Castro - Chiloe, Chile

Castro is one of the main towns for the island of Chiloe, and has an airport and a plethora of buses to the mainland, as well as ferry service to the surrounding islands and mainland destinations.

The anchorage in Castro is a busy fishing port, but there is not much in the way of marine services, not even a dinghy dock. The days of rocking up at the Armada's dock are long over, and we were politely informed that we were trespassing on military property when we rocked up in the dinghy to have our paperwork checked.

That said, Castro is a really nice town, with palapito houses along the shore, good grocery stores, shopping malls, and plenty of hardware stores.

Access to the shore is fairly easy, there is a small cove near the anchorage where a dinghy can be beached, we didn't have any problems here, but probably not the best idea to leave the dinghy there too late at night.

Anchor in the bay inland of the armada dock, making sure there is plenty of space for the Armada boats to come and go. Watch out for mooring balls, which are often loaded with 3 or 4 fishing boats, and can take up a lot more space than you would expect.

Otherwise a fairly comfortable anchorage, we took the oppertunity to rebuild our gearbox here whilst we waited on some other repairs to be made ashore, and felt very secure. Bad weather rarely comes from the east, and subsequently the anchorage is well protected from the usual windy directions.