Tuesday, January 24, 2012

1/24/12

As of this morning I still hadn't gotten any response to the request for
clearance that the marina sent in to the Armada for me last week, so on
the advice of Joloc & Keke, two spanish cruisers who are the only other
visitorts here at the yacht club, Shanley and I took the bus into
Valparaiso to charge into the Lion's Den, the Capitania. An hour later
I emerged, victorious, with the knowledge that tomorrow afternoon the
navy followed by the whole train of officials would come visit to grant
me a zarpe and to clear customs. The zarpe seems to be a weirdly
Chilean document - as far as I can tell it's essentially a cruising
permit, but taken to extremes. If you're planning to go anywhere within
Chile, you need a zarpe, and to spell out your itinerary on it in
advance, complete with ETAs at the various destinations. While I know
the US has somewhat similar requirements for foreign yachts, Chile also
requires it of Chilean yachts. Daniel, the skipper of a Chilean flagged
power yacht docked next to me, had to get a zarpe in order to sail from
here to Porto Montt, about 500 miles south, and back. I'm not sure if
theres a minimum trip distance or anything, but the whole concept seems
a bit extreme. Anyway, if all goes well and everyone shows up on time,
by this time tomorrow I should be offshore and bound somewhat South
again. Today we put the finishing touches on what we've taken to
calling the hutch, which is a sort of hard dodger - It's going to be a
lot nicer than the old canvas dodger, much drier and sturdier. A few
other things I learned in the course of the day - Haribo Brix candy is
disturbingly, puckeringly sour, Jehovah's witnesses from Wisconsin
apparently come to Chile to escape the cold and bring English copies of
"The Watchtower" with them. Also, the produce ladies at the grocery
store do not appeciate having to weigh an entire cartload of tomatoes,
oranges, grapefruit, mangoes, pears, peaches, lemons, and limes, when
one is a trainee and the other's scale is broken. Who knew?

1 comment:

  1. Such upbeat comments! Sounds like this was
    occasion for some R & R. Onward!

    ReplyDelete