Explore Sailing Voyages in Chile 🇨🇱

The time in Valdivia was really special and our social life was very active! We got reunited with Rolf and Wolf from SV Boaty McBoatface, Harry and Mirri from SV Rantje and with Stef and Manon from SV Long John Silver! All of our Patagonia buddy boats were in Valdivia this week! With all this people stuck on the same marina for a couple of days, it’s easy to imagine how much we drank and ate together 🥳🥂🍻🍷 And we made the mistake that we know we cannot do.. we had way too many drinks the night before the planned departure 😵‍💫🫠 We were so hangover when we woke up that we questioned ourselves if we were actually really leaving. We thought it was stupid to miss a weather window because of being hangover and so we left. I know think it was stupid to leave if we were hangover 😂😅🫣 The beginning of the trip was sooooo rough with the forecasted big swell (3-4m waves) and the lack of wind, resulting in either a very wobbly ride with only sails or a bumpy ride with the engine on. As a result, I got terribly seasick as I never did before, and I could only vomit for the first 24h of the trip. But I had to do my shifts on Songster and I had to be full time mother as well. I think it was the most difficult day of my life 😅 I still don’t know how I managed it 🤣 Once the first 24h were passed, I was reborn! Not only the hangover was gone but also the waves 🤗🤗 But the forecast of the second day wasn’t the best. We were supposed to get something like 6h of headwinds, so we thought we would just do one tack east and then continue back to NW once the wind turned again. But the wind never seemed to turn. It stayed against us for almost one full day. We ended up doing a big detour east and the back west. When the wind turned back and we could adjust the course we realized we had done only 24nm towards our actual destination on the last 24h 😂😂 Luckily we love doing this and we didn’t mind about the extra sailing day that we added to our passage 🙃 The rest of the trip was great and with the warm sunny afternoons that we were longing for. We even wore shorts and t-shirts inside the green house (how we call the closed cockpit now 😂😂😂). On Friday morning (May 10th) we realised that we wouldn’t arrive at Robinson Crusoe before sunset of Saturday. So our best shot now was to hold on and not push at all, and try to arrive by Sunday morning after sunrise. Is was an easy task for Friday the whole day and Saturday, as the wind was relatively weak. We just enjoyed the slowing down and floated sometimes with 2-3kts of boat speed. We knew we had to be as slow as possible now because the forecast for Saturday night and Sunday early morning was with 30+ kts of wind from the back, and Songster would fly! I was nervous about the forecast, worried about the strong wind. The numbers can be very scary.

This blog is yet to be completed, but oh man! We did it! 35 days and we crossed the Pacific!!!! Now it’s time for some champagne 😃😃

We planned to leave the anchorage in Puerto Antão as early as the first daylight would strike in the morning, which would be around 7:30am. For my surprise, our delay wasn’t that much and by 8am we were already lifting anchor! Our departure time was crucial: we needed to pass the 20nm Chacao channel with the outgoing tide, which started at 7am, to avoid 3 or 4 kts of current against us. Our departure was perfect and we enjoyed the 8kts boat speed we were doing, effortlessly, while leaving Chacao channel behind. It was a glorious moment: we were leaving Patagonia behind and entering the Pacific Ocean! We officially concluded this chapter of our trip! And we started a brand new one: The Pacific Crossing! Exciting!!! Time for new - and warmer - adventures! A change in scenery is always good! Time to get ourselves tanned again 😬 Once out at the sea, we met the big swell that we were expecting, and surprisingly it wasn’t that bad.. 2,5m waves, long period. Only Christopher felt a bit seasick, but we gave him medication in time and he was soon playing again 😃 We had a smooth downwind sailing through the day and a calm and cold night. We even had to switch on the engine because the wind was to weak and we were more wobbling around than moving forward. The wind never really came back, but at least the waves only got smaller :) by the morning we were arriving on almost flat seas - and with a thick fog at the entrance of Valdivia River. Our Friends from SV Boaty McBoatface, SV Long John Silver and SV Rantje were all in Valdivia and very happy that we were coming! Thanks to Starlink we organised a bbq for our arrival, we even invited another sailing yacht that was sailing close to us, some Chilean guys that we met in Puerto Montt minutes before leaving the marina. They wanted to go to Valparaiso but also had to enter in Valdivia because of the bad weather that was coming next day. The mood onboard of Songster was great! Since we left Puerto Montt, 3 days ago, it has only been sunny, including the morning of our arrival in Valdivia. After more than a week of non stop rain in Puerto Montt, we were happy to see the sun again! And looking forward to arrive and be reunited with our Patagonian cruisers friends ❤️ By the time we actually entered Valdivia river the thick fog was gone. We followed the buoys marking the channel and we were welcomed by everyone on the dock, ready to get our lines. It’s doesn’t happen so often that there’s so many friends waiting for your arrival at the dock. It’s was a ver special moment and a good ending for a easy and smooth sailing trip.

It’s never easy to leave a safe harbour, specially when sailing in high latitudes. It’s also hard to define what’s actually a good weather window and what’s not, when the weather is so unstable. Our passage from Puerto Montt to Juan Fernandez islands was something about 600 nautical miles. We have been watching the weather for over a week now, waiting for the right window to leave, but this window never really came and we we’re getting anxious. We were ready, Songster was ready. Well, the window to go to Juan Fernandez islands in one go didn’t come, but we did see the opportunity to leave Puerto Montt and sail to Valdivia! And we took it! We left Puerto Montt in a sunny morning (after over a week of only rain), with a warm goodbye from our friends Marrit and Joost from SV Awa. They were supposed to be leaving on the same window as us but they were not ready (they arrived in Puerto Montt two weeks ago and updated their batteries bank to Lithium, so they were still busy with that, unfortunately). Hopefully we’ll catch up at Juan Fernandez 🤞🏽 This first part of our trip to Valdivia was very relaxing. We only had to sail for 5 hours until the next anchorage, our last anchorage in Patagonia! We anchored at Caleta Abtao at around 14h. This Caleta lays a few nautical miles away from Chacao channel. Chacao channel connects the open Pacific Ocean to Ancud bay, and can attain up to 8 kts of current during springs. For our luck we were on neap tide, so we could expect something around 3 or 4 kts max. According to our pilot book, we needed to be at the entrance of the channel 1h before high tide in order to cross the whole channel without current against us. And that’s why we anchored at Abtao, to wait for the right time. We could have left on the next outgoing tide (7pm) but that would mean we would arrive in Valdivia at night (130nm away from the channel). We ended up taking the next one, at 6am (ok we didn’t wake up that early and we left more like at 8am 🫣). That would allow us to arrive in Valdivia during the day light 🙏🏽 . The anchorage was beautiful and we had a good time there :)