Puerto Williams started as a Chilean Navy town and that is just about all it is now. It’s not as picturesque or as large as Ushuaia but there are some very nice people living in the town. Most of the people are fishermen, mostly for spider crab, and the season is in the dead of winter. Not appealing. There is a very limited number of restaurants and bars–hardly any. […]
Well, our plan to leave Puerto Williams about 2PM today has been abandoned. The delay is due to Chilean bureaucracy: the immigration process here is very, very slow. Now it turns out that they want us to tell them exactly when and where we are planning to go in Chilean waters. […]
We are still out here waiting for trip clearance. They really want to be able to approve our entire plan, all the way to Valparaiso and apparently they have to fax it to Valparaiso to get final approval because the government employee here in Puerto Williams doesn’t have the proper authority. […]
We are leaving Ushuaia today and the good news is that Captain Toby went through our agent in Punta Arenas and was able to get an exemption from the pilot requirement through the Chilean archipelago so we will not need to have a stranger on board with us for the rest of the trip. […]
The engines were fired up about 8:30AM this morning and I think we are all ready to leave Puerto Williams and go past Ushuaia and head out to see new things. We head west on the Beagle Channel past Ushuaia and after several hours of wonderful cruising, we had lunch. […]
It’s Valentine’s Day and Phil gave me a beautiful pair of earrings from Ushuaia. What a guy!
As a follow-up to yesterday, by 10PM, Kyle and Kyle had not radioed to be picked up from their hike–thank goodness we were in radio contact–so Captain Toby set out in the tender to try to find them. […]
It was a bit foggy today but later the sun came out. The plan is to go west on the Beagle Channel and then down Canal Pomar and then down Canal Ballenero and then Paso Brecknock to Peninsula Brecknock to Canal Cockburn to the Canal Magdalena. The water was smooth and we just kept moving along. […]
It was windy all night and now there is rain. We are leaving Isla Brecknock and entering the Canal Cockburn and as we turned the corner in Canal Cockburn, there were some heavy seas and we just had to slog through them. Luckily, they didn’t last long. At the east end of Canal Cockburn where it meets Canal Magdalena, we entered the Seno Chico and at the end of this was a huge glacier area. […]
Today we traveled through Canal Magdalena and crossed the Straits of Magellan and headed up to Punta Arenas. As we crossed the Straits of Magellan, there was a west wind of about 35 knots gusting to 45 knots and that west wind is what makes the Straits so treacherous. But it was only for about two hours or so and we all made it through just fine. Not at all dangerous. […]
Well, I had to leave today and Phil nicely rode with me to the airport, about a 45 minute drive from the dock. I flew from Punta Arenas to Santiago and then to Miami and then to Jacksonville and believe it or not, all the planes were on time. So now I’m home catching up on these notes since internet access where we have been was a bit spotty. […]