Puerto Eden

"I am going to stop the ship, and will let you know when to drop the anchor" the Captain states on the VHF to the crew member standing on the fore deck in the wind and under the pouring rain.

An instant later the noise of the chain rattling down reverberates along the ship.

"What's up? Why you dropped?" … just softening the words heard in the radio and wheelhouse…

"I thought you said 'Drop that shit' so I let go"

Engines run on stern, blaring explosion of laughter in the bridge.

A promising start of the day.

"Flawlessly" — Europa just dropped anchor at Puerto Eden. Located about 49° of latitude south and housed between islets and narrow waterways, it is considered one of the remotest settlements in Chile, just paired with Easter Island and Villa de Las Estrellas at King George Island (South Shetlands, Antarctica).

Enclave for the native sea people, the Kaweskar, for over 6000 years, it was in 1937 when the Chilean Air Force built here a supporting station for an experimental commercial hydroplane line between Puerto Montt and Punta Arenas. The dispersed nomadic Kaweskar population started to gather and settle around the newly built Base. Gradually the place became a small town, and in 1969 was re-founded officially and integrated into the National Census.

At the present times its population is estimated to be somewhere between 80 and 176 inhabitants, many of them the last descendants of the original ethnic group.

Lately, the Chilean Government has been improving the local quality of life. Since the year 2000 there is a hydroelectric power plant, phone and Wi-Fi access has been provided too. The ferry connecting Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales stops here for a little while twice a week, delivering supplies and special orders from locals on request. And the kids can attend a relatively new school with free internet connection and modern facilities. But not today, as they were welcomed aboard the Europa for the morning whilst we were ashore.

Following the trend of having to face strong blustery conditions, we got to the town; once here the seas and winds abated. Port formalities arranged, zodiacs dropped us in the settlement, lying on a peninsula of Wellington Island at the west side of Paso del Indio, the waterway which separates Wellington from the mainland.

We are greeted by a giant kelp as we step ashore. The rain is streaming down, and so the roof in the port area is very much appreciated. Here, free Wi-Fi is available, and some of us get stuck here. For those of us exploring the island, it is a wet endeavour. Out of the port area, we wander along a boardwalk taking us on a tour of the small island — being basically the artery of the settlement to link all facilities and residencies. Sporadically along it we find small wooden houses, but no one is to be seen outside. Barely just a couple of locals show up at the jetty to sell handicrafts and homemade king crab empanadas.

Puerto Eden residents, fishermen as most of them are, depend on the catch of several species, mostly king crab and the shellfish they call "choros" and "cholgas", but the red tide's high toxin concentration on the latter has been a recurrent problem for months in a row for several years, spoiling the fisheries.

The boardwalk keeps the vegetation preserved underneath. Mosses, grasses, bushes and trees are all intact, making the boardwalk a nature experience. Green-backed Firecrowns are flying around the large red-flowered Chílco bushes, their doings revealed by their chirping sounds, but hard to observe. With the rain still pouring down, the smell of the flowers and the buzzing of the hummingbirds, it feels a bit like walking through a rainforest. And indeed, we are in one of the rainiest places on earth (meteorological registers tell us about up to 347 rainy days a year), and in temperate rainforest. Small streams cross underneath us, and in some places, we walk past walls of mosses and plants. Some of the boardwalks are also taking us over the hill of the island where we get a view of the surrounding area. This is a wild place to live, only forests and mountains as far as the eye can see. Down from the viewpoint, we pass houses crammed together along the side of the boardwalk and in the tidal zone fishing boats are resting on the beach waiting for the tide to bring the water back.

Next was to resume our way northwards through channels and narrows, and eventually reach the more offshore waters of the South Pacific.

Not far from Puerto Eden, the Angostura Inglesa links Paso del Indio with the straight and wider Canal Messier. Meandering narrows subjected to strong currents that ask for careful navigation. A passage that has to be timed preferably with the flowing waters with us, or in slack tide. A network of channels within the labyrinth of waterways, islets, islands, bays, fjords and inlets that characterise this region. Despite the old Spanish fleet making several incursions in the surroundings, finding their ways, exploring and claiming the territories, these narrows had to wait until 1830 to see a ship making it through. Surely it represented a challenge for the Adelaide, support vessel for the HMS Beagle Expedition, which was searching for a southbound passage along the Chilean Channels, and first navigated those English Narrows (Angostura Inglesa).

Winding our way through it, Europa just took about 45 minutes to leave behind these narrows and get into the Canal Messier. In total it runs for 72 nautical miles on a north-south general direction, leading to the open waters of the Pacific Ocean in the southern part of Golfo de Penas. The coastline is mountainous on either side, snowy peaks up high, waterfalls running through steep forests, the channel itself is wide and free of dangers, except for the Cotopaxi Shoal, where a rock with a depth of 4 m rises near mid-channel on its west side. Sitting atop, a ghostly sight — here lays the rusty hull of M/V Capitán Leónidas. Built in Germany in 1937, sailing under the Panama flag, she was heading from Punta Arenas to Valparaiso with a cargo of bagged sugar when she ran aground on the 7th of April 1968, just right on the same spot where in 1889 the ship "Cotopaxi" sank.

Once the wreck is left behind, Europa continues northbound, but not until the end of the Messier. During nighttime we find ourselves taking a diversion to portside into the narrower and deep Adalberto Channel, which connects with the Fallos waterway. That was to be our gate offshore.