08 February 2010; Puerto Montt, Chile.

The planning worked out as expected and by 0100 this morning we entered the Chilean Inside passage via Canal de Chacao. Not much of an issue in principle but I had to be on the bridge as the passage has one narrow point, near the town of Chacao. Here the navigable width of the channel goes down to about 3000 feet and currents can run up to 8 knots. Normally you go through at or near slack tide, when the current is predicted to be the least and hence our planning for 01.00 near the entrance. The Chilean fjords are not un-similar to the Canadian Inside passage when you leave Vancouver, with little villages dotted along the cliffs, interspersed with open grass area’s for farms. The town of Puerto Montt that we were visiting today is the district capital for this area and located about 70 miles past these narrows. That gave me the chance to catch another 2 hours of sleep before the fun and games of the day were starting.

This whole area can be notoriously windy with depression after depression coming by to the south but due to all these fjords and islands with high mountains it is impossible to predict where and when it will blow. The same goes for Puerto Montt. You cannot predict much more then whether the wind will come from the North or the South. How much, you will find out when you get there and when you are there for the day. I dropped the hook in 60 meters of water as close to the town as possible to have optimum shelter from the cliff under which Puerto Montt (down town area) is situated. It always give me a peculiar feeling when you are taking anchor bearings on the local shopping mall but that was what we had right in front of us. We were welcomed with a nice local drizzle and during the day it drizzled off and on.

The ship at anchor, shown from the top of the cliff under which the downtown area of Puerto Montt is located. The red and yellow horiozntal striped building is the main shopping mall of the town.

It was getting more interesting with the wind during the day as in the course of the morning the northerly wind increased considerably with sometimes peaks of over 35 knots. However as the ship was close under the shore, the wind did not have enough open sea surface to whip up waves and our tender service could continue unhindered. The Prinsendam just yawned at a great rate behind its anchor. As the wind became steady later on at about 25 to 30 knots, she swerved in a nice figure of 8 behind the anchor. The holding ground is here extremely good, a combination of heavy mud interspersed with fine sand and we were sitting there rock solid with 800 feet of chain out of the hawse pipe.

Puerto Montt has a dock and on paper we do fit in. However you can only arrive or leave at slack tide, when the currents are manageable (the flow goes up to 6 knots in the harbour) and with the strong winds it is also questionable if and when you will get out again, once you have made it to the dock. As we run a tightly scheduled cruise, we cannot do with these sort of variables thus the Prinsendam and for that matter most cruise ships anchor in the bay and tender a distance of about 4500 feet towards the shore.

Somehow this does not look very Chilean. An area of Puerto Montt called Frutillar.

Puerto Montt came to prominence in the late 19th. century and many British and Germans settled down there; as a result the town has a very North European look over it. Here you do not see or expect an Inca Sheppard coming around the corner with a herd of Llama’s.

Our last tour came back just on departure time and when the tenders were hoisted back on board we picked up the anchor again. Normally the anchor winch just pulls the ship towards the anchor location but here with the anchor chain so tightly sucked into the mud, I had to follow with the ship, steaming forward at the same pace as the anchor was winched in, in order to break it out of the ground and to stem the force of the wind trying to push the ship back. Once the anchor was up, I applied the “blow away maneuver”. Let the wind catch the side of the ship and push it to open waters while at the same time increasing speed to steer towards the desired course of 180os opposite to arrival.

Since 1 am. this morning, the navigation of the ship is being done by the Chilean pilots as we are now inside territorial waters. They bring their own charts, both paper and on the lap top and take shifts in conning the ship. They work closely with my own navigators so that we can adhere to the schedule of our cruise. Tonight a very intense storm will start to build up and move quickly over the area during tomorrow. However as there is no open sea, we will not feel any waves, and the amount of wind will depend on how this storm will pass over and blow through the fjords.

For our next port Chacabuco, the weather forecast is almost un-predictable. It will be chilly and for the wind or rain: to quote the pilot, “we will see it when we get it”.

Note: Both pictures by special reporter Lesley Schoonderbeek who connects the word wind to being worried about her hairdo in the same way as I connect to it with being worried about the safety of the ship.