Monday, January 23, 2012

3 more islands

On January 20th, we headed back down the 2 canals from the Chilean lodge to continue our southern explorations. On our way, we spotted one of the very few waterfalls, which surprised us, as we expected by the rainy reputation of this area to see more in all the surrounding hills and mountains.

By 20:15, we set anchor at Isla Orestes (S45°02.310' W073°27.782') with Sea Turtle's stern tied to a tree. This is a very pretty, tiny, protected cove and Jordan trolled in the dinghy fishing for awhile with no luck. We then watched a fabulous sunset with amazing reflections on the water...

Me taking a photo of Jordan taking a photo!

We left mid-morning on the 21st and stopped at Puerto Aguirre at Isla Las Huichas (S45°09.860' W073°31.258') to buy some fruit, bread, and an ice cream cone for Jordan! Yes, it's still sunny and warm out.

This is a check-in port but the officials didn't seem at all interested in us - just glanced at our papers and waved us off! You can jerry-jug fuel here but it has been reported to be dirty.

Friendly locals directed us to a "restaurant" where we had lunch in a family's home. As the woman prepared spaghetti, soup, and salad, her husband and another fellow sat down to eat with us with a big screen TV a few feet away.

We then continued motoring south on glassy seas with winds of 0 to 3.5 knots. We motored through rock infested islets, anchoring in a secure cove off Isla TraiguĂ©n (S45°36.775' W073°47.616') but not before I had rock-watch-duty on the bow as we pulled in. Again, we were greeted to this cove by a couple of dolphins. Secured at 20:30.

We left early on the 22nd (08:30) as we knew we had a long run to make that day. At first, we had no wind then 5 to 15 knots on the nose, but with the current, we were hitting up to 8 knots. But by early evening, we were only doing 0.2 knots with the counter-current and washing machine tide waves. And we were in a treacherous pass.

We finally made it to our intended anchorage at 20:30 hidden behind a string of rocky islets (S46°24.230' W073°47.802') in the fjord Estero Elefantes. It was windy an hour later and the clouds were completely socked in but we had a good hook holding.

Tomorrow will be an exciting and long-awaited day...

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