Been a while since I’ve added to the blog I suppose, as we haven’t actually had a lot of advances in our journey. We’re still in Williams (that’s the summary!).

I said at the start of the year that we’d be sailing to Brazil shortly, no small proposition in view of Argentina’s continued closure; we’d have had a rather lengthy as well as stormy sea journey, without much prospect of stopping in Argentina on the way. But this ceased to matter when Brazil also closed finally (having been one of the last with little pandemic response). Who knows when they’ll open as the situation’s still poor apparently. That’s the east coast of South America shut at this time.

We’re sometimes asked why we don’t instead take the Pacific side, since we’re at the point where Atlantic and Pacific meet here; but apart from the fact that our plans are more on this side, it sounds like a lot of the Pacific’s shut currently. Friends haven’t had success on either side.

So having been detained by border closures for a second winter here in 2020 already, we’re still detained in 2021 for a third one. We do always like to travel slowly and Williams is worth an extended stay, to observe the seasons as the forests turn red in the autumn and then the snowstorms of winter arrive, and to come to know the people of this tiny distant city. But while we’d spend a year in a place very happily, in our third year we’re more than ready to be on our way. By now it’s less travelling slowly than not travelling at all really, as the seasons become expected and somehow pass more quickly, and each week starts to have the same routine. (And we’re barely into the story with Space Oddity, having bought her in this city.)

But the location remains beautiful, and of course the last two years were far from ideal for anybody; cases were low and lockdowns were short here, so in that we were more fortunate than many. Gean found a job before covid at which he’s been able to continue, which too was fortunate.

As soon as the woods are getting greener and the weather’s getting better in the springtime, we want to return to sailing at the very least locally, for instance rounding Cape Horn in Space Oddity, since we’ve not done that with this boat before. Sailing around the Horn from the base of Williams is relatively easy. And of course we’re planning to leave Chile once the spring’s here really, but that depends on the opening of the countries on our route, as some of them would have to be open realistically. (Argentina/Uruguay look more likely than Brazil at this time.)

But now in June the days aren’t much more than six hours, and the temperatures are below zero outside; so for those asking what we’re doing currently, that’d be burning logs in the stove mostly.