55:57.638S 067:13.491W

Spindrift
David Hersey
Fri 8 Feb 2008 12:19

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.

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