Day 5 - Welcomed by Dolphins
13 December 2011 | 42 28.7'S:73 45.3'W, Isla de Chiloe / Castro
Zia
It was a long day of mostly motoring as the winds were light. Before leaving Est´ro Quintupeu, we put the port bow of Hekla in the thundering waterfall, a kind of baptism I guess. The good thing about motoring is that there will be hot showers. The bad things are the noise, the smell, and the weird vibration. I much prefer the way Hekla feels under wind power. We did sail a bit. When we were going along at a nice eight to nine knots we were flagged down by a fisherman. Did we want to buy fish? We caught on the wind as we sailed by. It took as awhile to slow down enough for them to motor up to us. We bought a four plus kilo Congrio. The fisherman skinned and cleaned it mostly. He handed it over to Sven by it's jaw, head still intact. Then the younger fisherman pulled out his camera and started taking pictures of Hekla. She is an item of fascination wherever she goes. Thank god for Sven. I had no idea what to do with the huge fish. He cut it's head off, filleted it, and we put some in the freezer for later, including the spine and things for making stock, and then Sven showed me how to make a typical Chilean dish. It goes like this: slice a half an onion on bottom of pan with some butter, lay fish fillets on top with salt, put some longaniza sausage pieces on top of the fish, cover with two sliced tomatoes, sprinkle with more salt and lots of dried oregano. Cook covered until well steamed maybe 20 minutes? Then add a layer of soft cheese. Cover and cook until cheese melts. Serve hot with steamed potatoes. Really really delicious. I forgot to write the name of it down, so Sven if you read this please tell me, or I can wait until when you sail with us again. We went into town that evening for drinks and ice cream. Castro has a lovely main square with palm trees and Christmas Lights which we walked around a time or two before heading back to Hekla. For me the highlight of the day were the dolphins that welcomed us into Castro. Around 7:30 in the evening I noticed them swimming along with us. From the bow I could see five to seven swim under the bows and then jump out of the water in pairs alongside Hekla. I believe that these white bellied ballet swimmers are dusky dolphins, Lagenorhynchus obscurus for all you biologists and scientific minded out there. I am quite content, without knowing their name, to delight in their joyful frolicking.