We steamed all the night to get to Punta Arenas this morning, arriving just as the sun was starting to light up the city. This was our first real experience of working on watches through the night and it was, well, exhausting, but also exhilarating to see the secret world of the water at night. We were on short two person watches, for two hours, and thankfully were met with fairly calm waters and little sea traffic the whole night. It would have been a much more stressful story if we’d been sailing through a maze of container ships all evening! For many of the crew it was their first night sailing, learning to trust (or not trust) radar, GPS, the second GPS, the depth sounder and the ship identification system, which is a steep learning curve. For me the scariest thing is little wooden fishing boats, who don’t have a full set of lights (often just one guy with a torch) and who don’t turn up on the radar because they’re too small. But luckily we didn’t come across so many of these until the dawn fishing run, so it was very smooth sailing all around.
The crew was pretty thrilled to wake up in town and it didn’t take long before we were jumping off to see what there is to see in Punta Arenas. For many of us it was a battle between WiFi and tax free shopping, right up until lunch time, where the prospect of a menu and someone else doing the dishes was by far the most exciting thing since sliced bread!
We gained a new crew member today as well, a French fellow who will be joining us until Malvinas. It wasn’t until we had a new person with us that many of us realised the level of the camaraderie that has developed amongst the crew, the comfort and good sense of humour! No doubt he’ll fit right in shortly J And now we’re readying ourselves for some wild days at sea, our excitement for the wilderness is growing!
– Amelia