Day 15, Passage to Puerto Montt

2000Z 06OCT19, Day 15, Easter Island to Puerto Montt, Chile. We've made good progress and are actively slowing down a bit. The winds came up, as expected overnight, but things were handled sailing just the genoa and running downwind. We gybed 3 times to keep a good course with the wind shifts. As morning came the winds shifted more southwest than forecasted and took awhile to calm back down. Slowly things have been settling back down and the main was raised around noon local.

Current Position: 41 21S / 075 33W
24 hour progress: 153nm, 6.4kts avg SOG
Overall progress for the passage is 1963nm with approximately 80nm to the entrance canal to get to Puerto Montt. Today has been gray and dreary with the occasional sun trying to do a cameo, but the feeling of being enveloped in a fog cloud has left. We are currently sailing a starboard tack, beam reach with 3 reefs in the main and a reef in the genoa. The winds are 20kts +/- 5kts and the seas are big but calming. We would raise more sail, but need to slow down for a daylight approach to the canal.

We passed a cargo ship around sunrise this morning and are expecting to start seeing marine traffic as we are approaching the coast. The weather and sailing has been challenging. However things are starting to calm and we are trying to time our arrival with daylight tomorrow morning. From there we will either wait a night at anchor outside the canal, or go through the canal and stop to anchor for the night along the way to Puerto Montt.

The crew are all doing well. The boys have been a bit stir crazy and everyone is excited for landfall! We continue to be extremely satisfied with Zephyros and her pilot house. She has been a great boat for these conditions - we have been comfortable inside with the door closed while it continued to rain last night and the wind was from behind (which would blow the rain inside with the door open).

We have had some minor damage from the hard sailing. The winds have caused a short blow out of a seam in our genoa which will need to be sewed when we get into port. For now we have a reef in the genoa to protect it from further splitting. It is close to the forestay near the tack so a couple of wraps of the furler has it unloaded and protected.