New Challenges on Sila

A little while back, Porter wrote a blog in response to the Bobblehead's question about hardships on Sila. She wanted to know if our adventure is really as great as we have made it out to be on the blog. The honest answer is absolutely yes. It has far surpassed our expectations in many ways. But in the last week, our endurance and morale have been tested a little more than usual.

About a week ago, we were tied up to two fishing boats for a couple of days. We all enjoyed the experience as we learned a lot about life as a Chilean fisherman, toured the boats, were treated to gifts of fresh fish and delicious meals, shared homemade chocolate chip cookies- a true American treat- and enjoyed the chance to practice our Spanish. The boys even watched a movie (in Spanish) on the big LCD screen with the crew. As this has been our only contact with other people recently, we speculate that our immune systems were not prepared for such proximity.

In HMI parlance, Puke-Fest 2014 has hit Sila. It began with Porter, hit me two days later, and yesterday found Christopher and the Rabbit down for the count. While I do not want to overwhelm you with disgusting details, I do hope to convey some of the added challenges of a stomach bug on a boat.

In my case, the worst of it hit while we were on our overnight passage across Golfo de Pena, roughly translated as the Gulf of Grief or perhaps the Golf of Sorrow- aptly named from my perspective. During my 10 pm to 2 am shift, I alternated between throwing up on the cockpit floor, pumping sea water to flush it clean, adjusting sails, checking radar for boats, and recording our position in the log, all while hoping that the awful sounds would not wake the sleeping crew until the watch change. Fortunately, this particular offshore passage was not terribly rough so I did not have to deal with seasickness to "boot".

For Christopher and the Rabbit, the worst part was probably sharing the misery. There is no escaping the sound of someone puking in the cockpit, which is difficult enough when you feel good. When I asked each of them how I could help them yesterday, Christopher asked me to shoot him and the Rabbit asked if I had a magic wand to make it go away. And for Porter, being the first meant he did not know how long it would last, thus making it more difficult to have hope that he would ever feel better again.

We are tucked into a beautiful little anchorage with an anchor and four shore lines, two on the bow and two on the stern, so even in the 40 knot gusts last night, Sila did not move. But it rained nonstop yesterday, leaving us all in this small space together. Only Big Jack ventured out into the pouring rain for a ramble through the brush and up onto the stunningly beautiful granite domes that punctuate the landscape here. This place is a surreal combination of granite walls and domes, much like Yosemite, and deep glacial fjords. It is simply amazing. Now we are hoping that Big Jack doesn't get it next. Stay tuned... - Molly