Heading North.
UHURU
Steve Powell
Tue 29 Mar 2011 18:44
67:18.39W
We left Ushuaia this morning after saying all our goodbye’s and are now heading east along the Beagle Channel before turning north though the Estrecho de le Maire and out into the open seas. We have met a lot of great people down here who have always been friendly and generous with their advise and help. The sailing community consists mainly of long term live aboard family’s on the smaller boats and charter crews on the larger boats. We have seen at least three old Challenger boats that used to live in Berthons Marina, Lymington, that have been converted into to very good charter boats down here. Of course, they all knew Lymington having been there to buy their boats. The charter skippers were unquestionably the most friendly and helpful people you could meet, we gained a massive amount of knowledge from just talking with them. These guys spend the whole season down here in all conditions going to Antarctica and back or up the Chilean channels. These are the guys that take the films crews out to do all the fantastic documentaries you see on the BBC. As you can imagine they have few tales to tell. You have to take your hat off to them, real adventurers. In particular, thanks to Steve on Xplore and Miles on Pelagic Australis, great guys and great crews.
My plan now is to sail up to Punta Del Este, Uruguay, as quickly as we can. There’s some pretty awful weather coming so I want to get out of it’s way. I have a new crew onboard, David, a friend of Chris’s, and Fiona, Alan Brook’s, retired MD of Oyster, step daughter. Fiona has sailed the Atlantic with Alan and has got a bit of general experience, and David’s a golf Pro by profession so we’ll see how he gets along!
There has been a lot of speculation as to why we are coming back this way. The reasons are simple and two fold. One I wanted to make the last month special for Beans, and coming south back down to Ushuaia was the best way of doing that, the southern channels are much more scenic and we had places that we could take her and Willie for some fun excursions. And for family reasons I really need to be back in the UK by early June, so the best way to do both was to sail back up the East coast of South America and leave UHURU in Grenada, where I know they will look after her well.
So this is just a quick update to let you know where we are. I will try and keep you updated on our whereabouts and any adventures on the way.
Luv to all
Steve and crew. Chris, David & Fiona.
29th March 2011.