In the Navy

I´m back.

I´m in a internet cafe/(super)market in the 2236-strong Chilean Naval Base town of Puerto Williams. We returned last night, and ze crew is all en route back to Europe - excluding me. Since the 10th of March, I´ve been predominatley sailing/motoring the channels of Tierra Del Fuego with my eurotrash crewmates. The phrases "Sehr schoen" und "Super schoen" were common vocabulary. It was really quite pleasant. In place of the blog, I scrawled a commentry of the trip all over an Ushuaia tourist map. At some point, I will put it into the computer.

Following up a conversation from last night`s moderate-to-severe drinking session at the Micalvi club, I'm on Pelagic knocking for the skipper Chris Harris. He's arranged a crew of two, and needs a fourth, to sail the boat, Pelagic, up to Uruguay where it will sit out the winter.

By some stroke of luck, this is the boat that inspired this whole adventure five or six months ago. My second sailing school skipper, Graham, had told me about Cape Horn and Skip Novak's Pelagic. I'd looked into Pelagic before I came out here, but at some six thousand pounds, it was unrealistic. So, this has worked out very, very nicely.

http://www.pelagic.co.uk/fleet_pel.asp

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Chris says we're aiming to leave on Monday. Roughly, it´s a three day jaunt to Port Stanley, The Falkland Islands, then five more to Piriapolis, Uruguay. From the Falklands, there's even a chance I could find the option to switch boats and head to South Africa, via South Georgia.

It´s a shame that I can´t spend more time here in the wilderness surrounding Williams, but presumably there is wilderness elsewhere also. Worse though, it´s a terrible, painful shame that I may not get back to the Cape Horn brewery.