After 33 days at sea, and experiencing flat calms, light winds and 30+ knot breezes both upwind and downwind (the really difficult sailing will come later), we finally made it to Punta del Estes in Uruguay. Yay! 

I found the whole month fairly challenging; this may have something to do with being a watch leader and having a load of extra responsibilities as well as trying to figure out how everything works on the yacht, this whole ocean sailing thing and experiencing ocean helming (driving) too. I could still use that week off…

…But now we have 10 days here to fix the many boat issues that crop up, and with me also being bosun means I have lots of work to do. On the other hand Clipper and the Yacht Club Punta del Este (our hosts here) have organised plenty of activities; we have a BBQ tomorrow, I have a guided tourist day later, so hopefully it’s not all work.

This is my first time in Uruguay (or in South America, or even in the bottom half of the world) and so far it’s pretty great. Lovely people, nice weather and good facilities – and great bars and great wine. Although Punta is clearly an out-of-season fancy holiday resort and possibly not indicative of the rest of the country.

Here are some of the photos I took during Leg 1 – I didn’t take many due to the aforementioned responsibilities pushing things like cameras out of my mind. I did at least remember to take it up the mast during the spinnaker block check and mainsail check.