My blogging, rather my lack of blogging, has gotten utterly out of control; it is a snowball effect. I just never seem to be caught up. There is no excuse other than we have been busy, busy, busy; busy sailing, driving, and flying all over the Americas.

So, where to start...."let's start at the very beginning...", that's witty. You know, Do Re Me, The Sound of Music, come on people. I bet that song is stuck in your head now.

The beginning in this case would be sometime around the middle of February; yeah I know, it is already the beginning of September:

We were finally in Chile, it has been our big dream for the past year and a half and the reality was just starting to sink in. We had not thought much beyond our arrival, other than we wanted to slowly cruise the fjords working our way south to Ushuaia. We had not given any thought to the time frame or how the weather would play into our plans, we just had a general idea. For the immediate future we were looking forward to visitors and we would worry about the rest once they left. Our first visitors were Tom and Susan in March and then Kurt and Kelci in May.

We spent our first month in Puerto Montt at Marina Oxxean. We had some small repairs from our month at sea and some things that still need to be competed from our time in the yard. We also spent time exploring Puerto Montt and getting to know the others on the dock.


View of Volcán Calbuco (the one that blew) from Marina Oxxean.

Marina Oxxean is a small marina with about fifteen boats, all Chilean except for us. The first person we met was Sebastian. He is the captain of Altiro, the sailboat docked right next to us. He and Clint hit it off right away. He understands a little English and of course Clint speaks no Spanish but for whatever reason they seem to communicate quite well. He has given Clint the courage to try to Spanglish and not care if he makes sense or not, it was just what he needed. Duke is also Sebastian's biggest fan. It is Sebastian doing a cameo in Duke's traditional courtesy flag photo-op.

Sebastian joined us often in the evening for cocktails and twice he kidnapped us and took us on road trips with his amiga Bernie. I would not dare say "novia", I have learned the hard way that novia does not mean girlfriend as I was taught in Spanish class, but actually means something much more significant like betrothed. We had to call an evening quits one night when I introduced her as his novia, he literally ran from our boat ranting about how she would not be happy until she had a ring on her finger....I guess there was more going on there than I realized. Speaking a foreign language can be so tricky. I am diverging.....


Sebastian, Bernie, and me in Fruitillar.


Lake Llanquihue, the largest lake in Chile.


The amigos, Sebastian and Clint.


Volcán Osorno.

Another treasured friend we made at Marina Oxxean is Raul. Raul lives in Puerto Montt and has travelled all over the world on sailboats. He has cruised the southern waters of Chile for over forty years. He has been an invaluable source of local knowledge and has become a good friend. We have spent many evenings over a bottle of wine listening to his wonderful tales. He is getting ready to set sail for Panama and we are going to miss him greatly.

I could go on and on with stories about the genuine kindness of the Chilean people. Within our first couple of days at the marina we had made good friends and received help from complete strangers. Our first experiences with Chile were not its awe inspiring beauty; in fact the Andes were covered in fog when we first arrived. What first took our breath away in Chile were the people.

When Tom and Susan arrived in March we had still not explored the waters near Puerto Montt. We received lots of local knowledge and suggestions of what we must see. There is simply just too much to see in two weeks and we did not want to make it a fast-paced vacation. Tom and Susan work really hard and were looking forward to some down time. We also did not want to stray too far from Puerto Montt because the weather here changes quickly and can be fierce and we did not want to be worried about getting them back for their flight home.


Mr. R. Slinger and Ms. S. Wow.

We decided we would concentrate our time in the fjords closest to Puerto Montt and then if time allowed spend a couple of days seeing Chiloé Island. Well, we were so blown away by the beauty of the fjords we never made it to Chiloé and I do not think anyone was disappointed. I do not think Tom and Susan could have packed more into a two week vacation: sailing, kayaking, natural hot springs, camping, seals and dolphins, fly fishing, GIANT salmon slaying, a plummeting barometer followed by a BIG spanking and most importantly a proposal. Yes that's right Tom proposed to Susan!


It's not just an anchor any more, we tie off from at least two points.


Natural thermal pools where Tom popped the question, on his knee no
less.


The happy couple.


Heading out for the big fishing expedition...


Ray with the one that did not get away.


Just beautiful.


We came upon these guys having some fun and sunning themselves. There had to have been 100 of them. We actually smelled them before we saw them.


Do you see him?


There he is. Very A River Runs Through It, don't you think?


I can't repeat what she is saying but it did become the infamous slogan of the trip. She was not fly fishing!!!


I forgot to mention bonfires.


You never get tired of seeing dolphins playing at the bow.


Ever.


Viva Chile!

While Tom and Susan were with us our friends Giamba, Vale, and Ray on Angelique II caught up with us. We had last seen them in Isla Isabela, Galapagos. We departed a week ahead of them and came straight to Puerto Montt. They stopped off at Easter Island. We regret not having done the same, especially after hearing their great stories. They happened to time their visit with the island's annual festival which celebrates their history and cultural. Check out their website www.thelifetimecruise.com. You can also see their film which captures Clint, Tom, and Ray's Great Salmon Adventure https://youtu.be/AHk8E44DHAI. If you just want to see the part about the Great Salmon Adventure, scroll the video forward to 19:30.....good stuff!!!


Dinner aboard Angelique II having a fabulous Italian feast.

After Tom and Susan left we had a month before Kurt and Kelci were to show up. We were so completely blown away by what we had just experienced we could not wait to see more. We headed back to the fjords for some more unspoiled nature and then explored Chiloé Island. Chiloé and mainland Chile are only separated by a mile wide channel but in many ways they seemed like completely different worlds to us. I will share more about our time in Chiloé in my next post. If you watched Angelique II's video you already got to see some of Chiloé.


Heading back towards the Andes, there is already a lot more snow.


Kayaking the fjords.


Collecting fresh mussels for dinner.


One of our favorite spots.


My mountain man!


Spectacular!

We returned to Puerto Montt a couple of days before Kurt and Kelci's arrival. Since arriving to southern Chile our weather had been sunny and dry. February and March are supposed to be nice, it is summer. Come April the weather starts to change and by May the rainy season should be in full swing. We were just entering the second week of May and we had seen very little rain; that was all about to change and just as Kurt and Kelci were arriving, not good.

One of the biggest challenges for us cruising this area is going to be the weather. The whole area is dominated by fronts that bring a lot of wind and rain. In the fjords the wind is funneled and intensified. It is not unusual to get 50 knot gusts from any direction at any time. It is critical that we are constantly receiving current weather reports and monitoring our barometer. The barometer being the most important tool because it is real time, not a forecast; all a forecast can do down here is let you know something is coming the barometer tells you how quickly and how strong it is going to be and when things are starting to improve.


This bar graph shows a very large swing in the Barometric pressure, down and up in a 1 day period. It is the fast up swing that really gets you!


The weather forecast for the kids' visit was not promising. We wanted to share with them all the things we did with Tom and Susan; unfortunately the rain and wind did not allow us to re-create quite the same experiences. We still had a great time and managed to pack a lot of amazing stuff into our two weeks: kick ass sailing, high seas anchoring (sorry Kelci), white water kayaking, picnicking, lots and lots of Aggravation (the game) (sorry Kurt), hot springs and a lot of wine. We also got to introduce them to our friend Dwyer.

Dwyer is a fellow cruiser in his twenties who single-handed his 30' boat, Rascal, here all the way from the state of Washington. We first met Dwyer via an email introduction by a mutual friend. We had just completed our passage from The Galapagos to Puerto Montt and he was preparing to make the same trip. Through a couple of emails we shared our experience and what we did or would do differently and agreed to meet for a beer when he arrived. Well, Dwyer pulled up to the dock at Marina Oxxean a couple of days after Tom and Susan left. Clint was the first person Dwyer had talked to in over 30 days at sea!!! We knew it was him the minute we saw the little boat with the really big US and Chile flags. He is a super cool guy with a great story. Check out his blog at www.voyageoftherascal.com.


Karma & Rascal tied up together waiting for the blow.


There finally here!! I love this picture.


Clint's birthday BBQ at the thermals.


Wine float.


Picnic at our secret lake. We had to sit on the railing of the deck because the water was up at least 10'.


The same spot the month before. Clint is taking the picture from the deck. I told you it had rained a lot.


Celebrating our survival down the rapids.


The water was so high we had to use the kayaks to shuttle back and forth across the walking path to the thermals. In the forefront is the railing for the walkway.


Dinner?


We really enjoyed meeting Kelci. She is a no nonsense southern girl who has her head on straight and knows how to keep Kurt in line, love it.

We returned to Puerto Montt and saw Kelci off on her flight back to the States and we saw Kurt off on his Great South American Adventure. After his stay with us he spent another four weeks exploring southern Patagonia, Ushuaia, Buenos Aires, and other exotic places and hiking the W Circuit in Torres Del Paine National Park. He has definitely got the adventurer spirit, awesome!


Off he goes...

Our time with Kurt and Kelci made us rethink our plans. Originally, as soon as they left we were going to start slowly making our way south. Because of all the rain and fog, what they saw (I should say what they did not get to see) and what Tom and Susan saw were two totally different things. We were afraid that if we left now we would miss a lot of it because it would be shrouded in snow and fog and we would be hiding down below to get out of the torrential rain. We worked really hard to get here and we wanted to experience all of it at its best; plus we had already decided we were going to spend a couple of years here so there is no hurry. We decided to wait until September when the worst of the winter would be over.

With that decided, we had some time to kill and we would rather it not be holed up in the boat trying to stay dry. We decided we would do some land travel and do some skiing, it is winter after all. We started looking into renting a camper and where all we wanted to travel. Meanwhile, I received an email from my uncle who was hosting a family reunion for my dad's side of the family. He wanted to bring Clint and I to the Reunion to surprise my mom and dad, wow! I could not believe my eyes when I read his email; talk about things changing in the blink of an eye. Fortunately because of the change in our plans we were able to go.

We flew back to the States in the middle of June. We spent a couple of weeks at the cottage in Charlevoix, Michigan with Clint's parents and Courtney who flew in from Colorado. We managed to keep our whereabouts a secret from my family and we surprised my mom and dad at the Newark airport. It was an emotional reunion and an unbelievable surprise. It was a short visit with them and the rest of my dad's family in Buckhill Falls, Pennsylvania; then it was back to Chile.


Out for a cocktail cruise and dinner on Lake Charlevoix.


"Turkey in a Can" on Holy Island.


My Courtney.


My dad and me. I don't know why but we never seem to take pictures when we are with my family. I think we are too busy eating, drinking, and bullshitting.

Well this only brings me up to July. What have we been doing since July? I am getting to it....

Stay tuned.