In most of the countries we’ve visited by sailboat, once checked in with customs and immigration we’ve been free to move from anchorage to anchorage without asking permission.
Chile is a bit different. Cruising boats are not allowed to move freely – instead, they request permission to move from port to port. Permission is granted in the form of a zarpe, and one of the conditions of the zarpe is that position reports must be made every twelve hours.
Since Easter Island is part of Chile, we requested and received a zarpe when we left Hanga Roa. We’ve been emailing position reports to the Chilean Navy every day at noon and midnight. They’re pretty simple and look like this:
1 Febrero @1200UTC
de Isla de Pascua a Puerto Montt en posicion 39 23.6S 81 53.0W Velocidad 7.6 nudos @ 060M
Sin novedades
Our friends Ivar and Floris aboard Lucipara2 named these position reports “Chilean love letters”, so that’s what we’ve been calling them also.
It is, or would be, comforting to know that someone is tracking our progress, but we have no idea if anyone actually receives or reads our messages. We’ve never heard anything back from either of the email addresses we include in our love letters. We hope someone is listening!
Day Thirteen: 171nm
39 18.2S 81 06.9W
