Tecla on her way to Magellan Street

In past editions, we regularly made room for captain Jet Sluik’s logbook entries with the logger Tecla. After passing the roaring forties, she’s heading with her crew towards Magellan Street.

October 20 // 53º36.5’S 072º16.2’W // course 126º // speed 4,9kn

Passing through Canal Smythe, we could see the Strait of Magellan lying in front of us. An open strait, a place where one could imagine big square-riggers, in the old days, sailing in and searching for new passages. But navigating through Smythe, passing between all the islands and finding your way around, cannot have been easy.

We all wondered today what it must have been like to find your way out of a labyrinth like the one we had just made our way through. Some channels seem big and wide, but turn out not to be channels at all, just inlets. Other routes around islands end in shallows. And when you take three turns to starboard, do you end up back where you started, or are you actually discovering new routes?

With their smaller schooners or rowing boats, the explorers were much more manoeuvrable than they would have been in their large ocean-going ships. So smaller parties would set off to navigate and explore the various routes.

We now have all the help we could possibly need: paper charts – more than I can count – GPS to keep track of where we are, and even an electronic chart to glance at every now and then. The radar tells us what is really out there, while the VHF helps us report in to the Chilean coastal stations and make sure we don’t end up in the narrower passages at the same time as another ship.

We have just passed Paso Tortuoso, a narrow passage less than a mile wide, with enough current to slow us down to 3.8 knots. A naval vessel passed us, luckily just after the narrowest part. We were making 4 knots against the current, while she shot past us, going with it.

Later tonight, we will anchor and wait for the next tide.

The sights today were amazing: spectacular mountain ridges, permanent snow, and even an old shipwreck. Near Isla Simpson and Isla Shoal, we passed the remains of the Santa Leonora, a ship that met its fate in these remote channels. It is strange to think of a ship once making its way through these waters, perhaps with the same mountains surrounding it, before becoming part of the landscape itself.

All is well on board,

Jet.