El Mar, the sea, the ocean, the Pacific.  All the same, a challenge.  Must admit, it has been a bit frustrating traversing across this side of the ocean.  Perhaps it is our route and I am being unfair, but gesh!  The majority of our days sailing down the coast of Chile have been with the wind and current on our nose.  We can figure out how to deal with that, but then you couple those conditions with the swirly seas and it becomes downright uncomfortable.

Please refer to the “live blog on 21 February 2019” as I don’t want to be repetitive.

The 600nm trip from Quintero to Valdivia should have taken us between 5-6 days.  We padded it a little as all of our trips have taken longer than expected with the stronger currents and weather conditions.

Early on the 4th morning, we were seeing almost 2 knots of current and over 20 knots of wind pushing against us.  El mar was so squirrely that our auto pilot could not hold our course.  We had a choice.  We could either keep our heading and make it to the next safe harbor 60 miles away.  At our speed it would take us 2.5-3 days.  Or we could turn around, backtrack 40 miles and hide out in Bahia Llico.  We decided to backtrack.

Bahia Llucio

Bahia Llucio is a one horse town. Well, not literally, but there are only about 4-5 streets, 3 small tiendas, 6 restaurants, and a fish market.  We walked the entire town in 10 minutes.  However, they do have a magnificent, long beach peppered with lovely little sea shells, crabs, clams, and muscles.

The bay is surrounded by lush, green trees which is a stark difference to its Northern towns.  Fishing boats are pulled in and out to sea using a tractor and a dozen dogs are your welcoming committee.

It was cold, so we were in full cold weather gear when we went to shore.  The pack of dogs followed us on our walk down the beach.  A small herd of cows were sun bathing, but would have nothing to do with Matt.

We hit out in this bay for 4.5 days before a weather window presented itself.  We had 180nm to conquer against the wind, waves, and current.  El Mar was cooperating as we were leaving.  The trip started out decent enough, we had a double reef in the main for about 12 hours before taking it down.  But then, el mar started to mimic a washing machine cycle making it a really uncomfortable ride.  We forged ahead and arrived at the Valdivia mouth at dawn.  A short 2-miles up the river and we arrived at Club de Yates Marina Estancilla.

Some fun photos.  Matt surrounded by his computers and charts, sunset and sunrise

This is what it looks like when a fishing boat encroaches on your space.  Of course, this only happens at night.

TRIP 1 – Thwarted and had to backtrack

• Total miles – 377
• Total hours – 76
• Max Speed – 11.1
• Average Speed – 4.9

TRIP 2 – Continuation to Valdivia

• Total miles – 199 nm
• Total hours – 40.25
• Max Speed – 8.3
• Average Speed – 4.9