June 15 2009
Hello everybody,
Since our last long mail a lot has happened. After that mail we decided to go to Tortel because the weather was not looking good to cross the Golfo de Penas.
After a nice day in Tortel we were able to make arrangements to cross the Argentinian border to renew our visa. But that night we got a very heavy storm with violent williwaws while at anchor. Before we knew it our anchor was dragging for the first time in our life. We were just able to move before we hit the boardwalk. Although it was not raining we became wet because the williwaws were sucking water out of the sea. The water was smoking.
There was not much room to find another place because the north bay is very shallow and the other one very deep. So we motorred around a bit in the pitchdark in the vicinity of two anchored yachts on moorings with their anchorlights on.
The Armada advised us to anchor again north of the yachts but it was very shallow there. After two more attempts we achored in 8 m. with 50 m. of chain. We kept the radar on to see if we were dragging and stayed up all night. During the heavy gusts we eventually dragged another 40m and were floating in only 3 m of water.
The next morning we left rapidly in a heavy rainstorm and it turned out that the anchor and chain came up completely clean. So it must have been thin mud. The anchor has never dragged; not even in 45 knots of wind.
We did not want to leave the boat unattended to go to Argentina under these circumstances.
We went back to Canal Messier to wait for favourable weather and there it turned out that our anchorwinch motor was burnt. So then we had a problem. Because also the manual retrieval broke again like in Ushuaia. It is a very flimsy construction with only two pawns and springs. You would expect better from Lewmar.
Anyway.
After three days a nice weather-window turned up to go north and we decided to skip the whole Chonos Archipelago and go straight to Marina Quinched near Castro (Chiloë) because we could not anchor safely anymore. In this marina we could moor on the pontoon and have the electric motor rewound.
This all worked out fine and we had a good 420 mile trip with mild SW winds. The anchorwinch works again and we rented a car to see the island.
After a NW storm has passed tonight we intend to go slowly to Puerto Montt.
We will have time then to visit the interior and visit Wolfgang from the Patagonia Net in Villarica, May be we can do some skiiing on the Vulcano there.
The 2nd of August we leave for Vigo (Spain) to visit Erich and Erika in Galicia. On the 10th we will continue to Amsterdam to welcome a new grandson around the third of September.
On the 30th of October we will fly back again to continue oour trip north to Peru and Ecuador. As itlooks now we will pass the Panama Canal around November 2010 and continue to Europe to do some sailing there and look for a house to live in.
Love,
Peter and Paula