Sequitur

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As the glacier retreated behind us, Edi reheated some of the leftover pizza and we enjoyed a delicious lunch. Meanwhile, the day's second load of laundry was in the washer-dryer.


We saw no traffic, in fact we had seen only one ship in the previous ten days. Then, as we reentered Canal Messier and turned southward, we spotted a ship across the channel. It was not displaying its AIS, and as we came closer, I realized it was the wreck of the steamship Capitan Leonidas aground on Bajo Cotopaxi, a mid-channel shoal with only 4.9 metres of water over it. The shoal was named after the English steamship, which had unfortunately found it in 1889.


At 1800 we came to 55 metres on the Rocna in 18 metres of water in the centre of a 150-metre basin in Caleta Sabauda. We were less than 3 miles from the entrance to Angostura Inglesa, the notorious winding rock and shoal-strewn narrows with flood and ebb currents of 6 to 8 knots and short-duration slacks. Sounds very much like the British Columbia waters in which I have boated in since the mid-60s, only more gentle. In some BC narrows, the currents run at more than 16 knots.


On Thursday morning when I got up to send our position report to the Armada, the barometer was down slightly from the previous evening. We dawdled over breakfast and puttered aboard waiting for the tide, then at 1045 we weighed and picked our way through the islets, rocks and shoals and out of Caleta Sabauda and headed toward English Narrows under thickening cloud.


As required, I called Puerto Eden Radio to report our ETA at Isla Medio Canal, and then again as required at 10 minutes before arrival. We passed through the most restricted sections of the pass almost exactly at low water, carrying our 7-knot speed, and we continued through the remainder of the narrows with the beginning of the flood.


At 1355 on 29 December we came to 35 metres on the Rocna in 11 metres of water in front of downtown Puerto Eden, a village of 176 people. It had taken us 692 miles of winding channels and 16 anchorages to cover the 462 miles from Puerto Montt. We are 487 miles from Cape Horn, and our route there is slightly less sinuous. Our latitude is 49º 07' 39" South, almost the antipodean equal to Vancouver's latitude.