Hello everyone - It has been a very long time since we have sent out a Hawk update. We arrived here in Puerto Montt in mid-April and here we have stayed, except for one extended visit back to the States each, since. We have watched fall and winter and spring in Puerto Montt, and they all look alike - endless rain with gales once a week or so. But the weather has actually been much less tempestuous than in Ireland, and we've enjoyed the respite after so many miles sailed in our 2001/2002 season.

Despite the current forecast for ten days of rain, highs in the low fifties and a gale here or there, spring is slowly arriving in Chile. In the next day or two we will be leaving our winter berth and getting back underway, heading south toward the Beagle channel and the Horn for our second visit to the bottom of South America. It unfortunately seems to be an 'el nino' spring with more rain than normal (read "constant deluge") but at least it seems like we will have the winds with us rather than the constant head winds we had coming North last fall.

It will take us about three months to get back down to Puerto Williams. We hope to arrive in time to share Christmas with a number of friends at the Chilean naval base yacht club, the half-sunken supply ship, the Micalvi. In the meantime, our e-mail contact will be pretty limited. We have organized it so we can send regular Hawk updates, so expect to hear from us once a month or so. But we will not have direct access to this e-mail address again until we reach the Beagle in December. Beth's dad will look over any e-mails and let us know by Inmarsat C if there are any really urgent ones. We'll let you know when we're back in cyber-cafe land and look forward to hearing all about your adventures then.

We hope you all have a good season, be it summer or winter in your part of the world, and we'll share our voyage south when we're able.

Fair winds! Beth and Evans s/v Hawk, Leaving Puerto Montt