Waiting

You'd be disappointed if you could just sail into the Straits of Magellan. What would the world be coming to?

We've been waiting in Puerto Profundo, just north of the Straits, for five days now.

When we were first tying in here, on a very gusty day, we toyed with the idea of parking Galactic on the side of the caleta, stern up on the rocks. Surely we'd be more secure in the gusts that way? But good sense prevailed, and we hastily enacted a plan to do what dragging anchor and inefficiently-angled shore lines could not, namely keep us off the rocks.

We shifted berths on the next morning, taking advantage of the calm hours to move to a caleta that had been too gusty to enter when we arrived, and which would give us a strait shot to the mouth of Puerto Profundo if we should feel like leaving in the dark.

For days now we've been watching the forecast promise high pressure and calm conditions for July first. The colors that go along with poor weather on the forecasts - the magenta of 30- or 40-knot winds, the puce-yellow of seven-meter seas - are nearly enough to make you seasick in the calmest anchorage. By contrast, good weather is depicted with the happy green of a 12-knot wind barb and the tranquil blue of a two-meter swell. Looking at that graphical promise of better conditions to come, I've started to imagine July first as a day of mai-tais on the lido deck, a day when we'll tie into palm trees in our chosen caleta.

We'll see what happens.

Meanwhile, we've been running the odd family experiment of spending all of our waking hours on top of each other in the saloon, which is quite cozy with the diesel heater glowing in the corner.

It would be easier if our boys (talking to you, Eric!) didn't fight all the time. Much easier. And it would be easier if, while they were squabbling, Alisa wasn't trying to teach them school and I wasn't sitting at the chart table, drowning out the family noise with the earbuds, and doing science on my laptop. But it's more or less always been thus for us. I'm very happy to have the science work, and we're generally quite happy with how the Tasmanian curriculum, as enriched by Alisa, is working for Elias. And when the boys decide to play nicely together and have an uproarious boy time, well, then we're in heaven.

We've also managed to get off the boat for a walk nearly every day, and for the boys to throw snowballs at each other, and at us.

That's one lesson I remember from mountain climbing in Alaska - weather days are much nicer if you manage to get out of the tent.

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

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