Pos: here
Loc: Punta Huentalauquen
Acc: tent
Dist: 0 km

Tomorrow:
We are again not paddling tomorrow due to still around 4 m of swell.

Huaaaaa! No getting up at 6.30 am, just a quick pee, and back into the sleeping bag…
I didn’t sleep well, I already yesterday night felt the first signs of a stuffed, sniffy nose, a thick head and a sore allover body due to a small fever. My body told me exactly it’s time NOW to recover from a bit of a cold which I probably got due to constantly wet hair and a wet bum (I wish I had taken my proven dry suit…). NOW is big swell, and we can’t go anyway. So it’s a little time to “enjoy” being a little sick…
During the day, Peter showed also signs of the same stuff, and we both almost just laid in our tent, read a bit, slept a lot and ate reasonably.

In between, I felt like a small walk up the hill to have a look at the raging breaking sea which I was barely able to see! It was not only fully overcast all day, but mostly thick mist also. Not inviting at all to jump on 4,5 m of swell with 15-20 knots of wind…

Ricardo, one of the about four local fishermen here, came up to me on my walk with a shovel in his hands, ready to fix the sandy path at some points. I also saw a car driving off with some other guy, probably going into town, to get some food. They brought us later a bag full of fresh buns, thanks very much!

While “talking”, I also showed Ricardo my broken bow, which instantly created a help action of the locals – they all brought repair material they think I may need. As I already experienced a well meant, but not matching Polyester repair on my other kayak in Argentina (I later could simply peel off the rock hard repair strip), I rather used my own epoxy and mat which I was hoping now to match also better. They saw it dries much slower, which they thought was not good, but I think it was good, compared to the quickly glass hard Polyester stuff they’d rather liked to use on their own boats. But I’m not an expert…now the whole thing looks like it’s going off nicely and soon will be rock hard tomorrow. Already my first serious repair on my brand new kayak… 🙁 at least it’s already done, with the bow sticking into the shelter of the apsis of my tent for wind and mist protection.

We had still cell phone reception here at the beginning of the desert and could check on Windguru the long term forecast for the week…it is high swell around 4 m until Saturday with more or less wind on top, only Sunday the seas are going down…as we are both not on our hight of health today, were are actually happy to have a few more days off. But the quota of four days paddling and probably four days off should NOT stay like this all along the trip!! Further north, the swell should be a bit less anyway… hopefully… the coast line here is quite straight along cliffs with landings on narrow beaches, so a high swell also creates ugly back wash which is not really pleasant. We’ll relax, have to take it easy now, and will get better soon anyway!