Category: South America

RAPA to VALDIVIA, CHILE – Ocean Crossing

CELEBRATION – SV RAYNAD – Arrives after 3,900 nautical miles

We made it!! 30 days at sea- Nov 11 to Dec 14,2017

JOURNAL & PHOTO ENTRIES

Odd life we are living these few weeks as we sail across from the dramatic island of Rapa in the Austral Islands toward Valdivia, Chile, a trip of about 4500 miles total from Tahiti to Chile.

When we first set out, the seas were calm and we had a good wind for gently sailing away from Rapa allowing us to look back and enjoy the steep cliffs dropping 1000 feet directly into the sea, local fishermen out catching tuna, the small island Rapa Iti covered with wild goats and the sea birds soaring around back and forth to their nests in the cliffs.

 

 

It was a beautiful start to a very long trip.

 

 

Just as we were settling in for a terrific sail, the wind and seas started building until we found ourselves with 2 meter seas and 25-30kt SE winds, both of which continued to grow and drive us more north. As Raynad pounded and slushed along at speeds of 7-8kts we made great progress if our destination were the Gambier Islands!

That was a rough beginning which severely challenged my sea legs. Eventually we decided to jibe and head back south a process which started a sort of sea-saw toothy track costing us extra miles to make any advancement toward our destination. As all things change out here on the ocean, the weather did too and we were eventually able to set a course more to the east.

Then, a huge low pressure weather system caught us and slammed Raynad with 3-4meter seas and wind gusts up to 79 knots! I even took a photo of the gage to prove it:) White knuckle sailing for me, fortunately we’d already put 3 reefs in the main and pulled out the staysail, so Raynad powered through it all reaching speeds up to 9.2kts with that minimal sail plan. Capt John loved it – I just held on and kept my eyes peeled to the radar, AIS and Furuno GPS hoping and praying that it would all pass quickly with no significant incidents.   Finally, I got what I wished for, lighter winds, however the seas remained huge at 3-4 meters giving us an incredible rolly-polly ride which we eventually had to motor for abut 24+hrs. So the pattern seems to go. Frontal system with high winds and seas followed by high pressure system of light or no winds but huge seas remaining.

The big rollers are awesome and pretty incredible to watch- terrifying at times and yet fascinating too. 

The sea birds absolutely love it when the winds are up and we’ve seen one Wandering Albatross,  a couple of other albatross, shearwaters, storm petrels,   and fairy prion so delicate, lovely and sharp in their flying.

 

The fairy prion love to accelerate by flying between our sails. 

Although we love watching the birds and at times observing the ocean, especially when the sun it out; we are spending most of our time down inside the boat watching the radar and AIS for traffic. It’s cold in the cockpit and there’s really not much to see up there. As we get closer to Chile, we will have to pick up a closer watch because we’ll come across fishing boats that may, or may not be well lit and probably won’t broadcast AIS.

What do we do besides manage the boat and watch the monitors? Lots and lots of reading, drinking tea, listening to podcasts or music, snacking and sleeping. I would LOVE to have a good long walk right now – it’s easy to get a sort of cabin fever living within this small space, especially when its at an angle and bucking about making any activity or movement more challenging. Once a day we communicate with a Norwegian boat, s/v Impuls who are about 160 miles ahead of us. They left Rapa about 36hrs before we did and are also on route to Chile, either Puerto Montt or Valdivia.

Nearly half way with 1,800 miles to go! We are both really looking forward to our arrival:)

CROSSING JOURNAL

11/15/2017

After successfully lifting the anchor at about noon today, e are about 40 miles along our 3550 mile route toward Chile. All is well, speeds have been pretty good, seas not too bad, the sun is setting and we’re getting ready to prepare ourselves up for the night watches.

11/16/2017 – 28-00.26S/143-45.30W

We set off with light winds and only about 3kts of speed for the first 30 mins or so until we cleared around the island and the winds came in stronger while the seas were pretty nice so we reached speeds of 8-9 kts for about 2 hrs. Now it’s a bit more lumpy, 2m seas, so although the winds are about 15 kts our speeds are now about 6kts and the motion a bit less fun. First night out, to it’ll take a bit of settling in.

After a gentle start, we are hard on the wind! A very fast night with speeds ave 7.5-8 kts, so lively, but John did most of the night (10pm-4am) which was a relief to me. After coffee, we put another reef in the main and furled up more Genoa to smooth out the ride and also help us point even tighter on the wind. Now we’re sailing along at 6-6.5kts, with increased winds moving from SE toward E. Capt John is resting at last.

It’s odd to think about how long we will be out here. I’m already excited about reaching Chile, I’ll be super keen by the time we see landfall!

11/17/2017 28-47.40S /140-30.48W,COURSE: 076T,SPEED: 6.8

Rather rough evening night and morning on Raynad. The winds are just not cooperating so we were hard on the winds, heeled over and still not going in exactly the right direction, so we’ve ended up tacking, making very little progress. Worst of all, the meclizine did not work and so over that whole period, I was really sick. Finally this AM I put a patch on and after 4-5 hrs am better- hence writing emails:) John was wonderful and took over most of the watch, sail management and even my Magnet job this morning. I know it wasn’t always easy for him either, but he’s admirably stoic and gets the job done. It’s likely to be like this for a few more days, but then hopefully favorable winds will return and we’ll start making good progress.

Other than the weather that’s against us, all is well. We’ve reduced the sail and speed, so the ride is at least a little less heeled over and slamming. Felt like climbing Everest every time I had to get up and go to the toilet! The boat shipped lots of water as the tempestuous seas rolled by. Looking for calmer weather maybe starting Sunday, we shall see!?!?

11/18/2017 – 29-49.22S / 140-22.76

Short email because it’s tough to type on such an angle. All if well although we are making little forward progress in these winds. Persevere is all we can do and hope that the forecast NE winds arrive in 3-4 days.

Yesterday afternoon we went downwind for about an hour so that John could fix our furling lines which had been causing problems, so now we are reefed down to a shorter mainsail, tucked away the large genoa (forward sail) and are using the staysail, so our speeds are much slower and the motion less intense on the boat. Right now we are just tacking back and forth trying to gain some miles toward Chile, but it is a bit depressing tobe making so little progress. Once the winds return in our favor though, we’ll pull out more sail and hope to make speedier progress toward our destination.

11/19/2017

It’s a beautiful, sunny day, the sea is rather awesome to watch as the long swell of about 3 meters rolls by with the white capped wind waves on top, a few seabirds to watch…overall not unpleasant, just slow.

Has been a mostly calmer day on Raynad, although typical of sailing, the night starts to bring squalls, etc. Nothing too bad it’s just that I decided to cook a nice dinner when it was less lively and by the time I started cooking the boat was bashing about on a starboard tack making the entire process an extra challenge- worked though and so we’ve had our first “real meal” since setting out.

Despite all our efforts, we are simply NOT making much progress in the direction of Valdivia. We’re tacking back and forth 70 degrees or at 185 degrees, we’ve only gained 290 nm toward our destination although we have traveled 435nm done with disappointing speed as well.

Capt John is making coffee, so I’ll just send this. We are good, just frustrated by the weather!

11/20/2017 – 30-58.68S /140-08.24W

John and I enjoyed our morning coffee out in the cockpit watching what we believe was a juvenile Wandering Albatross soaring around Raynad – magical to watch these enormous birds:) We were like three solitary souls out in the middle of the expansive and lonely ocean. It was a good night and our course is slowly curing more eastward, which is very welcome. The winds are forecast to continue moving north, so we should have some better direction over the next week. Some strong winds and rain will hit on Weds PM-Friday, but hopefully nothing over 30kt. John is out on deck messing with the lines preparing for us to pull out more sail.

11/21/2017 33-51.66S /138-12.14, COURSE: 124T,SPEED: 6.0

Finally we are briskly sailing ON COURSE to Chile!! It’s been a struggle causing us to complete over 200 totally useless miles out of the 700 completed so far. Plus, our speeds have been 6-7 kts all night. Heeled over, it’s once again like climbing Mt Everest to move throughout the boat, so John and I are mostly sitting in the two side by side seats near the navigation table. We just finished our coffee which John is amazingly able to produce despite the angle and bounce – truly amazing and very much appreciated by me. The weather is totally overcast, we had several rain squalls last night and its definitely getting cooler every day although not cold enough to need the heater (except to heat some hot water for showers). I suppose we’d maybe see more seabirds, but we tend to go out to the cockpit, look around and come right back down into the cozy salon. At night we run the radar because it’s sooo dark we cannot see anything. Our AIS will pick up any commercial traffic.

We just broke to under 3000 miles yet to go!! YEah!!! Speeds are good at the moment averaging 6.5 since last night and often up in the 7’s:) The sun even broke out this afternoon and we had to strip off some polar fleece. Hard on the wind, we’re reading lots while sitting in the two seats under the window. I sat outside for a bit and watched a few seabirds, but not many and no more albatross. So I figure, if we can ave 5.5kt, we just might get to Chile in 22 days:)

11/22/2017 35-12.25S / 135-07.63W – COURSE: 115T, SPEED: 7.1

We’ve just completed a good night of sailing with speeds of 6-8kts and reasonable seas making us now 2900 miles from Valdivia! Every hundred miles is an accomplishment that makes us more and more optimistic:) Raynad just powers along with the wind, it’s amazing really to make all of these “green” eco-miles. Although we do run the generator for about an hour twice a day to re-charge our batteries and this morning John ran the heater for about an hour because the boat was so cold. Nonetheless, our carbon footprint is pretty small right now:) Of course we are only moving at about the same speed as I run, the difference being the boat will do that speed 24/7.

Thinking of you all as you prepare for Thanksgiving – no turkey or yams for us this year. As the wind shifts lighter and more NW, the swell is diminishing, so I just might try making a pecan pie today. Sourdough bread is already on the go, I have regular potatoes, we have the stuff for a green bean casserole and we have some chicken I’ll maybe cook up tomorrow – will let you know how the feast on Raynad turns out.

11/23/2017 35-52.89S /133-14.34W, COURSE: 111T,SPEED: 7.2

Good Morning and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

John and I tried to give each other a big Happy Thanksgiving hug and kiss this morning and we got knocked over!! No pie making today as the boat continues to sail along bouncing briskly at about a 15-20 degree slant. Instead I have some pecan bread to put in the oven after coffee and will make chicken and potatoes for dinner. Thinking of you all in your respective locations. ENJOY!

11/24/2017 36-42.36S / 130-23.94W,COURSE: 105T, SPEED: 6.7

Good speeds throughout the night, some rain and morning fog, or at least low cloud ceiling. Winds have been strong enough to keep us moving well over 6 kts and even up to 8 kts overnight, so our progress was a bit boisterous at times, but good. We’re both feeling a bit fuggy-headed this AM. John is on to making the coffee which will no doubt help. This is a long, long trip.

11/25/2017 – 37-23.90S / 127-26.64W, COURSE: 104T, SPEED: 5.6

It’s 3:40am here and I’m back on watch, although John is already on the job making coffee:) We had some brisk winds last night going up to 40kt, but hanging in the 30’s and because the seas hadn’t yet built up, we were able to crank out speeds of 7.5-8.2 kt! Now we have another reef in the main, furled up the genoa and are flying the staysail, so we’ve lost our impressive speeds and are now only making 5-6 kts.

11/26/2017 37-32.53S / 125-48.79W, COURSE: 095T, SPEED: 7.5

It’s been an intense day on the ocean with some strong winds and seas. Hopefully they will calm down during the night. Raynad is doing a great job together with Auto(the autopilot) to keep us smoothly sailing with some great speeds in the upper 7s and 8s. Too strong a winds for me, but we’ll just carry on. Doing lots of reading because it’s a real challenge to move through the boat. I’m really happy to still have some meals I put up in the freezer before we left Tahiti. It’s chicken curry tonight.

All is well and we’ve made some good miles, only 2500 miles to go!

We had quite a night with storm force winds and seas, but good ‘ole Raynad held the course and toughened it out. Now we’re working to make enough progress to hopefully avoid the next buster. All is well, although still a challenge to manage all of the now rocking and rolling motion of the boat. Nonetheless, Capt John produced two wonderful cups of filter coffee this AM:) We’ve had the joy of occasionally seeing the lovely Shearwaters flying by.

It was a stormy night and pretty stressful, but we coped and good ole Raynad performed amazingly well. I took photos of the meter and we reached a top of 71 kts, mind you the general average all night was between 40-60, so pretty loaded and giving us speed of up to 9.2 kts, but an average of 7.8. I’m glad it’s over – although it lasted for nearly 24 hrs. Now we’re wallowing, sometimes rather violently rocking back and forth in a following sea of 3 meters and not making more than 5.5 kts of speed while we wait for the next wind shift to the SW. None of the grib files promise us that lovely sailing that we so enjoy, it’ll be either low fronts passing with strong winds, or light winds with big seas. Anyway, all we can do is plug along and appreciate this boat and Auto who is working really, really hard to keep us on track the way we want to go. 2260 miles to Valdivia:)

11/27/2017 37-40.22S / 120-53.23W, COURSE: 072T, SPEED: 6.8

Roaring along surfing the waves on a gloriously sunny morning, hot coffee in hand.

The winds here have shifted to the S and we’re sledding along at around 7 kts under sunny skies. The seas are an incredible caldron – very impressive and a bit scary, but Raynad is awesome at coping. Auto sure makes our life manageable.

11/28/2017 37-37.51S / 119-23.84W, COURSE: 099T, SPEED: 5.9

We’re just settling in for the night after watching a lovely sunset over the huge rolling seas. The winds have gone lighter and to the south, however, we still have these big seas of 3m coming up from the more tempestuous waters of the Southern Ocean. When it’s not stormy, they are pretty incredible to watch. We’ll be in light winds for a couple of days so the challenge will be to make forward progress. It’s colder and colder every day especially now that the south winds have brought clear weather along with the arctic chill.

11/29/2017 – 38-05.27S / 117-32.15W

Our wind died out on us last night, but unfortunately the seas are still rolling by at about 3m heights, so we are wallowing and rocking about as we have been mostly motoring for the past 10 hours. Very uncomfortable conditions, we’ll just hope that we can catch some wind soon and gain a bit more stability.

Incident-

We are rocking around wallowing in big seas with no wind, motoring:( Last night was a bit of an adventure – about 1 AM I went up to the cockpit to check on the wind, we were already motoring and I thought I heard some wind kick up, just as I was turning to look forward, a big swell hit the boat and not having a good grip, I was thrown from the top step into the cockpit, down and over into the companionway step down, hitting my head on something solid and eventually landing down in front of the electrical panel. This created a gash in my forehead that went the full thickness down to my skull, that Dr. T needed to suture. So in a rolling/bucking boat he managed to get out the supplies, clean it up a bit and put in five stitches before using medical glue to seal the outer edges. Fortunately I wasn’t knocked unconscious (just dizzy and faint for a bit)and nothing seems broken, just lots of bruises, a purple left ear that’s about doubled in size, and some new pains in my right shoulder after using that arm to try and break some of the fall. A bit of an extreme offshore medicine moment. John did an incredible job, especially under the circumstances!

We now have 1983 miles to go!!

11/30/2017 – 38-22.82S / 113-26.29W

Seems like we are either in no wind with big seas, or too much wind and big seas! Now it’s pretty strong winds (28-30kts) and big lumpy seas, so a ride that requires holding on at all times while staggering through the boat. Even sitting we have to secure ourselves a bit. Raynad does great and plows through it all. We’ve got the staysail out and a reef in the main. Will likely put another reef in the main before tonight. Just finished coffee which John magically manages to accomplish making despite the conditions. Sun is out, it’s a beautiful day so I’ll go out and watch for some seabirds:)

12/01/2017 38-52.96S / 110-33.10W

I just finished another fantastic cup of coffee produced by Capt John in a bouncing, rolling galley – truly amazing! We had some fast sailing yesterday as the low pressure front was over us with winds of 25-35. Unfortunately these started to build up into the 40’s last night, so we put a couple reefs in the main and gave up some speed for the sake of more comfortable sailing during the night. All is well and we now have 1700 miles to go!

Odd life we are living these few weeks as we sail across from the dramatic island of Rapa in the Austral Islands toward Valdivia, Chile, a trip of about 4500 miles. When we first set out, the seas were calm and we had a good wind for gently sailing away from Rapa allowing us to look back and enjoy the steep cliffs dropping 1000 feet directly into the sea, local fishermen out catching tuna, the small island Rapa Iti covered with wild goats and the sea birds soaring around back and forth to their nests in the cliffs. It was a beautiful start to a very long trip. Just as we were settling in for a terrific sail, the wind and seas started building until we found ourselves with 2 meter seas and 25-30kt SE winds, both of which continued to grow and drive us more north. As Raynad pounded and slushed along at speeds of 7-8kts we made great progress if our destination were the Gambier Islands! That was a rough beginning which severely challenged my sea legs. Eventually we decided to jibe and head back south a process which started a sort of sea-saw toothy track costing us extra miles to make any advancement toward our destination. As all things change out here on the ocean, the weather did too and we were eventually able to set a course more to the east. Then, a huge low pressure weather system caught us and slammed Raynad with 3-4meter seas and wind gusts up to 79 knots! I even took a photo of the gage to prove it:) White knuckle sailing for me, fortunately we’d already put 3 reefs in the main and pulled out the staysail, so Raynad powered through it all reaching speeds up to 9.2kts with that minimal sail plan. Capt John loved it – I just held on and kept my eyes peeled to the radar, AIS and Furuno GPS hoping and praying that it would all pass quickly with no significant incidents. Finally, I got what I wished for, lighter winds, however the seas remained huge at 3-4 meters giving us an incredible rolly-polly ride which we eventually had to motor for abut 24+hrs. So the pattern seems to go. Frontal system with high winds and seas followed by high pressure system of light or no winds but huge seas remaining.

The big rollers are awesome and pretty incredible to watch- terrifying at times and yet fascinating too. The sea birds absolutely love it when the winds were up and we’ve seen one Wandering Albatross, a couple of other albatross, shearwaters, storm petrels, and fairy prion so delicate, lovely and sharp in their flying. The fairy prion love to accelerate by flying between our sails. Although we love watching the birds and at times observing the ocean, especially when the sun it out; we are spending most of our time down inside the boat watching the radar and AIS for traffic. It’s cold in the cockpit and there’s really not much to see up there. As we get closer to Chile, we will have to pick up a closer watch because we’ll come across fishing boats that may, or may not be well lit and probably won’t broadcast AIS.

What do we do besides manage the boat and watch the monitors? Lots and lots of reading, drinking tea, listening to podcasts or music, snacking and sleeping. I would LOVE to have a good long walk right now – it’s easy to get a sort of cabin fever living within this small space, especially when its at an angle and bucking about making any activity or movement more challenging. Once a day we communicate with a Norwegian boat, s/v Impuls who are about 160 miles ahead of us. They left Rapa about 36hrs before we did and are also on route to Chile, either Puerto Montt or Valdivia.

12/2/2017 15:29UTC 39°11.97’S 107°30.92’W

The winds came back about 5pm last night and we’ve been having a great sail just using the Genoa. Should last for about 6+ more hours until the huge high pressure system comes over us and we get becalmed again. No exciting news to report. We’re just reading lots and lots of mostly lighter stuff. Even John is reading my “travel” fiction. Can’t complain when we are tucked in warm and cozy inside Raynad while she clips off the miles.

12/03/2017 -39-28.64S / 104-56.75W, COURSE: 098T, SPEED: 6.1

It’s a lovely, sunny morning here on the ocean, a morning that started at 1:00 AM!! Seriously, the sun goes down at about 5pm and returns at 1am because we are keeping our clocks on the F.P. time and yet we are moving through different time zones. I “slept in” and didn’t get up until 4:00am:) Still light winds, so we have been motoring for the past 16 hours. We have lots of diesel, but we’d much prefer having the winds for sailing. 1,440 miles to go, so about 12 days +/-.

Sorry about the mix up with the sailmail address. You’ll be enjoying some of the music leading up to the Christmas holidays. Is your church doing anything special? You’re probably starting to get several groups performing at the Rio Grande.

Not much news here. We just keep plodding along. Both of us looking forward to terra firma and the chance to take a walk!

12/4/2017 17:00UTC 39°56.42’S 101°34.48’W Course 097 Speed 6.4

We are sailing! A surprising NE wind greeted us early this morning allowing us to switch off the motor-yeah! Because this isn’t found anywhere in the grib files, hard to know how long it will last, but we’ll take it. We were motorsailing most of the night, so it’s wonderful to be able to turn off the engine and continue under wind power at over 6 kts:) We are further lighting the morning mood by listening to a podcast of BBC Friday Night Comedy. It’s really hilarious – I highly recommend it to you guys if you care to download it.

We actually got in about 6 hours of great sailing this morning!! We motor sailed most of the night until early in the morning the winds strengthened and next thing we knew we were flying all the sails and bogeying along at 7+ kts with flattish seas – very, very nice. Now the winds have dropped and gone behind us, so we’re still sailing with just the Genoa and only going 3.5-4kt. Oddly and almost spookily, it’s been foggy for the past couple of days. It’s rather surreal to look out over the gray ocean and the wisps of fog all around us. 1,257 miles to go….we’ll celebrate when we break through 1000:)

12/5/2017 06:12UTC 40°00.62’S 100°07.63’W

Absolutely windless out here AND the weather gribs are showing that yet another high pressure system, maybe two, are coming together over us meaning that light winds are forecast for the next 4-6 days! Not good. We have diesel, but we don’t have enough to motor all the way to Valdivia. So…we’ll just have to sail what we can even if it’s only at 2-3 kts of speed and resign ourselves to a longer passage. We’re fine and sleeping is easier with the flat seas -can’t complain about lots of things. The Norwegian boat will be doing better with this weather as they are a light fiberglass boat and can make better speed in light winds. Raynad is hardy and awesome dealing with the heavy weather stuff, but she’s hard to pull through light winds. When the winds get a bit more off our nose, we’ll mess with the Geniker (our parachute material sail) and see if it will give us some good speed.

12/06/2017 40-15.91S/ 097-14.31W

We’ve had two birds visiting us a few times per day. They are the smaller Buller’s Albatross which forays the upper latitudes of the Southern Ocean and coast of Chile for dead squid and other detritus from their nesting grounds in the small rocky islands of SW New Zealand. They really are lovely and such a welcome site amongst these lonely waters. According to John, we had a 388meter cargo ship pass within about 35nm of us last night! A fellow cruiser in Tahiti has been watching our AIS signal on MarineTraffic.com and has been alerting us of any other traffic in our vicinity. It’s pretty cool that he can do that. You two might get a kick out of looking on that website. It’s a nice way to also keep track of where we are since our ability to connect to winlink is almost nil and so we cannot update our position reports. Sailmail does not offer that service.

Anyway, all is well as we slowly make our way to Chile. A bit of wind this AM such that we’re sailing downwind with the Genoa – 1049 miles to go:)

YEAH!! Less than 1000nm to go!!

We celebrated with a big hug and kiss without getting knocked over:) And a bit of a toddy…not much mind you because we’re already staggering around the boat and don’t need any substances to enhance that!

Actually seems like we might make it to Chile -it’s looking like a reality. Now it’s just an “ordinary passage-making” ahead of us.

The fog rolled in about 3 hours ago such that we can hardly see the front of our boat. Good thing we have radar. Nonetheless, we are under sail and doing well.

12/7/2017 14:08UTC 40°16.90’S 093°53.90’W

Rolling along on another morning at sea. Although we are keeping our clocks set on Tahiti Time, we have moved through several time zones such that it gets dark now at about 4pm and the sun comes up again at about 1am! So, it’s a bit quirky here on Raynad because John goes to bed at about 5pm and has been up since 2am and I go to bed at about 8pm and “slept in” getting up at 4:30am. While out in this Southern Ocean void, we both sleep at night (John is in the salon and I’m in the sea berth) keeping the AIS alarm on and also the radar. Between the two of us we wake up roughly every 30mins or so and check the status. Once we are within about 400+/- miles of Chile, we’ll go back on to a regular night watch schedule. Last night was a very restless night though and neither of us slept much due to the rough rocking of the boat with the changes in the winds and seas. We’re only using the Genoa because the winds are mostly behind us, but they keep flipping between being mostly SW or mostly NW. Had some faster miles though so we are now 932 miles from entering the bay toward Valdivia:) As we get closer, I’m needing to review the food in our freezer and make sure that we eat the better cuts of beef and chicken because Chile will confiscate any animal or vegetable products we have. For the most part, it’ll all be gone so our estimates of needs will have been pretty good. We almost caught a fish yesterday – had it on the hook and I was reeling it in as John readied the gaff, but it managed to break off the hook…bummer:( Fresh fish would have been nice:)

12/08/2017 40-14.22S / 091-30.37W, 089T, SPEED: 4.8

After having sailed for over 24 hrs, now we are motoring again in light winds. There is a big low pressure system building up which will push this high away and bring us lots more wind. Hopefully not too much though, I don’t fancy approaching Chile in a storm!?!? Ideally a nice 15-20kt wind would do us just fine:)

All is well. 816 miles to go.

The winds have been really light today and are forecast to be light for a couple of days, so with the seas also down a bit, we decided to finally haul out the Geniker and see if we couldn’t improve our sailing experience. Dragging it up to the bow, hooking up all the appropriate bits, hauling it up the halyard, out it flew giving us 4 kts of speed with 8 kts of wind – not bad – John was happy…..then BANG! Down the lovely green patterned sail went spreading itself over the water. Argh!?!? Hauling on the sail and lines now sodden with seawater, we finally got it all up on the deck in a twisted mess. Turns out the shackle pin had broken of all the dumb luck. Not to be beaten…Capt John and crew sorted out the twisted mess and after about an hour or so of mucking about got it reasonably sorted. BUT – we needed the halyard. So, up the mast went Capt John in the bosin’s chair with his trusty crew on the wench. A rather harrowing event when the occasionally passing swell knocked the boat to swaying back and forth, poor John! Mission accomplished, we thought, but one bit had gone wrong way around the shroud…up the mast he went again to sort that out. As I mentioned…not to be beaten, John decides that we should try and fly the Geniker again. Grumbling crew aside, that’s just what we did and now we are sailing smoothly under the lovely green parachute sail in light winds. With any luck, we’ll be able to keep this sail for the next day or so before we’ll likely still have to motor when the forecasted winds drop to 1-2 kts! Behind this a big low pressure system will be bullying its way toward us, so the smooth ride will come to an end and we’ll likely blast our way into Chile. Updates will follow.

12/09/2017 40-12.04S /089-07.27W, COURSE: 092T, SPEED: 5.0

We’re SLOWLY progressing onward under light winds and speeds of 3-5kts, but averaging only about 4.5, so our trip is lengthening. We flew the Geniker for a few hours yesterday which was wonderful because it gives us such a quiet and smooth sail, but only works with lightish winds and mostly flat seas. We tried to fly it for awhile last night, but as winds and conditions shifted, ended up taking it down. Now we’re using the good ‘ole Genoa again with the bigger seas bank and thus the wonking back and forth…we’re swaying our way to Valdivia! Frustratingly slow, but we really need to save our diesel for the no wind times in the forecast.

Captain and crew are fine, the sun has broken through the foggy cloud cover for a bit. We had some lovely Shearwaters flying around earlier. We had a few laughs listening to Prairie Home Companion and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. Always good to have a bit of light entertainment to cheer the mood. Now it’s Alison Krauss singing.

12/10/2017 12:18UTC 40°17.46’S 086°25.74’W

Another night at sea, this is now our 26th day since leaving Rapa in the Austral Islands. We now have 587 miles to go until our waypoint just off the coast of Valdivia. It’s 3:25am according to our ship’s clock which we have yet to change over from the time zone of French Polynesia! It now gets dark at about 2:00pm and the sun comes up about midnight – odd that we’re keeping the clock as is – but I have my head around that time especially regarding the 8am and 6pm Magnet radio groups that I’m still trying to participate in. The morning doesn’t work because the propagation is so bad, we cannot hear and they cannot hear us, but in the evening we have so far been able to talk over the radio, report our position and sometimes have a bit of a chat.

This morning is almost totally windless so we are motoring. Due to the wind being behind us, the exhaust fumes tend to make their way into the boat which gives me a headache. John keeps trying different ways of getting ventilation, but it doesn’t really work. He figures according to the forecast that we’ll need to motor for about 320 or our remaining miles and sail the rest when the front comes through. We’re really needing to keep an eye on our diesel – we left Tahiti totally full and put in about 200 liters via gerry cans in Rapa – but are now down to about 600 liters. Should be fine, but always a concern.

John said he saw a beautiful rainbow this morning (at about 1am) when the sun was breaking through the night’s fog:) For awhile last night we were surrounded by fog but directly overhead was a clear and starry night.

Position 12/11/2017 15:25UTC 40°17.51’S 082°58.63’W

Just another day at sea, same gray water, fog, big rollers…last night as the sun was setting I went outside to bring in the fishing line and the scenery was so unique. There was a very dark fog bank circling around the horizon, somber shades of gray toned colors brushed through the horizon and a huge roller brought a dark wall of water, easily 3-4 meters high toward me. It’s difficult to describe, rather spooky really, so I was glad to tuck myself back inside the boat and continue watching the radar for traffic. 434nm to go. Coffee in the making:)

12/12/2017

Another night completed and now only 290nm to go:) We’ve been motoring for about half of the day/night and are now motor-sailing again. Winds are supposed to get even lighter today before filling in and swinging from the south to west and then northwest as they strengthen. We’re hoping to be sailing by later this afternoon and with any luck, sailing for the rest of the trip. Once we arrive at our waypoint outside the bay,we then have about 14 miles to motor into the conflagration of three rivers with our going up the north side to marina across from the city of Valdivia. We’re thinking that we’ll arrive Thursday night, or perhaps Friday morning depending on our sailing speeds.

All is well – we are definitely looking forward to being there, walking ashore, going out for steak & wine…and sleeping on a still boat:)

SV RAYNAD 200nm offshore Chile

 

12/13/2017 40-02.08S / 076-57.20W, 088T, SPEED: 6.6

Yes we are now moving totally by wind with both the Genoa and main sails out, no engine, 5-6 kt speed with 20-25kt winds. A good smooth ride so far. 158 nautical miles to go until we are at our waypoint to turn into the bay for Valdivia. Once we arrive there, we will change our ship’s clock to Chilean time UTC -3 (so 8am in Oregon will be 2pm in Chile).

Our friends on the Norwegian boat arrived in the bay about 11:30pm last night and are now on their way up the river toward on of the marinas. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All is well – captain and crew are happy and anxious to complete these last mile, celebrate, get in a good walk and then a very, very long sleep!!

12/14/2017

It’s been one of our best sailing days with 20-25 kt winds, surfing seas, we have the genoa and mail up and are moving along between 6-8.2 kts! 90 miles to go, so we’ll be in sometime tomorrow. If we keep these speeds up, we’ll get there around 6am:) Of course that’s just to our waypoint at the entrance to the bay. We then have another 12-16 miles to motor up river to the marina.

Champagne is in the refrigerator – we’re very, very ready to arrive! Looking forward to finding some wifi and make Skype calls.

I’ve just reset my watch to now be on Chilean time which is now 7:45AM rather than the old FP time of 12:45AM, so a big time change for us! We now only have 44 miles to go until we turn into the bay and go up the rivers to Valdivia. We should make it to that waypoint in about 6-7 hours and then it’s another 14+ miles to the marina. We’ve had the best sail of the trip this past 20 hours with good winds, settled sea conditions and both the genoa and mainsail, we’ve been moving along at 6-8kts – fantastic and all done pretty comfortably. Will let you know when we’ve arrived.

SV Raynad ARRIVES- Club de Yates – Valdivia Marina!

We are safely rafted up to the end of the dock at the downtown Club de Yates in Valdivia with our friends on the Norwegian boat rafted to us:) Popped the champagne and celebrated our arrival (complete with photo of us and our friends with Skip-It the boat dog). Various immigration stuff to follow and now we’ll eat some soup and get a good night’s sleep – at last! It’s already 9:00pm here, not dark yet, but 7hours later by the clock than F.P. We still have one clearance left to do with the Armada, so we cannot yet leave the boat and take that much wanted walk.

 

Our last 36 hours of sailing was fantastic – fast and pretty comfortable – a great way to finish our 30-day ocean voyage.  We had masses flocks of birds surrounding us, including two more Wandering Albatross. 

 Totally foggy upon our arrival, so good to have radar and charts to navigate with almost no visibility. Fortunately once up the river about 10 miles, the sky cleared and it was actually hot and sunny:) 

 

There is so much marsh land here, we’ll see lots of water fowl, plus lots of sea lions up the river.   

 

The canal up to Valdivia is very colorful with the fishing boats rafted alongside.