Too much wind and waves to continue the slow going on to Valdivia, so we turned around and headed for a sheltered bay.

After a beautiful day, sunny and virtually no waves and simply dodging the fishing fleet, 60+ Meter long fishing boats the sun was setting and the clouds were rolling in. Hmm. Strange sight, not used to that. Dropped the main and continued on motoring south just past Lebu. Waves picked up from every direction, could not find a comfortable point of sail that made forward (south) process. Tried toward land, out to sea and of course straight on, nothing was comfortable. Salt water was washing the boat, and I had just washed it down with fresh water during the beautiful day.. 🙁 The current was also running against us so we were going no where fast.

The final straw was when Auto lost the angle, wind and waves caused a ‘off-course’ alarm and the wind and waves were too much to get us back on course. I took over swung it around into the wind and continued on for a few moments thinking of the best course of action. Grabbed another weather report, it was supposed to get worse, more wind and we were already near 30knots. It was over 60 hrs (120 miles) more at our current pace to arrive Valdiva. 30 miles behind there was shelter, 30 miles ahead a small island that didn’t really have a good protection and with the wind getting stronger didn’t make good sense, so we tucked our tail and headed back.

What a world of difference going with the weather instead of beating in to it. Opened the jib and cruised along comfortably at 6-7knots. Made getting rest a whole lot easier. Followed one of the ‘tugs’ on AIS into the bay here instead of going the long way around the island. AIS create track from boat you are tracking is an awesome feature.

Dropped the hook, made some pulled pork sandwiches with a beer and took a nap. We are anchored in about 4 meters of water at high tide, down to 2 meters twice a day. Long beach and small town of Bahia LLico, hopefully we can brave the cold and take the dinghy ashore and explore some while we wait till what looks like Wednesday before continuing on.

56F degrees this morning, fired up the diesel heater and made the inside a tropical 80F.

Cheers,
All good here. Now 160 miles to get to the mouth of Valdivia River when the weather decides to cooperate :).

At 2/24/2019 @ 1:16 PM
Our position: 37�11.32’S, 073�33.31’W
Traveling 0.5 heading 207T