Hauled out in Piriapolis, Uruguay
Wednesday 01.30.2008

The Schooner Maggie B is hauled out in Piriapolis, Uruguay, still approximately at 34° 53S, 55° 17W. Yesterday we were plucked from the water by a huge travel lift and placed delicately in the yard. The travel lift is capable of lifting 80 tons and had an easy time with us.

Today we worked like dogs, sanding the whole hull in the morning, getting completely covered with the red dust of the old paint. In the afternoon we painted, getting a coat on the hull (and us) by 1700. She looks lovely! Tomorrow we will put a second coat on, and cover the spots where the log supports prevented us sanding and painting the first pass. Hannah especially specialized in getting about as much paint on herself as on the boat.

Curtis did a quick job of replacing the through-hull fitting, after making a call to Covey Island and talking to the very person who installed it in 2006 - great support from Nova Scotia!

It seems one always has some challenge when one hauls out. Our challenge seems to be bureaucratic. EuroMarine Trading of Newport is the US distributor for Lopolights, our LED navigation lights. We love them, they are very bright, look lovely and use almost no power. Unfortunately we break them a lot. I bought a pile of our broken ones home over Christmas, sent them to EuroMarine so the they could evaluate the weakness we discovered, and they sent out free replacements by FedEx. Free until the hit Uruguay, that is. The stated value on the package is just US$100 (though certainly worth more). Anything of more than US$50 is charged 40% duty. On the value of the package, plus duty on the shipping! Plus, plus, plus. I appointed Thomas our Commercial Attache. He made a close friend of the woman who is the local Customs agent. He had me call the US Embassy in Montevideo’s Commercial Attache. We sent letters with tons of stamps on them swearing we were a foreign boat in transit and would install the lights and leave Uruguay. We had friends of Thomas’s from another Consulate go by. It only got worse. He spent more time on the phone than scraping and painting. Finally we hired an “Agent” who works with FedEx and supposedly $200 will cover all our costs, fees, expenses and tariffs. We’ll see.

Locals say that the problem here is that in most places when you put “Temporary Importation, Boat in Transit” on the package, it helps. Apparently here the math is: boat=money. Perhaps that is why a travel lift that only costs US$25 to get hauled isn’t mobbed by boats from hundreds of miles around. In fact, perhaps that is the bait to get into the tariff mess? I hope we don’t have more surprises.

This time of year the South Atlantic High sits out at about 30-35 degrees South. We went south of it to get from Salvador, Brazil to Cape Town in 2006. Having it there, however, means that the wind along the coast of Uruguay and southern Brazil is from the Northeast, or right on your nose. But if you wait for a nice juicy low to come by to the south, the wind starts from the Northwest and then shifts to the Southeast afterwards, both of which are just right for us. We plan to finish up here in a few days and then move along 20 miles to Punte del Este, the ultra chic resort, to wait for our breeze. Right now it looks as if the next southerly is due February 3rd, which might be to soon for us to make the 600-700 NM run to Florianopolis, Brazil. We’ll see. It will be nice to have a big sail after way too much motoring recently.

All is well.

Location 34° 53S, 55° 17W
Monday 01.28.2008

The Schooner Maggie B is tied up at the pier in Piriapolis, Uruguay at 34° 53S, 55° 17W. We arrived at noon today, January 28th after about a 140 NM run from Colonia. We passed Montevideo at little after midnight, which was complicated. Lots of wrecks scattered around, a zig-zag dredged channel full of big boats coming and going, tugs with long tows moving our direction and draggers head to head. All topped by a huge ferry doing two 360’s right in front of us as we tried to avoid everybody. Earlier we were passed by a ferry doing 44 knots, which caught our attention.

Piriapolis is a nice beach community just before Punte del Este, which is the chic place. There is a little tight harbor which is very friendly and run by the Navy for some reason. The Volvo Ocean Race some years ago stopped at Montevideo and they transported a huge travel lift to work with their boats. After the race, the travel lift was donated to the People of Uruguay, and it was moved here to Piriapolis. It is rated for 80 tons and has lifted 70, so the Maggie B at 35 should be no problem. The cost is an astonishing US$25 to get hauled out. We hope that all the rest is as modestly priced.

All is well.

Location 34° 29S, 57° 50W
Sunday 01.27.2008

At noon on January 27th, the Schooner Maggie B was at 34° 29S, 57° 50W, just clearing from Colonia. We are headed ESE at 7.5 knots, motorsailing, for Piriapolis, which is 131 NM away. We should be there a little after dawn tomorrow. It is warm and hazy, with a 10-12 knot ENE’erly.

Putting the main up was fun. It was the first time we hoisted it since it was taken off to be repaired in Buenos Aires, plus we replaced the topping lifts and lazy jacks. So it was a bit of a struggle, but we waited until we were a ways clear of Colonia so that the locals wouldn’t laugh too much at the Norde Americanos.

The weekend in Colonia was a delight. Old buildings, cobblestone streets, lots of great restaurants and bars and some very interesting stores, including a Musto store, our favorite for high-end sailing gear. And it even wasn’t too difficult to find some restaurants that served something besides beef! Our research on wines continues, and we found some lovely Uruguayan whites and roses.

Our route from Colonia to Piriapolis takes us along the north shore of the Rio de la Plata. There are dozens and dozens of shipwrecks and “deep water” means 20-30 feet. At least the charts seem accurate as to buoys and depths. We are trying to thread a path clear of the shipping lanes (lots of big boys moving in and out), but staying in water over 15 feet and not scrape any wrecks (the masts are often visible). It is quite twisty and turny, enhanced by occasional swarms of small Argentinean sailing boats rushing downwind to get back to Buenos Aires from some Uruguayan beach resort or another. We will pass Montevideo at about midnight, which hopefully will not be too interesting.

All is well.

En route to Colonia, Uraguay
Friday 01.25.2008

The Schooner Maggie B left Buenos Aires at 1100 on January 25th. We motorsailed across the Rio de la Plata to Colonia, Uruguay, arriving at 1500. The estuary was as brown as ever, and quite littered with shipwrecks. The passage was made more interesting by high-speed ferries zipping past at 40 knots on their way to or from Buenos Aires and Colonia. On the 25 NM crossing, other than the two dredged channels, the deepest depth we saw was 18 feet.

Colonia del Sacramento in a small, old-fashioned town of about 20,000. It was founded by the Portuguese in 1680, to smuggle goods across the river to Spanish Buenos Aires. It changed hands many times over the years as the Spanish and Portuguese fought along their borders. It looks as if it will be great fun to explore its cobblestone streets. It is rather a relief after the size, dirtiness and bustle of Buenos Aires. We are anchored just off the Yacht Club. There are about 100 boats on moorings, many of the Argentinean, here for the holidays. The boats (almost all sailboats, veleros) are generally about 30 feet with shallow draft. We are at the outside of the pack, only partially protected by the breakwater in all of five feet of water under our keel.

The Maggie B is in pretty good shape. The main sail and G2 gennaker, The Bird, have been patched by North Sails Buenos Aires. The autopilot was overhauled by Furuno USA, and they gave us a new Rudder Reference Unit, all of which seems to be working well. We have lots of goodies from home that all together make the schooner more homey.

The generator is still deviling us, having some sort of fuel supply problems. Our chief suspect is that the electric fuel pump is just losing its pull after working so hard these two years. We are getting a new fuel pump shipped to us in Piriapolis, just down the line, where we plan to haul out next week. The Buenos Aires Onan distributor said that they knew the pump, they had it in inventory, but that it was out-of-stock, but would be in “in 10 days to two weeks,” which means “never” in South America.

The crew for this leg is Curtis Weinrich and Hannah Joudrey continuing (Hannah all the way from Cape Town!). New shipmates are Thomas Didier from Quebec and Janet Gibb from Wellington. Thomas is a former shipmate of Hannah’s from her time on the Eye of the Wind. He has been in Montevideo for a year’s apprenticeship at the Canadian Embassy. His fluent Spanish has been a huge help for us and his Portuguese will help as well in Brazil. Janet has been sailing and racing for many years (like every Kiwi!) and her “day job” as manager for a High End Wellington providor should help us nail the finest food and supplies as we coast along.

Our current plan is to spend this weekend in Colonia, leaving Sunday afternoon for Piriapolis, which is about 160 NM East of here. We hope to arrive Piriapolis on Monday and get hauled out either Monday or Tuesday. We will clean and scrape the hull, and repaint the bottom paint, which will hopefully only take 3 days, though it seems you always fine something new (and NOT nice) when you haul out. We also have to change one through-hull fitting, where the handle was broken off, fortunately in the open position (it is the Gen Set cooling water fixture, and, yes, I did check that the cooling water is still getting through).

After hauling and painting in Piriapolis, we plan to reward ourselves by several days in Punte del Este, a very chic Uruguayan summer resort. While we are the biggest boat in Colonia, we will probably be the smallest one in Punte del Este. After Punte del Este, we plan to make for Florianopolis in Brazil, another summer resort for those fleeing Rio and San Paulo.

It is good to be underway again, and heading North.

All is well.

Happy Holidays from the Crew of Schooner Maggie B

The crew of the Schooner Maggie B are mostly on holiday break, though Curtis is holding the fort in Buenos Aires. He has sent our mainsail out to North Sails Argentina to fix some tears and delamination. We hope to be able to get a diesel mechanic by to help us troubleshoot the Onan generator, which hasn’t been working too well. The autopilot was carried home to Chicago and FedEx’ed to Furuno North American to get overhauled.

We have a first draft of a Schooner Maggie B work song to help us raise the sail and do any “haul” work. Traditional sea shanties were both work songs (Way, hay, up she rises) as well as “fo’c’stle” songs which were more for straight enjoyment (Shenandoah). Here’s ours:

The Maggie B’s around the Horn
Homeward Bound, Hooray!

What care we for wind and weather

When we get our pay?

The Pisco Sour is our drink,

Which we learned in Chile.

Williwaw’s do blow us around

Glaciers make our day.

Reef her up and reef her down, boys,

It’s our time to play.

The Maggie B’s around the Horn,

Homeward Bound, Hooray!

Comments and advice encouraged!

I have just looked at our web statistics for the Schooner Maggie B web site. I’m quite astounded:

Successful requests since last February 2007 are 1,939,211 including 35,017 in the last week.

Successful requests for pages: 1,099,649, including 17,788 in the last week.

During December we served 2,183 Distinct Hosts.

There are a lot of wonderful people interested in the trip!

Merry Christmas to all!