Pos: here
Loc: Isla San Pedro
Acc: Navy Station
Dist: 0 km

It was a tough decision yesterday – to leave this morning or to stay. There was a small wind gap with 12-18 knots north west from 7.30 am with early light to about 11-12 am, but with still a lot of rain and uncertainty when the bad stuff would start again. The first sheltered beach would be in about 22-25 km. No idea what the sea would  have been like on the crossing, though the whitecaps where gone. It was marginal…I decided to stay. Maybe because here I don’t have to suffer anything and am not running down supplies and batteries?

I found it is always much harder to decide to leave safe shelter in civilization into marginal conditions than to leave from an already maybe marginal spot in the bush to a maybe better one…tomorrow will be the same decision.
The forecast is something like 17 knots in the morning, going down over lunch, rising to *ugly* again in the afternoon, and bringing the last rain storm over night. Wednesday, when the last heavy rain is gone in early morning, the wind decreases from around 15 knots over the day to 10 knots and it will stay dry for the next days, with very low wind. This is at least what I can see on Wind guru here on the Navy computer. Karel will tell me his forecast tonight.

So either one more day here tomorrow, or I’ll leave, paddling at least those 25 km to the first reasonable beach. I was suffering already this morning for about three hours with lower wind from 7.30 to around 11 am, it had even some sun shine – then the usual ugly heavy rain stuff came in again and I felt ok that I stayed.

I was allowed to “shop “this morning a few items food store! Thanks a lot for providing me shelter, meals and now even a few extra supplies! I got milk powder, a few oats (yeah!), some pasta, soup and tomato sauce. I should be well set now until Puerto Montt, if the weather behaves just a bit all right. It seems like it is coming here in batches, as after Wednesday the whole rest of the week is looking calm and dry again! Thank goodness…

I was thinking, after those long days of heavy rain, the portage after the river to the lagoon may be more soaking wet than necessary… 🙁 ? Maybe another reason to wait one more day? But besides my (forced) stay on Isla Deceit for four days, I always had a maximum breaks of three days, and this even only twice or three times, I think…so this four and a half day stay (counting to now) is making me quite dissatisfied I’m stuck here (despite the nice company) and letting this marginal morning chance go…but just now, it is heaviest raining outside again and my human need for a dry, warm and safe shelter is fully sated…