The final frontier!

After a frustrating two weeks in Puerto Eden, we were finally in sight of a good weather opportunity. An opportunity to do that final stretch from Puerto Eden to Puerto Montt. Finally a little longer voyage, and with sails(!). Only that little problem that the furler is a little... let's call it, not so really good at all! But would work!

We were to go over night from Puerto Eden to a small little anchorage, just before the golfo de penas. Caleta Ideal. Nothing much to expect on this route more than a "Angostura de ingles" a passage with current running about 4 knots. We hoped to time it good. Which we normally are super bad at. But this time it went smoothly. Anton had control over the helm while the captain was all over the VHF, in some 6-year old child type of Spanish!

"Securite, securite, securite! All ship, all ships, all ships, this is the Norwegian sailing vessel Colon.... "(And so on!) Something that was completely new for me to say into the radio. Super excited. So excited i did it in English afterwards, just to do it again. Considered Swedish as well. But figured this would do it. Going through this passage, which is highly (in these parts measured) trafficked. The Armada told us to say it. So we did! Voila! Made it! Boom! yeah. And we made the passage as well!

Caleta Ideal final anchorage before heading to Puerto Montt. Nice weather . Nice boat. Nice place with other words...

Unfortunately during the late evening we got hammered by swell and heavy wind, keeping us from doing more than 2 knots with engine. Which is a real ^&*% as we really needed all the drops we can squeeze out and not spend it on these kind of things. With a small caleta (Anchorage) just ahead of us we decided to just go there instead. But something was not feeling like it should, like it was just a gust of wind in this passage. So last minute, before sun really sat below the mountain range (which also meant the second option is gone, as we've learnt not to anchor when you cant see anything. Specially without an ecco-sounder...), I decided to continue. Wind was still there when we moved on, but swell had gone down. After a couple of hours we were back to normal speed and could make the entire jump at once. Which was great. Next day should've been more wind...

Well in Caleta ideal we just dropped the anchor in super calm and clear water. Waited for the opportunity to continue. Just a few days afterwards. The final 450 NM to Puerto Montt. I decided to go here in stead of Valdivia to prepare for the pacific. Not sure if it was the best move. Will get to that later. Just lay back and enjoy the rest.

Super good time to start your sail, is it not? Sun just rising over the mountains and your super excited about the day plus you know the day will last a super long time from now...

Forecast said somewhere around 10-20 knots of winds. From the south. We are headed north. And should be like that for the entire trip. Sweet!

We went out, waves a little too "dryer typed" to get any kind of sense from where they actually were coming. Golfo de Penas is known to build waves as high as 6-8 meters in rough conditions. This was not rough conditions so we had a sweet little start, pumping the engine and music and were headed out to open sea again!

Well... To summarize it all. We've got maybe 6 hours of really good sailing in. Fast, smooth and super enjoyable again to be sailing... Before the wind died and the rest of 3 days we spent motoring up the final bits of diesel our tanks could manage and arrived safely in Puerto Montt.

This guys steering this boat, is the only one we've spoken to during the channels that actually spoke a little of english. Deserves a spot here (Yeah, we tried talking to the research vessel Nathaniel Palmer as well... They called us "station" and said we were breaking up - you understand why there is no picture of them, right?

We came into the small river that all marinas (There are three here actually!) are located. Current pulling us in with 2-3 knots. Our electronical charts went all over the place, showed different things all three of them. In the middle of the night you think? Yep. Always. So we anchored up relatively close to the marina and were woken up multiple times by big ferries and other working boats driving past us. We did manage to anchor up more or less mid channel. Then we were finally allowed into the marina... But not of course allowed to step a fot on ground. QUARANTINE. Again?! What is going on? We've just self quarantined for about 2 months. It was later shown, just the day after, that this was the quickest quarantine we've done.

The marina is quite empty due to Covid, but just gives more room for some kind of view anyways...

However, real world have caught up. We've more or less been pretty allowed to travel, go around and to most things we wanted during this long stay in Chile. However, here, we are only allowed to town twice a week and only for 2 hours. great. Town is about Thirty minutes away. Leaving not much to find stuff we need.

Think these guys are the only ones working these days.... Weird that it feels like the boat is shiny. It's not...

So we are preparing and working on the boat. But it is a sloooow progress. Nothing is being done and we are not super excited about that either. Would be nice to work while we spending big money in a marina. But yeah, the world is the world these days i think...

Pretty much all the work we've done so far. Get "shit" out of the boat....

Looking forward to the open ocean now. Getting a little away from this. Anyways. Will come back with some more interesting oily faces, pictures and boat later when we do something! Just been here a week already.... anyways!

Cheerio!