Pos: here
Loc: Isla Wellington Caleta Refugio
Acc: tent
Dist: 51,2 km
Start: 7:10 End: 17:00

I had a great night’s sleep! Long, almost undisturbed (I still felt I needed to look outside at 2 am how the water level was, and for sure the sand flies came in…), with a tad bit of light rain. There is nothing like a horizontal bed place without bumps and sliding to one side or downhill!

Still stuffing a soaking wet tent…nothing is perfect. But it’s supposed to be a dry day, and the tent dries fast putting it up first at night.

I did well taking that camp site yesterday! On the first glance, there wouldn’t have been a reasonable spot for the next half day! I’d have looked behind the islands right before I started to cross over the channel to the other side, but no need.

And I did well taking Canal Pitt and Andrews, instead of the main channel! As soon as I crossed to the other side, the ocean swell coming south west out of the off shore Bahia Salvacion through Canal Conception was playing up quite a bit! It was a beautiful following south west wind, but all together the swell and the reflection off the solid rock wall of Isla Wellington made it quite choppy! No way to land for a pee until maybe about 10 km before Punta Cameron.

At the lighthouse of Punta Cameron, Canal Concepcion turns from going north east to north, and the swell is gone. The islands become much more tame as well, with a few bays and lower land. A wide bay with three nice Caletas was inviting to find a camp spot, and in the second one with the nice name Caleta Refugio I stopped at the end where the river comes out, parked my boat on the side high and dry and tied to a tree, and walked up with minimum gear a low hill onto a mossy open field.

So far I had avoided to camp on those moss areas, which had been always soaking wet. But here, after those long almost dry days, the moss felt great, and even had a nice smell! It is not supposed torain heavily tonight, so my spot will be perfect! Dry, horizontal, wind protected, no surf noise, soft, sunny, with a nice view of the bay, and it has even (so far) no sand flies! What else do I want…if Fjordland camping could always be like this…

I’m really wondering if my calm dry weather spell for more than a week now is normal being further north, or if it is just good luck? In any case, I enjoy and deserve it…

Two more days until my next pit stop, as I refused myself to pull off two super-long days…what for? I think, 50 km for today are enough. About 90 km left to Puerto Eden!