[password] rachel25
[position] 41 46.524s 073 39.715w
[status]
Motoring east through Chanel de Chacou between the mainland and Isla Grande de Chiloe. A very light cool southeasterly head wind, brilliant autumn sunshine, seals, sealions, squadrons of pelicans, the odd lone dolphin leaping high. Brightly painted wooden fishing boats, compressors chugging, surface supply diving the banks for shellfish. Slack water now but only for minutes, soon we will be tearing along at 10 knots into Golfo de Ancud. And best of all this morning, the cloud on the eastern horizon firming into snow covered mountains, the Andes, still far away but beginning to dominate the eastern skyline.
We spent yesterday and last night anchored off the town of Ancud. We liked it. Bustling, colourful, not touristy. People getting their supplies in after the weekend. This is the main town on Chiloe. We managed to buy and load 120 litres of diesel onto Ithaka. A jerrycan job and lots of rowing backwards and forwards in the dinghy. Met a girl from Fiji on walkabout, feeling guilty she was not with her family in cyclone torn Lautoka. We wondered how our Fijian friends fared in Fulaga. (any update from anyone?). We woke this morning to the wash of the fishing boats leaving port, and the smell of woodsmoke hanging in the bay.
Rowed ashore this morning to check out with the Armada (Chilean Navy). You have to report in at every port and present your paperwork. They produce a Zarpe, an authorisation for you to proceed along the "agreed route". You have to give your ETA at the next port and radio in, or e mail your position twice per day. We find it all quite demanding and so different from the other side of the Pacific. We will have to get used to it. We were pulled up by a white capped, young rating yesterday, some would say correctly, for not using lifejackets in the dinghy.
We hope to seek out a quiet anchorage a few miles south of the north eastern tip of Chiloe later this afternoon, as there is unlikely to be any sailable wind, the downside of the current high pressure dominated weather.

[speed] 5.6 knots
[heading] 098 true
[weather] Wind SE 5 knots. 0.0m waves. Sky 0% cloud. Baro 1020. Vis. Very Good.
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