Back in Ushuaia ... 12 days and 420 Miles later ... (?)

Biff and I made copies of charts independently from each other, and we both managed to screw up to convert the scale into the correct mileage per inch ( or cm) traveled on the chart ... thus we do not really know how many miles we have paddled so far ... I think it is somewhere around 420 Miles (the SPOT messenger show the track like he crow flies) ... mas o menas!

And yes, we do not even know how many days we have paddled, since we were just too tired most nights to make a note in our diary. Is it 12 days or 13 days after we set out from Punta Arenas?

The only thing we know for sure is that we are back in Ushuaia. Appr 5 Miles before turning into the AFASyN Yacht club in Ushuaia, Coast Guard Officer Julieta Roeg from the Naval Prefectura Argentina in Ushuaia sped with a Coast Guard Ship plus crew towards us to welcome us, and to let us know she is delighted to see us happy and safe ... a great welcome.

We had very good weather in the past 13 days, with only 2 storm bound days, one of these was pretty dramatic since the surf on our West facing beach was huge ... 15 to 20 feet dumping, loud surf ... other, most, days were filled with sunshine, tailwinds (!), and in the past 2 days we paddled along huge mountains (imagine the Matterhorn half sunken in the ocean), along huge glaciers, sometimes calving to the sound of explosion alike thunder, followed by a little tidal wave ... "Nemo", and "Cerveza Fria" (the name of my Valley Nordkapp according to the Chilean Navy "Zerpa", the permission required to navigate the Chilean waters) were allowed to paddle through, on, and along ice bergs of all kinds of size, sometimes a little close (for comfort) to walls of 100 to 300 feet of ice walls, but the glaciers did not calve at this moment.

Despite the good weather, there was drama almost every day. On and off the H20. We battled lots of equipment failures, lost items, and the adjustment needed to combine 2 independent paddlers schedules and mindsets. And we are aware that the tough parts of the trip are still ahead of us. Our friends from the "Facing the Wind" expedition seem to be stuck on the most challenging East Coast, making very little progres in the past 3 weeks ... yes, this will be us in a few days!!

3 (or 4?) days ago we passed the most lonely "Punta Timbales" outpost of the Chilean Armada: A single house, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, right on the waters edge in front of a huge waterfall. The house was the first sign of civilization we saw for 10 days, and we got greeted by 27 year old Armada employee Cesar and his wife and 3 year daughter, who will live for the next full year in this outpost, un-interrupted, and without being allowed to invite friends or family. However, Cesar was allowed for some reasons to take us in, invited us for dinner and beer, and offered us a beds in the room strictly reserved for passing Armada personnel.

Tomorrow is our day off, we will buy food, do boat reoais and modifications, and will sleep in since our new paddling schedule requires 4 AM wake up calls to avoid the strongest winds which ususllay start around 4 PM ... hopefully Biff or I will be able to upload some pics tomorrow ...

Thank you all for leaving such encouraging comments!!