This is the major port city of Chile and located immediately adjacent to Vina del Mar, so our travel here was brief. With the help of Navy Captain Sergio Bascunan, the Chief of Operations for the 1st Naval District and a new compadre, we secure a birth alongside the commercial wharf in downtown Valpariso. […]
After clearing the needlessly complicated immigration and customs procedures, we finally pull away from the pier in Valpariso at 4pm on November 27 making our way west to the tiny Juan Fernandez archipelago. Lying 413 miles due west, the chain has but three islands only one of which, Robinson Crusoe, is inhabited and it only by 500 souls in the village of San Juan Bautista. […]
1. One day while wandering around the centro in Santiago I came upon a small coffee shop arrestingly named Cafe Passion. Its large shop window had been fully blacked out adding to the allure. Once inside the first sensation was heat. The place was at least 80 degrees. Then there was the dark. […]
The 1,700 mile trip from Robinson Crusoe to Easter Island takes us a full seven days and a wakeup, so we reach our destination on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day. Easter is the most remote inhabited island in the world. In keeping with this distinction we see along the way not another vessel. […]
This is a passage of some 1,100 uneventful miles, with gentle seas, whisps of wind and increasingly tropical skies. I and the crew pass these days in a relaxed stupor of naps, books, movies, fine meals and wines (not the crew, though. The captain wisely forbids the crew from drinking while underway.) […]
The 300-mile voyage to the Gambiers and its capital, Mangareva, was without notable events. Once again we are graced with nearly perfect weather and sea conditions. A 1:30 departure from Bounty Bay got us inside the fringing Gambier reef just at sunset on the following day. […]
It might have been a delightful and largely uneventful cruise were it not for the failed air conditioning units. This is but a minor inconvenience when the sea temperature is less than 75 degrees and the air similarly balmy. But here in the subtropics, where the Pacific warms to 84 and the air grows humid, […]
Following a memorable Christmas celebration with the crew, which included a Cruella Deville impersonation by our esteemed stew, Darcie Callahan, I returned to Florida for a much awaited reunion with the family, attended to various business matters and caught up with old friends. During this time […]
Pete Cicchine and Chris Jensen arrived in Tahiti after a wearying flight from their and my boyhood home in Pensacola to join me for two weeks aboard Indigo. We have been friends since we were 11 years old, having done the pre-teen and teen years together in Myrtle Grove on the west side of town. […]
Huahine , unusual among these islands, is split by a lagoon running across it on a more or less east-west axis. Near the west end is a small island within the lagoon. This geographic arrangement, aided by a salacious imagination, resembles vaguely an important part […]