Blog

Day 36, Day 11 from Punta Arenas – Saturday 25 February.

5.56am: Up in the dark this morning so that we can hopefully kayak through the narrow gap and avoid carrying the boats. However . . .

4.21pm S54.49.5 W71.09.5: We had to portage 100 metres! It was a great day, crossing between lots of islands in the swell. We took the outside route as there was almost no wind, except for a slight easterly headwind in the afternoon. Where is the tailwind??After 25 nautical miles we found a bouldery beach on Isla Stuart to set up camp. We saw an otter, the sun is out and all is good.

Day 35, Day 10 from Punta Arenas – Friday 24 February.

6.48am: It’s rainy and cold this morning. We hope the wind is not as strong as it has been!

4.00pm S54.41 W71.44.3: Someone is having a laugh with us today. We started heading south east and along came a rare south, south easterly wind! It was only force 2 to 3 but we were denied the following sea that we dreamt of! We covered 18 nautical miles, headed into a narrow gap between two islands and found a 300 metre portage at the far end. We are camping here and will leave at high water early tomorrow morning.
Happy Birthday to Barry’s Mum and son, Adam.

7.08pm: Stop press! The sun came out and it’s a beautiful evening. A humming bird and a kingfisher are here too!

Day 34, Day 9 from Punta Arenas – Thursday 23 February.

7.12am: We woke to hail and sleet all over the tent this morning but were warm inside. We’ll be on the water again today. Our aim is to try to get ’round the corner’.

1.15pm S54.31.7 W72.01.2: We made it round the corner of Brecknock Peninsular. There was a 2 metre swell off the end and a strong, tiring headwind, which left me feeling low on energy so we stopped after three and a half hours and landed on Boulder Beach. It’s very pretty here with lots of islands of bare rock, speckled with snow.
Tomorrow we have another 10 kilometres to go in a south westerly direction before heading east.

Day 33, Day 8 from Punta Arenas – Wednesday 22 February

6.05am: We are setting off early as, once again, it is hard to tell how strong the wind is from a sheltered bay in the dark. We’ll see if we can make some progress before it blows too hard.

1.05pm: S54.27.4 W71.58.1 Windy! We spent four and a half hours battling into strong winds until we finally found a place to camp, 8.5 miles away. We were thinking that we probably should have stayed in bed – but are glad we are here now!