Blog Archives

Does it rain in Paradise?

23:06.75S 134:57.98W

SunriseAukena by .

Sunrise over Aukena with rain clouds brewing

Yes it does! The last week has been very wet but only slightly cooler than the previous couple of weeks. We have been swimming every day but that is about all our outdoor activities have been limited to Read more ›



Making the bed for an engine

The old engine bed with repairs.

The start point. You can see the patched up engine bed – I bolted on the aluminium t-section in the channels to stiffen it.

The back story – Some readers may remember that we had a problem with “Morgane’s” engine bed while we were in the Chilean channels on our way north ( I wrote about it in this post ). The repair that I made then had held for the rest of journey to Valdivia; but one of the reasons for staying in Valdivia over the winter had been to make a proper repair. Repair is rather a poor way to describe what we had to do; rip it all out and start again is what we really had to do. Read more ›



Return to Valdivia

dinghy in misty morning light

Early morning in Marina Estancilla

I flew out of Cape Town on 28th August;  leaving the crew to make the final preparations to “Pelagic Australis” for her pre-season delivery trip to Stanley. Skip wrote about that on the Pelagic website here.

Paula met me in Santiago where we had rented an apartment for a few days via the Airbnb network. Read more ›



Is spring coming? – some news from Valdivia

Morgane's saloon

The fruit of much labour

An update from Paula.

Here in Valdivia spring seems to be arriving, even though it’s very early. Maybe is el niño, I don’t know… still rains every day, but the days are getting longer, the birds are getting louder, and the trees are flowering. All these is good for the soul, as the winter is long, grey and wet around here. Chris has been away for… I don’t know… two months? too long anyway! And I’m missing him very much. We needed the coins for continuing with our adventure, and so he left. Being away for so long is not easy, and I trully hope we won’t need to do it again. Read more ›



Post Brazil catch-up

dodger montageSo what have I been up to since the “Dodgy” update?Well we finished the dodger in early June, apart from the windows as we didn’t have any acrylic, before I headed of to Rio de Janeiro and Paula headed to Cambridge in the UK where she had a short term fellowship with the British Antarctic Survey. Read more ›



Dis-masted and re-masted

IMG_9873We pulled “morgane’s” rig last weekend, gave everything a once over and clean-up, replaced the wiring to the lights, installed a Furuno PB200 solid-state wind/weather instrument, installed a new Metz vhf antenna (a turkey vulture stole the old Glomar one) and installed mast steps. Read more ›



Dodgy

The old dodger

The old dodger didn’t offer much protection

Morgane’s dodger was very much old-school i.e. it protected the main hatch from the worst of the spray from ahead but offered no real protection for the crew unless you were the lucky one able to sit on the top step of the companionway. Read more ›



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