visited by Ken Koellings a few days ago.  He is the owner of boat #4 in the Atlantic 47 line.  Ken came on board and looked at all the improvements we have made as well.  His boat is being built right now.  In the first picture, you see one half of one of the hulls in the mold where they laid it out and that I showed you in previous posts.  You can see that the hull is already starting to separate from the mold.  So what they do is hold it in place with clamps, then raise the two sides up as in picture two below and bolt the two halves of the mold together.  They put glue in between the two halves and then they fiberglass the two halves together and add the reinforcing carbon fiber where necessary.  In the third picture you see the aft end of the mold and the two halves as they appear right now.  The slot between the two halves is propped open with bolts along the bottom of the hull and that part is fiberglassed together and reinforced.  The end product is then taken out of the mold, another hull is made and then joined together with the bridgedeck, and aligned to within 1 mm.  

Best Regards,

Chan

Escape Expedition 16 May 2013

There are two parts to this blog post.  The first is called, "The Attack of the Mold Monster."  The second is, "Exploration Continues".  I've mentioned to you several times how rainy it's been and that we never seemed to get a break in the weather.  Well a few days ago I went into Heather's room on the boat and lifted up the mattress and there was mildew starting to form on the matress cover.  I immediately went to the other bedrooms and checked and sure enough, there was mold or mildew on the other mattress covers as well.  Even though the mattresses are up on some special springs to allow air flow underneath, I guess if you make your bed every day, that nice tucking in of the covers around the edges keeps the air from flowing and after several weeks of rain, and condensation inside the boat was just what the mildew needed to get started.  So we went on the offensive immediately and took off all the sheets and mattress covers and put the tea kettle on to get really hot water.  I used a 5 gallon bucket that I have on the boat to wash everything in hot water, clorox, and soap.  I did it on the back deck with this amazing hand washing machine gizmo that Jay found on the internet.  I posted a video of me washing clothes with it on You Tube at http://youtu.be/UkEwb0B1f6c.   It saves your back, when doing the laundry and really circulates the clothes, or mattress covers around as you can see on the video.  We hung everything out on the lifelines around the boat, but as soon as we did, it started to rain again so I hung a line from one side of the bridge deck to the other inside the boat, hung everything on that, and turned the heaters and blowers on to try to dry everything.  Next, we took more hot water and clorox and wiped down the whole insides of the boat to kill any mold that might be getting started in the bilges, bathrooms, or any other place.  That wasn't the most fun I've ever had, but it's part of the adventure and something I'm told by the other boaters that's pretty common on boats, especially metal boats.  Now, we keep the hatches cracked even if it's raining to improve the air circulation and I run the heaters for a while each morning to dry out the boat.  I also prop up the mattress each day, one day I prop up the head of the mattress, the next day the foot, so it gets air circulation.  That seems to be working.  Since Elaine worked so hard helping me clear out the mold and mildew, I took everyone out to supper that night at Kuntsman's which is a pub and restaurant up the road about 3.6 miles.  She insisted on serving the beer though so I took this picture of her serving Kuntsman's finest lagger.

The next day was overcast and sprinkling off and on so we put all the mattress covers and dirty clothes in a bag and took it down town to the local laundry shop and turned it in for another wash before putting it back on the beds.  They don't really have do-it-yourself laundermats here in Valdivia so we had to leave it overnight and then go back the next day to get it.  Everything came back fresh and clean, but it was still a pain to pack it all a half mile or so from the laundry place to the bus stop.  Heather and Elaine waited on the boat practicing their water painting while Jay and I went to retrieve the laundry.  Later that night, Jay cooked this fantastic meal of BBQ chicken, grilled potato slices, and peppers.  It was really good and then we all sat around the table and watched the movie Tin Tin until the internet went out about half way through, so we hooked up the external hard drive and watched the movie War Horse.  It's a really good movie if you haven't seen it.  We have a hard drive that my son Chris got in Afghanistan that has over 400 movies on it and when he found out we were getting the boat, he sent us the hard drive thinking there would be long passages on the ocean when we might need to watch a movie, or two, or three.

The next day was Mother's day, and still rainy off and on so we took Elaine in to Valdivia to walk around town and to see the museum there.  The museum was closed, but we were able to walk around the museum grounds and look in the windows.  It's mostly about the various cultures that settled in the Valdivia area and the displays are distributed among several old houses.  Here's a picture of one of them.  There were carriages outside the buildings we could look at like the one below that Elaine and Heather are looking at, and the rooms inside were set up to look like they did a couple centuries ago when the inhabitants occupied these houses.  We could see the rooms through the windows as we strolled around the grounds.

 There were flower gardens around the museum too that we enjoyed looking at.  Here's Elaine with one bloom as big as her head.  From the museum grounds, which are on the high ground right beside the river, we could look across to the other side and see the Fish Market, which is the long flat building right beside the water with the bright colored roof, and the casino which is the high rise building in the background to the left of the Fish Market.

Since it was Mother's Day we also took Elaine to one of the local restaurants for coffee near the bus stop.  Here's a portrait of the owner of the coffee shop.  The coffee was great, the service was good, and we had a good time just sitting there contemplating this adventure.

 The next day, Jay and I stopped by the Fish Market and picked up this big salmon and Jay put it on the grill that night.  Since it was Elaine and Heather's last night on the boat, we invited some of our neighbors over for some of Jay's special broccoli soup and grilled salmon.  They brought some wine and we added our own bottle of wine so we had a great time talking about all the places they have been and some of the places we have been too.  The couple we invited are from Germany and they are spending the winter here after coming up from the south where we had originally planned to go.  They had the misfortune of having their boat blown up on the rocks down there and had the hull breached such that water poured in.  They spent last winter down near Port Williams at the very bottom of South America getting it patched up and now they're waiting to have final repairs made here.

Earlier in the day, I got to practice my wild life photography when I saw this bird that looked like a huge blue Jay land on the pier next to ours.  I put on my big 400 mm lens and went way out on the bow of my boat to get as close as I could.  Just as I snapped this shot, a big hawk landed right below this bird, but he didn't seem to be concerned.  I talked to the production manager Roni Klingenberg about this bird and he said it's a pretty rare bird and is some kind of a Martin.  He told me the name, but I forgot it already.  He said they are very shy and rarely seen, but this particular one lives near by and knows he's not threatened here so he comes to the marina regularly and fishes here.  He's a big bird about 12 inches high.

The next day, the 14th of May, Elaine and Heather left around 11:30 AM on a shuttle I had arranged to take them to Puerto Montt to catch their flight back to Santiago, then Mexico City, then home to LA.  It was a clear sunny day, so Jay and I cast off the lines and headed to sea to spend the night out at an anchorage away from the Marina.  On the way down the Valdivia River I took a movie so you could go along with us (virtually of course) and posted it at http://youtu.be/gPfRzWqXxD4 on You Tube.  What little wind there was on our way down the river was right on our nose so we were just motoring along at about 2400 rpm and 8.5 knots.  

Once we rounded the bend down by Niebla, however, and headed out to sea, the winds really picked up to over 20 knots.  The swells were around 10 feet high and we were cruising along at 9.5 to 10 knots going down wind.  I posted another video at http://youtu.be/_zKroF4TBEk so you can appreciate what it's like when the wind gets up to 20 knots.  If we can get those kinds of winds, we can cover over 200 miles a day.  We sailed out to sea about 2.5 to 3 miles and then went in a box pattern to get experience sailing in all directions to the wind.  Coming back toward Corral, of course the wind was pretty much on our nose so we had to tack at an angle to make headway back to port.  Even so, we were maintaining 9.5 knots most of the way.  We sailed past Colleta Amargos and Puerto Corral which both have ruins of old forts we wanted to look at the next day and we looked for anchor points as we went by on our way to Point Roma where we planned to spend the night at anchor.  We got there around 4:30 to 5 PM, dropped the hook in about 13 feet of water, and let out about 70 feet of chain and rode.  We cooked up some fantastic Chilean sausages on buns we had bought at the market the day before and settled in for a relaxing night.  Here's a picture of the anchorage site just south of Pt. Roma.  You can see a house just in the distance and some fishing boats in the foreground.  I posted a movie of this site on You Tube at http://youtu.be/lYA-tdwv0-Y   

It was really cold that night, around 41˚ F according to the instruments on the boat, but it was quiet and peaceful.  We were protected by the point from any winds from the north or west and the tides weren't nearly as large here as they were at our previous anchorage.  There was a small waterfall adjacent to the boat about a hundred yards away so we could hear that at night and it was very peaceful until about midnight we heard a loud metallic clanging, which we thought was something to do with the anchor system breaking.  We jumped out of our beds and ran up to the bridge deck with flashlights in hand and found that it was just a metal ring that had fallen off one of the dome lights in the ceiling and hit the table on the way down.  Wow, what a relief so we went back to bed and pulled the covers up over our heads.  The next morning we woke up as the sun was coming up and I went up to turn the diesel heaters on to take the chill off before getting dressed.  On the way back down stairs I turned the tea kettle on so I could make coffee in a few minutes.  As I looked out, I saw this scene below and some fishermen just going out to make their daily catch for the fish market, so I ran down the steps, put on my pants, jacket, and slippers and went out to take these shots.  

After a few minutes, the cabin was warming up, the coffee was perking, and I had finished brushing my teeth and shaving so I went back up to the galley and made this breakfast fit for a king.  It had some of the sausage from the night before, some fried potatoes, toast, coffee, and orange juice.  And as I was making it, I could look out the galley window to the view just below the breakfast plate.  Now that's how God intended man to spend his days I thought to myself.

Later in the morning, we hauled up the anchor chain and idled around the bay to our south.  The whole southern part of the bay is pretty shallow, around 12 to 13 feet so we just idled along at about 1200 rpm and 4.5 knots, looking at the scenery and waving at the fishermen as we went by.  We then proceeded north up past our anchorage site at Pt. Roma to Corral where they have some ruins of a big fort that we wanted to go ashore and see.  Just as we came into the harbor, the winds came up quite strong and the water got really choppy with about 1 foot waves.  We dropped the anchor in a kind of crowded spot, but far enough away that we wouldn't drift onto the docks or other boats that were also anchored.  We could see the fort across the bay as you see in the picture below, but I didn't feel comfortable putting the dinghy down in the choppy seas so I gave the order to haul up the anchor again and we motored out of the harbor, put up the sails and cruised around the bay we had just come up through.

The winds were 9.5 to 10.5 knots and we were going about 7.5 knots with the wind at an angle of about 45˚ off our nose.  That was a good angle to just keep sailing right up the Valdivia River back towards our marina, so that's what we did.  We made it about half way up the river at pretty good speed under sail, but then lost our wind and had to furl the sails and motor back to our dock.  This time we tied up to the end slip because Alwoplast was launching the second in the Atlantic 47 line and they needed the slip closest to shore where we had been tied up for the past couple of months.  

Well, that's the report for today.  We're supposed to have good weather for the next few days so we will try to do some additional exploring and will report on what we find—hopefully, no more mold and lots of sights and critters.

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.