Crew Log 195 – Valpo

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February 18, 2010 – Valparaíso, Chile
By Herb McCormick

A little over three weeks ago, the 64-foot cutter, Ocean Watch sailed abeam of Cape Horn and her crew set their powerful white spinnaker, rounding the epic headland with the big kite up and drawing. We all have some serious miles under our respective keels, but it’s safe to say it was one of the premier highlights of our sailing careers. That, surely, will forever be my all-time favorite personal Cape Horn story. But it replaced a pretty good one.

It was nearly ten years ago, and we’d just rounded the Horn aboard the Chilean-flagged 52-footer, Chucao. Incredibly, the wind that day was out of the north at just 12-knots, and conditions were so benign that once we were around, we actually launched the dinghy and scrambled up to the lighthouse, on that day manned by a young Chilean Naval officer who’d obviously been granted permission to bring along his wife and kid for company. And so it was that I found myself planted squarely on Cape Horn, legs crossed, sitting on a floor in front of a television set with the three-year-old son of the lighthouse keeper, watching Bugs Bunny.

Yes: cartoons on Cape Horn.

To my everlasting regret, I don’t recall the exact episode – my friend Steve Callahan says we share an affliction called “half-zeimers” – but I do remember the sailor responsible for bringing me there, a man I’m proud and privileged to call my friend, Mauricio Ojeda.

And yesterday, as Ocean Watch closed on the Chilean city of Valparaiso, a tidy, 22-foot sloop sailed alongside crewed by a distinguished looking gentlemen and two young but clearly very able sailors, and I again laid eyes on Mauricio for the first time in far too long. It was a very fine welcome to the place they call “Valpo.” In Spanish, it means “paradise valley,” and we won’t argue with that description.

Today in Valpo – actually, in the smart little basin of the Club de Yates Higuerillas in the resort village called Concon about forty minutes from downtown – Ocean Watch has been cleaned and scrubbed, the crew is adorned in t-shirts and baggies, and the sunscreen has been liberally applied. For the first time since departing another beach resort, the Argentine city of Mar del Plata – and after some 4,000 miles of hard, cold sailing, to the Falklands, around the Horn, and up past the snow-peaked mountains lining the Patagonia canals – summer has returned. And it couldn’t be sweeter.

It’s here at the yacht club that Mauricio keeps his Dufour 22, Polo Sur, and yesterday his crew included two of his eighteen grandchildren, Martin and Sebastian, who came aboard and had a good look at Ocean Watch soon after we tied up. The club’s marina is full of nothing but recreational sailboats and powerboats (another first in a while; the few ports we’ve visited in recent weeks have been working harbors, chock full of fishing boats, ferries and freighters), and with hot showers, a pool, a very nice restaurant and bar, and Wifi right on the boat, we feel like we’ve landed in the lap of luxury.

I already owed Mauricio a debt I’ll never be able to repay, and now this. To make a very long story short, Mauricio invited me to sail to Cape Horn with some ex-Navy colleagues of his for a Cruising World magazine story, and we’ve stayed in touch since then. From Alaska to Halifax to Miami to Cayenne, we’ve been blessed with abundant support from locals, old friends and new friends, and now we’ve caught back up with Mauricio. The wind has been but one source of energy for this journey, for we’ve enjoyed gale after gale of goodwill.

Fittingly, even the breeze was kind to us on this latest leg from Puerto Montt, and even Mauricio, who knows these waters well, was impressed by how quickly we’d covered the 550 nautical miles. For the first twenty-four hours, we rocketed north before a 30-knot northerly, knocking off 14-knot surfs and registering a 206-mile 24-hour run, nothing to sneeze at aboard a 44-tonner. For those who’ve ever been seasick, keep the drug Sturgeron in mind; both of our new crewmembers for the leg, Kirsty Moen and teacher Roxanne Nanninga, took the remedy en route and felt tip-top for the entire voyage, the motion of which, trust me, was often extremely lively. (Roxanne also took other preventative measures, including a coffee bean taped to her navel! Anyway, something worked!) You can buy the English-made drug over the counter in Canada, Bermuda, the Falklands and elsewhere (but not the U.S.) and it’s been widely used by many, many cruising sailors, who swear by its benefits.

For the next several days, however, storm-tossed seas will be the last things on our minds. Here in Valpo, the crew has been joined by Sailors for the Sea C.E.O. Dan Pingaro and his wife, Kim, and there will be a full slate of presentations, boat tours and official visits – as well as catching up on several magazine deadlines, scheduling updates and other expedition business which has been long simmering on the back burner – before Ocean Watch resumes the voyage Around the Americas with the 1,300-nautical mile leg to Lima, Peru, on February 24^th.

Until then, in the immortal words of Bug’s buddy, Elmer Fudd, “Tha-, Tha-, That’s all, folks.”

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

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