Pasta has become a bad word. I don’t want to eat pasta when I touch land for at least two months. Kristy has don’t a great job with the food but we have eaten pasta everyday for the last 14 days and my body just wants a big argentine/Chilean steak with two plates of fresh vegetables. I must be getting soft in my old age. It is normal for people to start talking about food on the 10^th day of a trip but normally I don’t end up with such an adversion to one particular food group.  I am ready to not drink out of a sports bottle and eat out of Tupperware everyday.

The last three days have been groundhog day. The same squally conditions but last night was a really doozy with massive wind shifts both direction and speed. It was pretty hard going. Not to the level if we had been racing but the big morale killer was looking at the Distance to go (DTG) which was actually more when I came off watch after 4 hours then it was when I started. And before you suggest it the route hadn’t been changed. We were heading it seems to the Ross Sea and Captain Scott’s cabin instead of to Chile. Two days before due to route changing at 5am we were 1200 miles to go and at 9pm that night we were 1200 miles to go. It would all be fine if we had plenty of fuel then we could motor south and set ourselves up for a reach into Puerto Montt. But we have 4 days of motoring left in the tank. The last section of 75 miles we will be motoring to get from the ocean through the canal to Puerto Montt so we need fuel for that section.

This boat is certainly not a race boat it goes upwind at about 50AWA so the tacking angles are like a square rigger. However, after sitting down this morning and looking at the numbers I am pretty certain that when the rig was put back in last year the instruments weren’t calibrated as we are 20 degrees off the wind on one tack and 130 degrees off on the other tack. Even taking into account waves that is just wrong. I still have to persuade Tim (the captain) of this. But it is pretty important if you are basing your tacking on shifts on TWD (true wind direction) and the TWD you are getting from the instruments is rubbish.

This morning the sky got light but there was not spectacular sunrise and it is just gray outside with the occasional mist of rain. However, there was a beautiful albatross swooping around but not for long and also a petrel.

Roll on Chile.

As captain I take when to have the halfway party as a very serious issue as there is always the post halfway depression. Different people feel it to different degrees. However, in my experience if you delay the halfway party to a day past when you actually think you are halfway then the second half seems to be going quicker. At the end of the day who really knows what halfway is especially when you are not straight lining it i.e. paccup or atlantic. If you are delivering back from Hawaii or in this case down the coast and you have to sail most of a circle to get to your destination halfway is a hard one to figure out. Is it halfway on lat and long, halfway on mileage or halfway on time? All of those can be substantially different. I tend to always use the time theory and then use the worst case scenario i.e. worst case the trip could be 20 days so have the halfway at 10/11 days it the mileage seems to coincide then great.

Anyways I am rambling. Only because my watch partner at this point has ants in his pants and wants to get it done and has commented three times in the last two watches that they distance to go is not going down. Another problem with using the distance to go is that that number changes dramatically as routing changes. Routing will change a lot when trying to work your way around a high pressure system and a large north going current. So here we sit 1151nm possibly to go at our average speed which has been 8.1knots this trip that puts us in late Saturday night.

Puerto Montt is reached by going through the Chile Basin over the Chile Rise to Golfo Coronados and then in through a channel between Isle de Chileo and mainland Chile. In this channel called Canal Chacao the tide can reach 8-9 knots so there is no going through unless on a favourable. Slack tide only lasts a few minutes! The tidal range is 8m in springs or 25 feet. So we could end up if luck is with us hitting the entrance at the right time. If luck is against us we have to anchor outside at Caleta Godoy and await the change in current. The Canal takes us into Golfo de Ancud then leaving Isle Puluqui to port through Paso Quellin into Seno Reloncavi. We will be at Marina Oxxean with the isla Tenglo across the channel from us and about 2 miles from the city. The pictures of the marina in the pilot book look great. The write up about Perto Montt itself from the lonely planet guide does not excite!

But that is 7 days down the road.. The wind has gone right on the nose and looks to be the case for the next 5 days. The sun continues to rise and give OK displays but what is cool is having the light of the moon from the stern at the same time as the sun appears on the horizon off the port bow. We have 5 days worth of fuel but are hoping not to use it as this motor sailing is not as fun as sailing. In the meantime it is very lonely out here. We last saw a ship 15^th and it is the 20^th prior to that we saw one on the 11^th. They were probably wondering like us what a boat was doing out here. Haven’t seen any wildlife for about the same amount of time it was over a week ago that we had an albatross around otherwise there has been no wildlife. The other news is I will have run out of cornflakes by Tuesday which is a little bit of disaster as I have run out of fresh fruit for my morning yoghurt, cornflakes and fruit. Guess I should have added a few more bags of cornflakes to my supermarket cart. And so life continues on the 6-8am, 12-4pm and 8pm-midnight watch.

We are 6 days into what is most likely an 18 day trip from Ecuador to Puerto Montt. We are moving along at around 200 miles a day 60 AWA in another 2 days we will run out of the trade winds and it will be time to motor across a ridge with less than 10 knots of wind. The south pacific high is moving around quite a lot and is currently meant to split but we are looking so far out it is not worth banking on anything. By tomorrow we will be opposite the northern Chilean border. I have been reading the Chile lonely planet guide to come up with some fun weekend trips away from the boat. Looking forward to climbing a snow topped volcano, visiting the Yosemite of Chile and spending time at an island nature reserve. It is going to be stunning. Looking forward to Christmas time in Tierra del fuego where I am hoping to do the Dientes trek a 53km most southerly trek in the world.
We have had a little excitement with the pin dropping out of the vang in the middle of the night. Bit of a fire drill to get it stabilized before the hydraulic lines split apart. The vang on this boat is about a ton to heavy for two people to lift. So I ended up in the dark on the end of the main boom to disconnect the topping lift and use it to hold the vang up while we found something to take the place of the pin. We now have a ¾ inch drive that is normally used as the manual furl for the main the shaft is a little too small for the hole but it is plenty strong!
There hasn’t been much wildlife really to speak off besides one albatross which paid us some attention for an hour and then got bored. Also a tiny bird landed to rest and ended up in the pilot house. After defecating on the leather the captain had me banish the poor bird back outside. I can’t see that it would survive out here 1000 miles from land. The small petrels have been skimming the wave tops putting in a foot and wing every now and again.
I have been spending time replying to lots of emails, organizing lists of items to get for heading to Antarctica and going through photos that are over 4 years old.
As usual Vivid is luxurious with three square meals a day and no need to put on foul weather gear as the pilot house is dry and temperature controlled. Every now and again it is necessary to head outside to trim sails otherwise the day merges into one watch after another.
I suspect we will be landing in time for the weekend after next hopefully we will get in on a Thursday giving us Friday to clean up a bit and then have a few days off in Patagonia.

So we are heading off today to move the boat south from Ecuador to Chile. 27m yacht all loaded up ready to go with food, water and fuel looks to be like a 19 day trip. As you can see from our proposed routing we will be 1000 miles offshore to get to the west side of the south pacific high pressure system and offshore of the Humboldt current. The current is a cold low salinity ocean current flowing north along the west coast of South America from the southern tip of Chile to Northern Peru which can extend up to 1000 miles offshore! Unfortunately we won’t be stopping at Easter Island.

As it creates a large amount of upwelling it is one of the most productive marine ecosystems in the world as the cold nutrient rich water is full of nutrients. We expect the first few days will be dodging fishing vessels as up to 20% of the worlds fish catch comes from the Humboldt current. It is the opposite of the gulf stream decreasing the temperature of Chile and Peru.