Crew Log 191 – Puerto Montt

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February 11, 2010 – Puerto Montt, Chile
By Herb McCormick

Levels of Nasty

On the matter of grime, there are varying classifications of crud, a whole spectrum of “shmeg.” There is your garden-variety clutter, what you’ll find in a teenager’s bedroom. There are middling levels of gross, as anyone who’s ever employed the facilities of a public restroom knows well. And then you’ve got your bloody stinking disaster, a festering cesspool the mere sight of which makes your skin crawl, your stomach turn, and your senses shut down entirely. It takes a lot of work to reach this level of nastiness, the sort of effort eight adult males whose collective hygiene has devolved to that of the cavemen can produce after a long spell at sea.

Welcome to the cockpit of Ocean Watch. Do not take off your shoes.

On Thursday in the sunny Chilean coastal city of Puerto Montt, the gateway to Southwest Patagonia, it was cleaning day on the 64-foot cutter. We couldn’t remember the last time Ocean Watch received the full treatment – decks, cockpit, galley, heads, floors, cushions, etc. – and, man, did it show. Add to that mast maintenance by skipper Mark Schrader, high in the rig in a boson’s chair (in addition to his regular duties aloft, some of our navigation lights were out); a scheduled oil change (eight gallons in all for the auxiliary and the generator, a job Dave Logan describes as “a huge potential for disaster”); and a full underwater inspection, including the removal of some barnacles and a check of all the zincs (we hired a diver for that one), and it’s been a busy day. Luckily, our slip in the excellent Marina del Sur up a winding, narrow channel off the city’s main harbor, is a great place to get work done.

We arrived in Puerto Montt early on Wednesday morning after a quick and painless motor from the fishing village of Quellon, a run of just over a hundred miles conducted atop still seas and under a brilliant, clear sky. After weeks, it seemed, of thick, stormy clouds, it was good to see that the stars still existed. The two main bodies of water leading to Puerto Montt – Golfo Corcovado in the south, and Golfo de Ancud to the north, both to starboard of the big island called Isla Chiloe – are wide and gorgeous, with a series of islands separating the pair that reminded the Pacific Northwest members of the crew of the San Juans. On both rolling shorelines, some of which are lined with sandy beaches, the low landscape is dotted with farms and punctuated with trees, another series of visual treats we hadn’t seen in weeks.

Our “welcome party” here in Puerto Montt included our new onboard educator, Roxanne Nanninga, and David Thoreson’s significant other, Kirsty Moen, fresh from a brutal Iowa winter. As Ocean Watch was several days in arrears from our published scheduled, Kirsty and Roxanne have had a chance to get a lay of the land in our absence, and even stood in for the crew for a public presentation on the expedition. Roxanne has also had the chance to talk about the journey with some of the local students, who assisted with cloud observations and other science-related tasks.

Later today, Horacio Rosell, our Spanish translator here in South America, and Roxanne have another scheduled program in the city library, and Ocean Watch will welcome the locals with an Open House on Friday afternoon.

The boat is now spiffed, polished, and ready for company, and considering that they had nothing to do with the mess, Kirsty and Roxanne should earn medals of valor for courageous and hazardous efforts above and beyond the call of duty.

Thanks, as always, for following our progress. We’ll return to our regular daily crew logs after we set sail for Valparaiso sometime this weekend.

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

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