Time's Up

La cena

I suppose that it's inevitable that we would find ourselves leaving Puerto Williams, and Chile, with a few things undone.

I had really meant to take a picture of the family in front of the Yelcho, the boat that rescued the crew of the Endurance from Elephant Island - the bow of the Yelcho is set up as a sort of monument in Puerto Williams.  Never got around to it.

Likewise, Alisa had meant to make empanadas with Francis and Mauro (in pics above and below) before we left.  We almost made that one, but then the right weather for leaving put us in final departure mode and we had to cancel.

The Micalvi

I meant, too, to write at some point about some of the social nights at the Micalvi.  The bar is closed, but the ship is still open to sailors for socializing, and we had some great nights there, rubbing elbows with sailors from a great swath of nations who were all united in some vision of the same quest that had brought us all to that point.

Those get-togethers were a phenomenon of the winter.  When summer came around people started to come through on a quick schedule, and the social cohesion of the scene disappeared.

Nick's 60th

I never got around to taking a picture of the Alaskan flag that we left, either.  Elias and I put the flag, with our name and home port on it, up on the wall of the Micalvi on our very last day there.  It joined a host of strangers' flags, and a couple flags with familiar names (below).

If you stop by the Micalvi, make sure that it's still hanging there for us.  It's the only Alaskan flag, and in our haste we could only find three tacks for hanging it on the wall.

Cape Horners

The picture above (two giant petrels) is by Elias.  

The pictures of his parents below are also by Elias.  He achieves a certain documentary authority from his perch under the dodger. 

Yes, I'm afraid that's how we really looked.  We were trying to get into Caleta Martial, on Isla Herschel, in the Wollaston Islands.

The Wollaston Islands are the archipelago where Cape Horn is found.

We had a forecast for 20 knots of wind on this day, but got much much more at the end of the day.  We ended up going to windward under three reefs and staysail to make Bahía Arquistade and our anchorage at Caleta Martial.

We put up some points on the Unintended Drama Board (I won't go into details) and also managed to strand another aft lower shroud.  Sigh.

But everything ended up OK.  Meanwhile, Elias was as cool as can be, watching his parents at work - see the selfie below:

Visiting Cape Horn was never something I was particularly interested in doing during our time in Tierra del Fuego.  I figured that rounding Cape Horn meant going from 50°S to 50°S in the open ocean, taking whatever weather came along.  Ever since I heard a motorboat owner at a beach potluck in the tropical South Pacific, talking oh-so-casually about his time at Cape Horn, I figured that the modern version, of harbor-hopping down to the Horn and sneaking around on a fair weather day, wasn't something that I needed to do.

Our track around Isla Hornos

But then Alisa (all praise!) said that she wanted to leave Chile behind without any regrets over things that we'd left undone.  And maybe it would be kind of fun to go see Cape Horn?

Elias latched on the idea, and I was very easy to convince.

So last Friday, with a reasonable forecast in hand, we made tracks for the Horn.

It was a fast trip, as we were eyeing the end of our visas and the time needed to prepare for the passage onwards to Uruguay.  The Wollastons are beautiful, and we could have spent a long time happily knocking around the area between Puerto Williams and the Horn.

But the summer is on, it's going to go quickly, and it's time that we want to be a bit goal-oriented about things.  So we came away with a quick visit to the Horn, which was good enough for us.

And, to whit, here are some crew portraits in front of that most famous landmark in the whole aqueous sphere:

Eric, meanwhile....We had very light tailwinds on the morning we were approaching the Horn, with a respectable swell running.  Which meant that Eric was seasick, and not too keen to get out of bed.

Alisa finally rousted him, held a bowl while he vomited, and put his raingear over his pajamas so that he could come up and collapse under a blanket under the shelter of the dodger.

So Eric rounded Cape Horn in his PJs.

The Cape Horn monument from seaward.  The wind had come up from the
northeast by this point, and made the anchorage at Cape Horn untenable,
so we couldn't have gone ashore even if we wanted to.  (Which we didn't.)

But Wait...

...there's more!

After a bit of a jaunt down-country, we find ourselves once again in Puerto Williams, tied up to the Micalvi (the Uttermost Yacht Club in the World).

The pace of the summer season is gaining steam, with the million-dollar, Antarctic-going charter yachts awake and beginning to do their thing.

Next to us is a Big Green Sled that has been chartered as support vessel for some guy who is famous from the America's Cup (Never heard of him.  Barely heard of it.) who is going to be the First Person In The World To Sail A Tiny Little Hydrofoiling Catamaran Around Cape Horn.

(To which we think: that's nothin'.  Our five-year-old did it in his PJs.)

We haven't met him, but the Lucky Winner of the contest put on by the Sponsoring Sunglass Company, who is going to accompany the Famous America's Cup Guy on the Hydrofoiling Catamaran - we did meet him.  Lovely guy, from "Southern Bavaria" (is there any other kind?), who seemed to learn quite serviceable Spanish just for the trip.  He helped Elias and me launch our dinghy.

The crew of the Green Sled are from Tassie, and know some of our peeps.  Plus the Famous Guy and his support team are all French, which gives the Bold Endeavor just enough of Je ne sais quoi to keep it from being laughable.

We're starting to see what all the old Patagonia hands were saying back in July and August when they explained how much more they like winter...

But anyway!  We're enjoying the energy.  And now that we're back in internet world I can finish up with our calendar-worthy photos from our month in the Beagle Channel.

So, we pick up the narrative after the sensory delights of Seno Pia, east arm, and find the Galactics in the west arm, where the skies are grey and the sunshine is interrupted by a surprising amount of SNOW.

The boys love shoveling the decks.

But I wonder if they'll still love it in Alaska, when it's an everyday thing?

We finally got to use the ski goggles that we've been
carrying around...just the thing for keeping watch
in the driving snow...

Captain and cabin boy getting a line ashore, Estero Coloane.

I think that's a look that says he's happy to see beaver sign
- the fresh woodchips on the ground.

Family-friendly terrain in Coloane.

Eric!  It's right over there...

Magellanic horned owl!

Elias afterwards: Can you see how nervous I was in the picture?

Family and glacier snout.

The sun finds us again.

It was such a nice day that we are dinner in the cockpit for the first time
in a long, long time.

Estero Fouque.

Caleta Nutria, Estero Fouque.  An all-time favorite.

We got the perfect hiking day.  Alisa and Eric went up the hill partway.

Elias and I kept going up the ridge behind the anchorage. 
He was over the moon at all the icefall that we saw.

He's a great hiking companion.  We saw four "lifers" (new bird species) on this day, including the seed snipe he was gunning for.  You have no idea of the excitement.

Our high point.  Galactic is way down there in the lower right.

At the high point.

The Mothership

The next day in Estero Fouque.  This is the same shot that everyone gets.  But I'm glad we got it, too.

Shortly after this picture was taken, the crocodile went overboard.
Recovery was successful.

And, that was more or less our month in the Beagle.

Being distracted now both by the question of how we are riding against the Big Green Sled in the gale that has visited the anchorage, and the long list of tasks that awaits before we leave Chile, I think I'll let the pics speak for themselves.

Hot Dust

It's a very sensory memory.

Steering in Beagle Channel.
He's not much good at it.
But he is five.

Used to be, not so long ago, that if you went out and had a bit of an adventure, afterwards you'd entertain your friends back home with a slide show.

There was that smell of the dust burning on the hot lamp of the projector in the dark room.  Other motes of dust swimming through the cone of light reaching out to the screen.  The storytelling.  The license that the audience felt to offer wry commentary in the dark.

I realize that it's painfully unrealistic to be sentimental about things analog.  We must not even mourn books.  The only way is forward, and now that everything we have is files, there is nothing we have lost in the translation.

But, those slide shows were a big part of life in Alaska, way back in the 90's.  I was thinking about them when we were going through our pics from the jaunt around the Beagle Channel that we've just finished.

Beagle Channel

Larrikin.  Caleta Victor Jarra.

Midden, Caleta Victor Jarra.

Ashy-headed geese.

Caleta Ferrari, Bahía Yendegaia.  Friends of ours had stories of riding horses and butchering cattle here, but the place is now deserted.  

We were blessed on this trip by an unreasonable number of blue-sky days.  The westerly winds that could have made the trip westward along the canal trying were restrained.

Guanaco

Rufous-chested dotterel

Ventisquero Holanda, Caleta Olla

Brazo Noroeste, Beagle Channel

Ventisquero Holanda, Caleta Olla 

The western end of the Beagle Channel splits into two arms around Isla Gordon - the Brazo Noroeste and Brazo Sudoeste.  It is the most spectacular region in all of the Chilean canales.  Last time through, on the tail end of our trip south from Valdivia, we hurried along a bit to catch a flight out of Puerto Williams to visit family in the U.S.  And some of the caletas we wanted to visit were iced over.  This was our chance to see the place more thoroughly, at our leisure.

Manuel the fisherman

 In Caleta Olla we had a Polynesian-style session of reciprocal gift-giving with a centolla (king crab) fisherman named Manuel.  Smokes and wine went in one direction, and centolla in the other.  Manuel had the great gift of being able to dumb down his Spanish enough for us to converse.  We learned from him that the centolla fishermen stay out for five months at a stretch.  The owners of the boats keep about 60% of the catch, and the fishermen themselves make pitifully little for their pains.

After two visits from Manuel we had a complete surfeit of centolla.  Alisa came up with a range of new crab dishes.

Later, when we were fishing for centolla ourselves and I explained to Elias that we wouldn't keep any females we caught, he asked why we had accepted females (which are prohibited to catch) from Manuel.

Nothing like a kid to keep you honest.

Eggs and crab

Cleaning session

Crab soup

Crab cakes

Seno Pia was iced up when we tried to visit in July.  When we returned the conditions made up for that earlier disappointment.

Seno Pia (left) is where we began our glacier tourism.

We could have gotten pictures like this a hundred miles from our home in Kodiak.

But I'm glad we went to the trouble to come all the way down here to get these.

Glacier tour

Caleta Beaulieu, Seno Pia.  Fresh ice on the water but plenty of sun ahead.

How ' bout if we picnic here?  We got two spectacular condor fly-bys at this spot - maybe 15m and 10m(!) away from us.

I call this the concerned mom frown, and we get endless laughs about how it turns up again and again in our photos, even in idyllic-looking moments like this.  Someone has to keep our crew in order.  As often as not it's Alisa. 

Caleta Beaulieu

Seno Pia

Elias is good company in these places.

More soon.  But for just now, the weather has turned beatific and we have a fresh zarpe in hand, giving us permission to sally forth from Puerto Williams one more time...