Caleta Ancha

Where Next?
Bob Williams
Sun 18 Apr 2010 22:39

Position: 54 56.88 S 070 46.56 W
At anchor Calita Ancha, Isla Burnt
Wind: WNW, F3-4 gentle breeze to moderate breeze
Weather: Snow, drizzle, a patch of sun, and hail. Cold.
Days run: 21 nm (30 nm sailed)

Today’s forecast looked pretty reasonable, for the wind that is, the rest of the weather leaves a bit to be desired. The morning’s weather fax was legible and agreed with the grib files I had download via the sat phone. I got out of my warm bunk a little earlier today, while it was still dark, so as to make the most of the increasingly shorter days as autumn marches on. The winds are supposed to be a little more favourable this time of year but it is certainly a trade off between wind and length of daylight and the cold. This morning as we weighed anchor it was snowing quite heavily, my first sail in the snow, I hope my last quite frankly but somehow I doubt it. The decks were covered in snow making things that little bit more hazardous, and of course visibility was lousy. I was already pretty wet from recovering the shore lines so it didn’t take long before I was feeling very much on the cold side. And the first tack for the day was a novelty, as the boom came across it shook all the snow of the mainsail and dumped quite a bit of it right on my head. Great!

Fortunately the weather did improve quite a bit during the day. We kept a nice sailing breeze for most of it with only one short patch of calm, the initial snow fall lasted for about an hour then the day was mostly clear, overcast with a weak sun at times trying to make itself felt, for which I was very grateful, as it made a huge difference to my temperature being outside for most of the day.

We approached this evening’s anchorage under sail and as we got closer to the bay an unexpected gust caught me by surprise which, with full sail up, caused Sylph to lean well over. Unfortunately I had not barrel bolted one of the galley drawers which is normally only necessary in rough conditions, consequently the whole drawer fell to the deck and sent all its contents everywhere. The cat’s bowl decided to fly across the galley as well liberally spraying cat food over part of the furniture. Not to worry, only a minor incident.

We are now at anchor.

All is well.

Bob Cat:

Why are we here for goodness sake? There must be so many nice places on this planet we could visit, but the skipper has brought us to this cold, wet, windy place. I nearly had a collision with a large blunt flying object this afternoon. What next?

And turn the ****** heater on!

I have had enough, I am going to …. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.