Clark April 26th, 2007
April 26, 2007
39º49′ South, 73º15′
Club de Yates Valdivia
I am blissfully in port, drinking a microbrew that
tastes like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, exhausted,
worried, and contemplating coincidence and/or the
grand design.
If you will remember, I chose to zip directly from the
Golfo de Penas to Valdivia, taking an offshore route,
rather than go back into the channels. I suffered
dearly at the hands of Mother Nature for this choice,
but I am sitting here four days later, and I have made
record time for a solo sailor.
The standard route is to duck back into the channels
after leaving the Golfo de Penas and rounding Cabo
Raper, to progress as far north as Puerto Montt on an
inshore route. If a boat did this, as did the
Belgians, the German, the Swedes, and Alejandro and
Susana, one of the first potential stops would be Seno
Aysen. Not only is Seno Aysen scenic, it has a small
settlement like Puerto Eden if you needed anything
like food, fuel, or anything a settlement might
provide.
Two days ago there was a 6.2 earthquake in Seno Aysen,
causing a mountain to collapse into the seno, which in
turn caused an eighty foot tsunami. The settlement was
erased. They have found a few bodies and a fishing
boat stranded 150 meters above the high tide line, but
that’s all we know at this point. Currently there are
only three confirmed dead and seven missing, but this
is a very remote area and all communications and
infrastructure to the settlement were destroyed. It is
only accessible by boat in the best of times. The
Armada will not release the most recent position
reports from the foreign yachts, and they won’t say if
they consider any of them to be missing. Bastards.
They say the tsunami was largely confined to Seno
Aysen, and didn’t penetrate into neighboring channels.
The chances of all or any of them being in this
particular seno at the time of the earthquake are hard
to estimate. Peter, the German, lives here in
Valdivia, and this is his yacht club. Everyone is
worried about him and his parrot. I am especially
worried about Alejandro and Susana, because they were
in no hurry. They got rid of their charter guests and
were enjoying the time alone to drift around the
channels, plus they’d both had a bit of the flu and
were taking it slow. If a boat was in a hurry, they
probably wouldn’t divert up into Seno Aysen. If they
were taking their time to explore, or needed a phone,
or needed some aspirin, or some such reason, they
might have gone up there. The Belgians, Michel and
Monique, were definitely trying to make good time. I
never met the Swedes, Bjorn and Anika, I just talked
to them on the radio.
I, for once, for whatever reason, was in a hurry.
