Today we clean the boat, avoid sunburns, and eat lots of fresh veggies.

Buenos Aires materialized out of the mist at 10 pm last night under a beautiful crescent moon.

For a hundred miles preceding, the Rio de la Plata, which separates Argentina from Uruguay, had stained the sea brown with continental sediment. I can only assume this is from heavy spring rains inland, so that it felt like sailing on the Missouri River.

Thick water or thin mud, it’s hard to say.

It was incredible to be out of sight of land and yet only be in 20 feet of water. The charts were full of small X’s signifying shipwrecks — some we saw still had their masts 20 or 30 feet out of the water. After some trepidation we navigated our way through the maze of shipping lanes, dodging cargo freighters and super tankers in the dark into the inner port, where we were met by our liaison from the Puerto Madero Yacht Club where the Maggie B will be tied up for the next month (and will serve as my floating home) and were led through a narrow canal into the thumping heart of the city on Saturday night.

On our way in we were passed by two party boats full of dancers, the air filed with drunken Spanish and American rock n’ roll as the lights flashed red and green inside. Though exhausted, I was infected with the thin energy of arriving in a foreign exotic city late at night with over 3000 miles of ocean behind me.

Across the canal there is a strip of old brick warehouses fronting the water that have been transformed into trendy little restaurants and clubs, and that is where we were pointed by the captain of the yacht club, who said that even at 1 am, Buenos Aires would still be offering food and drink. Though Argentina is world famous for its steak, we found our way into a sushi bar where the exhaustion finally eeked out of us onto the white leather couches, replaced with some delicious sushi and vino blanco and topped off with a double chocolate ice cream cone.

Spirited back across the canal by our private watertaxi (seriously, the Yacht Club takes us too and fro at our whim in their handy little dinghy) we promptly collapsed into bed to the promise of a solid night’s sleep for the first time in a week. Dancing will have to wait until I exchange my rubbery sea legs for more solid earthbound ones.

Today we clean the boat, avoid sunburns, and eat lots of fresh veggies.