29/3/08  10:30 AM

I woke to the sound of running water and this time it was not rain but the babbling brook.  We have a wonderful sunny morning and spirits are lifted.  I mentioned the Salmon Farms yesterday and my cousin Lisa sent the following:

“Today's NYTimes had an article about the Chilean salmon
farms around Puerto Montt & the coast south of it. The virus
"infectious salmon anaemia" kills millions of salmon, Chile's
3rd largest export. Because of this & other viruses, they
have been using antibiotics banned elsewhere. They have also
been using growth hormones, carcinogenic fungicides & a red
colorant which causes retina problems in humans. These
things are mixed into the feed, some of which escapes & gets
eaten by wild fish. The contaminated feces from the salmon
are depriving the water of oxygen & causing the death of
other wildlife. The main cause is farming the fish too close
together. The companies (many foreign) farm in a region
until the water is dead, then move on to another place,
putting thousands of local Chileans out of work.”

We will probably be eating ashore tonight but I guess I won’t be having Salmon.

14:30

Nick is teaching Nik how to handle a sextant which he clearly knows a lot more about than any of the rest of us. We have sight reduction tables on board but I have neglected to purchase an up to date almanac. They try to take a noon sight eventually discovering that “noon” here is actually  a few minutes past 2pm.  Nick is confident he can get a fairly accurate fix even without the almanac.

This is the first truly glorious day we’ve had in living memory, blue skies and a following wind.  We’re on our way to Puerto Malinka a metropolis of 1400 inhabitants, mainly occupied with fishing and harvesting mussels.

The Niks managed to produce a fix which was only asbout three miles out.

17:30

Arrived Puerto Malinka and picked up a mooring buoy an hour ago, having ticked off another 57 miles, the last couple of hours of which was a really nice sail.