Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Unexpectedly in Puerto Aguirre for Christmas Part 2

Continuing from the previous post, Karina had just traveled many days to meet me in Chacabuco.  I had left the boat in Puerto Aguirre and taken a small "launcha" on a 4 hour trip to Chacabuco.  Both of us were feeling the stress of planes, trains and automobiles over the holidays but it was nice to finally be in the same place after almost a month apart.

The next day in Chacabuco was spent calling around to the major marine stores in Puerto Montt and Santiago.  Thankfully the owners of each spoke excellent English and were both very helpful.  Unfortunately, neither had the parts we needed.  We then found out that our friend Steve on s/v Threshold in Puerto Montt would be flying to Florida for a day just before Christmas to pick up some parts for his boat.  If we could get the parts to his house in Florida on time, he’d bring them down for us.  Hooray!  The parts were ordered and arrived in Florida for pick up.

Steve is currently on his way there now and should be back on Christmas Eve.  We will return to the mainland on Dec 24th, spend the night in the lovely hotel Loberias del Sur in Chacabuco, then Karina will fly to Puerto Montt on Christmas Day to pick them up.  I will be negotiting the border crossing to try to restart the clock on my 90 day visa.  If all goes well, Karina will be on the return flight in the afternoon and we will enjoy a Christmas dinner at the hotel.  We will then return to Sea Rover on the 26th and prepare for departure soon thereafter.  Simple, right?
In the meantime, Sea Rover is sitting quietly at the dock and we are finishing up some boat projects and planning our trip down south.  We installed our 3 strings of Christmas lights on the boat a few nights ago, and were apparently the talk of the town the first night.  According to the marina manager, people from the town kept coming down to take pictures of the boat.  I guess we must be the first sailboat they’ve seen decorated with lights. Karina has also decorated the inside of the boat with my few Christmas decorations and more lights and so it looks festive.
One highlight this week was having Lee and Don’s cruise ship pass within 4.5 nm of the marina here in Puerto Aguirre.  They were on the tail end of their cruise around Cape Horn and weren’t expected to come anywhere near us.  However, the weather intervened and the cruise ship decided to take the inner route up the channels and passed right by us.  Unfortunately visibility was very poor so we didn’t see the actual ship, but we saw them on our AIS unit and had a good chat on the phone with them as they went by.  The wonders of modern technology.
In closing, we’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Very Happy New Year, wherever you are.  Hopefully our next blog post will be from a more remote anchorage further south.  Safe travels for all over the holiday season.
Merry Christmas!!!

1 comment:

  1. Gary and Katrina. Good to see your most recent post. That cable always made me nervous and I was always mindful that it might just do what it did to you. I could swear that there was and extra cable aboard but I am getting old and don't trust my memory and I am sure that if there was one there still Gary would know it. It might have even been an old cable. Although it was handy to have both controls on one handle I would have preferred them separate that on failure you only lost one function. Best of luck getting that fixed and getting on your way again and wishing you the very best for Christmas.

    Walt and Arlyene Dews

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