49 07.659 S, 074 24.718 W
Today was a busy day for us in Puerto Eden, a very small settlement of 86 people on Canal Messier.
The first stop was with the Chilean Armada. A very nice fellow welcomed us and then looked at our passports and tourist visas to make sure we still had time left, which for us is until April 20, 2015. Then he reviewed the zarpe, asked a few questions, reminded us about the red tide areas and told us to change one of the email addresses for our QTH or daily report. Our zarpe indicates that we plan to be in Puerto Williams by February 15 and that still looks good. So we are good to go. We just need to call on the radio to let them know when we are leaving. No problem.
We raised anchor and picked a spot in front of the village and went for a look see. Juan, one of the nice Carabinaras or police man, pointed out where the two grocery stores were and when to find the home of Don Jose and Nelda, where we would purchase some fuel. First stop was fuel. Don Jose is an older gentleman who explained that we should come back in an hour. Ok, so time to check out the stores. The stores were closed so we peeked in the windows to see some of what was available and then walked down to the yellow house beyond the last store. We found out from Frannie B that we could purchase some fresh lettuce here and indeed we did, so salad is back on the menu boys! She also showed us some hand woven baskets and we bought one for a souvenir. Walking back on the boardwalk we rang the bell at the first store and we were able to buy some eggs, potatoes and carrots.
Back to the boat with our loot and the next task is getting fuel. We collected our empty jerry cans, put them in the dingy and rowed over to Don Jose's dock. He invited us in for coffee and fruitcake while we practiced our Spanish. Not the most sophisticated conversation but okay, while we waited for Don Jose's son to be ready. The son brought out a car battery and connected it to a fuel pump with a hose into a large plastic 200 liter drum of fuel and started filling up our jerry cans. We would fill up 7 20 liter jerry cans at a time, row them back to the boat, move the fuel to our larger jerry cans on deck and do it again. We did this complete exercise 3 times and now we have 400 liters of diesel at 1100 pesos per liter or about $1.80 a liter, added on board. This took up most of the afternoon.
After getting the dingy back on the davits we shifted our anchor position as it was getting a little shallow at low tide but we wanted to be close to reduce the distance we needed to row. After a shower we are relaxing from our busy day.
Tomorrow if the weather, wind and tide cooperate we will go to the small wharf and get some water otherwise we will continue our journey south to a safe anchorage before the weather front comes through.
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