Pos: here
Loc: Yacht Club La Herradura Coquimbo
Acc: tent
Dist: 0 km

Tomorrow:
Estimated landing: Los Hornos or La Oliva
Estimated starting time: Right after sunrise
Estimated landing time: Well before sunset

The noise of the night? Some loudspeaker on the Yacht Club area was transmitting all VHF channel 16 radio contacts onto the court where we were camping…plus the fishermen who were launching their small boats just on sunset came back one after the other through the night to the neighbor beach and were chatting like they do after a night of work out on thewater…

It was a typical stressful day in town…we got up early as usual, and instantly started online work, as the Yacht Club lounge was open during the night. At least we didn’t had to find a toilet on the beach this morning! 🙂

I was just nicely immersed in my work, also called home to my family and manager, and not really looking presentable yet, as three Navy officers came in for a chat! We were already missing you! Officer Esteban Avila spoke a very good English, and admitted he was one of the Navy guys who understood our message from day three – what is too much is too much! He was probably the main one holding the officers from the Gobernacion Maritimas de Coquimbo a bit back – thanks a lot for our privacy, Esteban!

But still – on Peter’s phone there was in the late afternoon a Navy person calling to ask about our current Lat-Long position…yes, we have a website!

They were just gone and I was diving back into my picture updates, when some Yacht Club guy announced press people would be happy to see me around 1 pm…all right…but they came already at 12 am!? Also the president of
the yacht club, Michel Copetta, came up for a chat and acted as a translator. He had to tell us that already since the 1st of September the local time in Chile was one hour ahead…so no wonder why they all came so much “in time”!

Press work done after an hour or so, and I just finished my pictures, when Michel was inviting us for lunch into his nice house. The Yacht Club president’s residence almost looked like a Maritime Museum! A pretty, very tasteful house of just another doctor as a host, this time an orthopedics – I keep it with the doctors! We had some great conversations, and I felt sorry we didn’t plan on staying longer in Coquimbo or have already met last night! He provided us also with lot of useful informations and addresses. Thanks, Michel!

Michel soon drove us to a quick food shopping, and later assisted on some fiddling with small repairs. It is so great to have local skillful help! Now it’s back to office work again…we are back on the water tomorrow. So sorry about this “lost” great weather paddling day, but sometimes chores in town are just there to be done…