English Narrows & Bernardo Glacier
March 12th.
A very sleepy day for me!. We wentt through the English Narrows around 9 am, weather drizzly all day. The English Narrows is a narrow passage in the Messier Channel in the southwestern coast of Chile. Here the channel is only 200 yards wide, but presents no great difficulty or danger unless a vessel goes through with the wind and tide, which should never be attempted if the wind is strong. In these narrows the tide runs 6 knots at springs
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Back to sleep until we went past the Capitan Leonardias- alias the sugar ship - about 11. This is the .wreck of a former cargo ship carrying bagged sugar from Santos, Brazil, it ran aground on April 7, 1968 in the fjords of Canal Messier. The ship still sits firmly on the flattened top of a submerged mountain called Bajo Cotopaxi (Cotopaxi Bank). Bajo Cotopaxi falls off quickly. There is some doubt as to whether it was an insurance job with the Captain running it aground deliberately, or whether he was very unlucky to hit a submerged reef in the middle of an otherwise bottomless fjord
 |
 |
 |
 |
Into lunch soon after noon. Then we sailed down the iceberg fjord to the Templano glacier , cruised around it. Then onto the parallel fjord to the Bernardo glacier: here we had a wondrous zodiac cruise with Damon, in the lead boat to navigate over shallows at its entrance. . A recap and Briefing and then had a zodiac cruise of 90 minutes towards this. Roger , at the helm. The icebergs were fantastic but we goy thoroughly drenched; it was also sleeting. Still so sleepy so had super at 7 and then an early night
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Onto Tortel