Scott battles with the wing engine, while Mary departs for the US
Day 209: Egret’s first snow
Position: Bahia del Relegada, Argentina
Scott and Mary Flanders left Gibraltar on 16 September, and we’ll be following their journey every step of the way, thanks to this unique online “blog”. For a complete listing of their diary entries, click here.
Well, mi amigos, sun ‘n’ snow. The first photo is of fur seals playing on the surface on the way from Ushuaia to Bahia del Relegada on the Canal Beagle. We have been seeing fur seals lying on their backs with their noses and flippers out of the water just floating along on our last several trips. The second picture was taken today. Egret’s first heavy snowfall ever.
Mary left last Thursday for Ft Lauderdale. She has been racing around picking up boat goodies, visiting Scott Jr, friends, tax man, doctor appts, etc. With the very poor ‘on time’ record with the Argentine airlines she opted to leave a day early spending the night in Buenos Aires. We have been apart very little in our 38 years together, this time being the longest. Miss her already.
I have been having dinners with boat buddies in the evenings, early these days (dark at 7:30), and doing boat chores during the day. I have even been leaving tools lying all over the place with the floorboards up. Ha, take that sweetie! All is put away now, even after losing the last of many rounds with the #@%^&*$(^ wing engine.
Sunday night most of the liveaboards (mooring folks, anchor folks AND the dockies) were up most of the night on anchor watch. We had winds to 55 knots. Yours truly slept (sort of) in the pilothouse dressed, including boots, with his blankie. Egret sailed around on her anchor chain but never dragged an inch. One dinghy was ripped from a sailboat and ruined ashore on the rocks, another flipped. The weather side dockies got their usual fender popping abuse.
Not wanting to get dock rot, Egret left Ushuaia yesterday, with a Canadian single-handing sailboater. His 50′ rocket (racing) sailboat is snugly swinging on her mooring. We had a nice ride down east in a bit of following wind riding the tide the whole way. We averaged about 4 mpg turning 1350 rpm. After arrival we dropped the little rubber dink and headed to Estancia Harberton for a spot of tea and their great chocolate cake. Again we met with the owner and his wife and had a great get together. Today we went back with pictures I had promised. We were invited into their house for lunch and great conversation. I wish Mary could have been there. We’ll visit back during the winter and rekindle the friendship. She loaned us an out-of-print English version of Uddermost Part Of The World by E. Lucas Bridges published in 1948. He was the present Harberton owner’s grandfather. Reading this book will take a bit of time but we will return it before we leave.
We walked to Harberton in a light snowfall that turned into a heavy snowfall by the time we left. As you can see from the second photo we got a bit of snow in the four hours or so we were gone. We have turned up the heater for its first real test. If that is not hot enough perhaps we can cut up the wing and burn it in a sandbox on the saloon floor.
