7/2/08 Midnight
We had a very pleasant early dinner
ashore and left around 8:30 pm. The tiny restaurant had a
commanding view of the Beagle Channel.
It was a set menu with Beagle Soup and I was assured the bits of meat in
the soup were in fact beef not beagle. The fish course was a local large
white oven baked fish with wonderful moist flesh. I never had a fish quite like
it. The tinned fruit with a dollop
of cream for dessert did let the side down and I drew the line at making my own
instant coffee at the table. The patron was very jolly and a good time was had
by all, helped of course by the fact that Gabriele and Paulo speak fluent
Spanish.
It looks like we’ll motor all of the 80
miles to Cape Horn and arrive at 6AM, in fact we might be motoring
a good chunk of the Drake
Passage. We had a Dolphin visit a little while
ago; unusually they played
amidships so we didn’t have to leave the cockpit to admire them. The
Chilean navy is tracking us and they call on the VHF quite often checking our
position, intended routes and ETAs.
We seem to be the only yacht around here at the moment and watching us
must give them something to do.
8/2/08
8:30
We did motor the whole way and arrived
a little after 6. Grey spitting a
little bit of rain. Gabriele and I were the first shore party. The lighthouse
keeper is a young military family man with 2 daughters one 5 and the other one
1. They spend a year here. The Cape is still heavily mined but
soon the presidents of both Argentina
and Chile will
come here for a peace ceremony and a clean up operation will commence. He was
very chatty and insisted we sign the guest book. He offers a choice of
three different passport stamps and I was a trifle dismayed to find a mini
souvenir shop. The last four days
here were extremely windy and he recorded gusts of up to 102 knots. Can’t say I’m sorry to have missed
that. He showed us his computer
screen and every time were we contacted on the VHF an e-mail about us was
distributed, so he could see us coming with out bothering with
radar.
I think we still have a Fleet Connection so
I’m going to try to send a few pix, including our vegetable
garden.