Location 41° 30S 79° 10W
Thursday 11.08.2007

At noon on November 8th, the Schooner Maggie B was at 41° 30S 79° 10W. We are thrashing along more or less close hauled in 25-30 knots of wind from the Southeast. A nice Roaring Forties Spring Event. Occasional sleet in the rain showers. Waves making up into a nice chop, but not too serious yet. Supposed to blow through pretty fast, which would be nice. We are under one reef in the main and the jib rolled up about half way. She is handling well, but we’ll take the main in to the second reef if things don’t abate some by sunset.

We have come 4668 NM from Rangiroa and have 281 NM to go to the channel entrance to Puerto Montt.

We are about on schedule to arrive at the mouth of the channel at sunrise Saturday, which is two hours before low water or one hour before the flood starts. If we get there really early, we will anchor nearby at Puerto Ingles, if we get there as late as Noon, we would catch the end of the flood. We should be in Marina del Sur by noon on Saturday.

The storm seems to bring out the Pintado petrels. There is at least a dozen working close in our wake and they fly within arms length of the stern. Big albatross are around also, and a 5-6 foot juvenile Wandering came almost close enough to touch the boat with his/her wing.

Hannah made a delicious soup/stew for lunch that was gulped down in coffee mugs — no soup plates today! Baked potatoes are cooking in the over for later warm-up.

All is well.

Location 40° 58S 82° 58W
Wednesday 11.07.2007

At noon on November 7th, the Schooner Maggie B was at 40° 58S 82° 58W. We are still motorsailing with about ten knots of wind directly behind us. We have 428 NM to go to Canal Chacao and have come 4513 NM from Rangiroa. The sky is partly cloudy but visibility is good. It is nice on deck in the sun, but the cabin is chill with the hatches open to air everything out. We are seeing lots of birds again — albatross and petrels — but we are still skunked on fish.

We are expecting a wind shift to a nice fresh Southerly.

Probably more wind than we need now because our target speed is 6.5 knots to get us to the mouth of the channel at about daybreak on Saturday, a hour or two before tide change.

Looking at charts, one way to grasp our position is that we are exactly on the longitude of Columbus, Ohio. The 4513 NM that we have come from Rangiroa is just about the distance from where we are to Atlanta, Georgia, or by plane from San Francisco to London.

Work on board is now all about landfall.

Checking brightness of riding lights (we haven’t seen a boat, even on radar, since Tahiti), cleaning, printing out crew lists, cleaning, reorganizing stores, cleaning, preparing Spanish standard phrases, cleaning, studying charts. We are trying not to go crazy this last step.

All is well.