Oh Sunny Day!
10 November 2019
Annette
Yesterday we woke up to a cloudless sky and ice on the decks. It was a day to brighten our spirits, warm our bones and dry our clothes. As the result of captain Mike carefully monitoring the forecasts and strategically planning our stops, we were anchored just around the corner from the glacier, Pio XI, for this beautiful day.
We struggled into our matching red dry suits, filled our back packs with a camera, binoculars, the drone, snacks and water and piled into our dingy. The 4 miles we motored over to the face of the glacier were glorious. We got to behold and enjoy the unobstructed view above and beyond the massive blue ice field flowing out of the mountains, which are normally shrouded in low lying clouds and fog, but today was clear as far as the eye could see. And not another soul in sight. Our hearts were singing praises for this reward, after the relentless clouds and rain.
Pio XI is no longer the tidal glacier it, until very recently, was. There are wide mud flats and gravel mounds built up in front of almost the entire glacier face. We were careful not to get to close to the ice face but did pull the dingy up on a mud flat in order to get off and explore around. We didn't get far before Mike sank knee deep in quicksand. He was lucky to pull out with both boots still attached to his feet, thanks to lessons he learned from watching westerns on TV.
After that it was decided we would explore with the drone instead. Mysteriously the drone malfunctioned in midair then crashed landed into the mud. Surprisingly after a hard impact and a few tumbles it landed upright and made its way back home to us on autopilot, but the gimballed camera was trashed. After countless crashes and close calls, sadly the damage this time is beyond repair.
Since the tide was coming up quickly and our attempts to go exploring were foiled we gathered up some margarita ice and made our way back to the anchorage. With plenty of daylight and blazing sunshine we raised anchor and carried on back down the canal, taking in the many glaciers and pinnacles that were hidden from us previously by clouds and fog on our way up. By the time we arrived to our next anchorage, 4 hours later, it was overcast and rainy once again, but we had had that rarest of things in Patagonia, a sunny day, and we were able to toast it with margaritas made with glacier ice.