Spray Was Here

We got the perfect day to enter the Straits of Magellan. And what a notable day it was, to reach this legendary bit of water.

The Faro Fairway lighthouse keeper was courteous and friendly when I hailed him on the VHF as we sailed by. I wished, not for the first time, that my Spanish was up to being chatty on the radio. When we first arrived at Puerto Profundo we heard him reading the weather over the radio while a kid made a ruckus in the background. How intriguing to sail by their island now and to see that they had quite a bit of room to run around, and to wonder what family life might be like in that remote place. It was calm enough for us to land and visit the lighthouse, but the winter days are short and we wanted to use every hour of good weather for getting into the Straits, so we traveled on.

The sun cleared the clouds on the horizon to illuminate the snowy mountains on either side as we made the turn into the Strait. Who couldn't feel the moment? This was the very stretch of water where Magellan gave the Pacific Ocean its name.

The sun was enough to get the boys in the cockpit, so I had the rare treat of their company as we motored deeper into the Straits. A passing container ship hailed us and asked, very nicely, just what the heck we were doing there in the winter, anyway.

And as a final touch, we tied in for the night in Puerto Angosto, where Joshua Slocum anchored the Spray on his second attempt to leave the Straits of Magellan behind him.

Slocum was here for something like a month, and made six unsuccessful attempts to set off from this spot before he finally got the weather to get away.

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We got no internet, no no.
We're as out of touch as we can be,
Yes, yes.

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