TOPtoTOP expedition reports

Warm welcome on Robinson Island

On Monday we arrived after a fast passage on Robinson Crusoe Island. We were all ill, because of the bad swell.
Half way the autopilot stopped working. That was quite frustrating because we have had enough energy from the wind generators and solar panels to run the pilot. Unfortunatelly the rudder was going very hard on a certain course and helming became quite a hard job.

So after that, the warm welcome of the Swiss Jost Otto Schnyder, who lives on the island, was like Xmas! He is a very interesting person and great coordinator: - Yesterday we met the key persons on the island to coordinate our activities.

Today we went to the first cave of Robinson (Selkirk) and climbed Cerro Alta. Then we collected 4 big bags of garbage in the surounding of the cave. It was Salina's first active clean up and by this ocasion she made already 5 steps by her own!

More soon... and hopefully with pictures (the line is very week).

Swimming together with sea lions

Together with Mare Nostrum we made an event to bring the local kids closer to the sea lions. We went with 3 fishing boats and 20 kids from the island to the sea lion population in the North of Robinson island. There we were all swimming together with the sea lions.
Tomorrow we have another school presentation...

Robinson island

Here now some pictures about our activities in the last few weeks. The internet connection here on the isalnd is very slow, that's why the pictures are smaller than normal:

The navigation from Valdivia to Robinson was fast, but difficult because of the rudder. So we were quite happy when the cliffs DSCN9679.JPG came closer and we arrived 2006-03-21 577.jpg.

We found a new friend: Jost Otto Schnyder. He is from Switzerland and some how a living Robinson and already in his lifetime a legend. He also helped us out with a jack to push the rudder more down. So may that's the solution.

Our first activity on the island was the climb 2006-03-21 553.jpg of Cerro Alto
2006-03-21 556.jpg with a spectacular view.
2006-03-21 557.jpg. On the base of the mountain we made a clean up 2006-03-21 570.jpg just infront of Robinson's cave, where Salina made her first steps.

A big help was the local radio station DSCN9670.JPG "picaflor rocho" to announce the activities DSCN9675.JPG. There we met Joge A. Tomasevic. A great researcher who fights for the endemic species: the Masatuera Rayadito rayadito.pdf (download pdf 58KB).

Our volunteers Elise and Jonathan Oz.02.2006 056.jpg were participaiting. We organised a clean up DSCN9707.JPG in the village and the whole school DSCN9698.JPG was participaiting in the drawing contest Oz.02.2006 078.jpg.

One of the best events was with marenostrum www.marenostrumexpediciones.com: we went swimming with the sea lions DSCN9684.JPG. We never have seen a closer relation ship between wilde animals and kids DSCN9687.JPG!

Again we made some remote people happy with our visit...and they made us happy too. Today they made it posible that we were able to see our next family member DSCN9695.JPG!

Tomorrow it's Salina's first birthday and than we will set sails for more remote islands in the Pacific ...It will be about 6 weeks of navigation to the Gambier islands!

Here the missing pictures of the last hours we spent in Valdivia:

On the 31.03.2006 we left our friends 2006-03-21 537.jpg in Valdivia and the people from Alwoplast 2006-03-21 549.jpg. One hour before our departure 2006-03-21 539.jpg we plant an Alerce tree on top of Salina's plazenta 2006-03-21 531.jpg, which was nearly one year waiting for this event in the freezer of the cantine of the company Alwoplast."

Voices of the crew

The purpose of this expedition report is that you get a feeling about the crossing from Patagonia to Polynesia, here the voices of the crew in their native language. We left Patagonia 25 days ago. End of this week we will have half of the distance. There is still about the same distance like an Atlantic crossing to go! You are able to contact us on Sundays:
phone: 00871 7625 68 933. At the moment we are on S19.16.592W094.25.879.

Sabine: Onkel Felix
Wir sind nun schon 11 Tage unterwegs und so weit n