Beth and Evans

19 September 2013 | Mills creek
06 August 2013 | smith cove
04 August 2013 | cradle cove
31 July 2013 | Broad cove, Islesboro Island
24 July 2013 | Maple Juice Cove
06 June 2013 | Maple Juice Cove, Maine
02 June 2013 | Onset, cape cod canal
20 May 2013 | Marion
18 May 2013 | Marion
16 May 2013 | Mattapoisett
10 May 2013 | Block ISland
02 May 2013 | Delaware Harbour of Refuge
16 April 2013 | Sassafras River
01 April 2013 | Cypress creek
06 March 2013 | Galesville, MD
20 August 2012 | South River, MD
09 August 2012 | Block Island
06 August 2012 | Shelburne, Nova Scotia
20 July 2012 | Louisburg
18 July 2012 | Lousiburg, Nova Scota

Sailing North in the Chilean channels

14 April 2002 | Marina del Sur, Puerto Montt, Chile
Hello everyone! After a bit over two months spent sailing into the wind and against the current in the Chilean channels, we have returned to civilization. We have been luxuriating in long hot showers, delicious meals prepared by somebody else, sending and receiving mail and having a choice of food beyond what was on board the boat when we left Ushuaia! We have yet to re-acclimate to carrying money, to motorized vehicles whizzing by us, and to the people crowding the markets and sidewalks. We also haven't gotten used to seeing garbage in the water and smelling diesel fumes, paint, varnish, raw sewage and the other thousands of smells we hardly noticed before being in the channels. We really did see land untouched by man's hand or turned to his purposes, still pristine, untamed and majestic. Dolphins escorted us into and out of almost every anchorage, sea lions played with us when we took the dinghy out to explore, and a dozen different species of seabirds fed in flocks of hundreds over seething shoals of fish.

While I can't even begin to capture two months spent in the channels in a short update, a couple of days in late February may help to give some sense of what it was "really like." Monday, February 25th, found us in the outer harbor of Bahia Welcome, secured in a cove only twice the width of our beam with shorelines from all four corners and anchors set off the bow and the stern, having sat out an "aviso de malo tiempo" - advisory of bad weather - calling for 50 knots with gusts in excess of 70 knots. But aside from some halyards rattling at the masthead, a few gusts off the hills and wind- whipped water flowing out of the inner harbor 300 yards off our bow, we thought the bad weather had never materialized. That morning, we woke to glassy calm in the anchorage and decided we had been sitting long enough.

It took us well over an hour to get all the lines back aboard and the anchors up, and while we were working a pod of a dozen Peale's dolphins played around the boat, throwing themselves out of the water to see what we were doing. Given the calm conditions in the cove, we expected to find little or no wind. But when we came out from behind the point of land between our anchorage and Canal Smyth, we found the channel covered in a seething mass of whitecaps and spindrift. We headed out anyway, and even put the sail up and tried to make some headway, but within ten minutes of entering the canal we had given it up and headed back in the anchorage. The wind was blowing straight down the channel at a steady 28 true, gusting over 30, and in combination with a foul current we weren't able to make more than two or three knots over the ground. We now realized how incredibly well we had been protected from the north and northwest. Given the mirror calm in our little corner that morning, we must have had in excess of 40 knots over the preceding days to feel anything at all.

We got up early the next day and headed out to find almost calm conditions, though what wind there was still blew straight down the channel at us. We made some good miles before the wind came up, not from the southwest as forecast, but out of the northwest once again, and we found ourselves motor sailing into the usual 20-25 knots. The rest of the day turned into a depressing slog as the wind continued to build and we fought to make headway against both wind and current in pouring rain that limited visibility to a couple hundred feet. By mid-afternoon I was really wondering why were down here and dreading every one of the six hundred miles or so we still have to cover to reach Puerto Montt. Evans's mood was little better than mine as we entered Canal Sarmiento and tacked slowly along the coast of Isla Carrington, taking advantage of the slight lee beneath every headland to reduce the wind from 30-35 knots apparent to something under thirty. When we closed with land, we could see tangled forests climbing the rocky headlands studded with dozens of waterfalls whose tops disappeared into the low clouds, but even these failed to lift my mood. All I could think of was how pretty this channel would be in the sunshine, how beautiful the snow-capped mountains of the Cordillera Sarmiento that runs behind the island we were tacking along, and how depressing it was to go day after day without seeing anything.

When we closed with our anchorage, we were both weary and ready to be done with the day. Caleta Moonlight and Shadow, named for the yacht that first explored it, lies at the top of Isla Piazzi, just before Estrecho Nelson, one of the major passages from the Pacific Ocean into the canals. We tacked across the channel to Piazzi and started running along it looking for the narrow entrance to the anchorage, a two-mile long, almost totally straight loch. I use the Scottish term because this felt so much like Scotland - not the high mountains and bare rock of the islands we had been seeing for the last ten days or so, but low and soft and green.

The entrance lies between a small island and the southern headland at the mouth of the loch. The passage through would have been terrifying if we hadn't been to Puerto Hoppner on Staten Island. About fifty feet wide with a few rocks on the island side, at high tide we had to rely on the kelp to tell us where the shoal areas were. As we were passing through this narrow channel, I saw something in the water ahead of us. It disappeared and then flew out of the water at us - a pair of Peale's dolphins greeted us as we came through the entrance. They accompanied us up the narrow channel, throwing themselves out of the water completely, turning on their sides as they fell to see us as we motored by.

Their antics revived us, as did the incredible beauty of the long loch we had entered - not the awesome, mind-boggling, majestically indifferent beauty of most of Patagonia but the soft, welcoming, intimate beauty of Scotland or Ireland. It felt as if we were motoring through a high alpine river, not a sea level channel. Within two boat lengths on either side of us, water lapped against rocks and overhanging mats of mossy vegetation and gnarled roots of the tangled jungle of beech trees. The open feel of the terrain and the wide sky overhead, after weeks of being closed in by high mountains on all sides, made us feel light and free. The rain had stopped and the sky was brightening, and we could see the channel running out of sight ahead of us. As we approached the pool where we were supposed to anchor, we saw an eruption from the water ahead of us. Five dolphins threw themselves straight up in the air, then crashed sideways into the water throwing up huge splashes. After that, they swam rapidly toward us all five abreast, surfacing in perfect synchrony, then slowed and milled around the boat while we dropped the anchor and settled back on it.

We had almost forgotten the ease and simplicity of just anchoring. Not having to launch the dinghy, take stern lines ashore, position the boat, worry about it swinging into land and all the rest of the rigmarole when we're tired and hungry after too long a day of too much wind and too much rain and too much cold - just drop the anchor, put on the snubber, back down on it and go below. So simple

In the absolute silence after Evans shut off the engine, I could hear the dolphin's sharp inhalations and several different birds calling in the trees around the anchorage. Not a breath of air moved across the water. We were totally protected by the low trees on every side. I turned to look back down the channel behind us and was surprised to realize the sky had cleared almost completely. For only the second time we could see the high, glacier studded peaks of the Sarmiento range about fifteen miles to the west of us. The silver sheet of mirror calm water reflected the vegetation on either side, which in turn framed a snow-capped peak rising above the rocky mountains in front of it.

"I'll sleep well tonight," Evans said.

We plan to spend the next few months here in Puerto Montt. I have an office overlooking the marina, and I'm already into a major writing project. Evans will be going back to the States in mid-May, and then will be getting Hawk ready to go south. We think we'll be heading back down the channels starting in September. After working so hard to get here, we're looking forward to going with the wind, taking our time and seeing the places we liked most or didn't get to on the way north and spending more time in the Beagle Channel.

Beth and Evans s/v Hawk
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Vessel Name: Hawk