Windhorse Sailing

Day: 24
Position: 56 degrees south, 67.18 west. Rounding Cape Horn
Weather: Sleet, rain, sun, hail
Wind: 35 knots West, gusting to 55 knots
Seas: 25 feet, South West

I woke up today with a sense of calm that is difficult to explain and impossible to duplicate. Even from our protected anchorage, a bay called Puerto Maxwell, you could hear the winds and snow shrieking all night, whistling at us, reminding us of our day ahead. Our forecast looked positive- winds 25 to 35, gusts to 40, typically conditions I wouldn’t be excited to go sailing in, but for Cape Horn, we couldn’t ask for much better. And really, that’s part of the mystique- it would be a disappointing to round the Horn on a light day. But still, why this sense of calm? I’ve dreamed of rounding the Horn by sail for many years, been plagued by nightmares in the last few weeks that have kept me permanently on edge, the muscles in my neck and back have been jacked up into a ball of knots no massage could ease. Everything, all this work, all this effort, all for this one day. And today I wake up like I’m on valium?

Maybe its because I was setting up for the inevitable anticlimax. Sail two thousand miles to round a desolate rock at the bottom of the world. Ridiculous. Like climbing a mountain, I have tried to focus on the journey, rather than the goal. But I am happy - no, actually ecstatic to report that the Horn has lived up to its grandeur in regal splendor, at least for our small yacht and trio of men. In “The Way of a Ship,” Derek Lundy describes, “the reputation of the Horn as a place of tribulation for seamen is based on a few facts of physical geography that can be expressed in six words: compression, thin water, latitude, ice, mountains.” I’ve read sentences like that in innumerable books so many times it becomes almost blasé. Wind and seas circle the southern oceans unhindered the circumference of the globe except at the Horn, where 2,000 miles of water and waves are compressed through a funnel into 600 between Antarctica and Tierra del Fuego. Seas that thunder in long swells in bottomless depths slam suddenly into “thin” water by a shelf that rises from 4000 meters to less than 50 in under two miles. The massive energy in these giants are further confused and concentrated by the effects of land, creating steep breaking behemoth seas and vicious rogue waves. As for “latitude, ice and mountains,” no description is needed I believe. Mountains create havoc with winds, funneling already strong gales into unpredictable williwas and making forecasting a rather dubious affair. Latitude - we are way the hell down here, and ice - well ice is cold and hard and even with a steel yacht, that’s a battle the ice is going to win.

Leaving the anchorage.

With a hearty breakfast behind us we shipped our two stern lines and anchor and headed on our last journey south through a tiny pass between Isla Hermite and Isla Jerdan. We glimpsed our first view of the Horn some 15 miles distant, a great mountain of steep rock, shrouded in dark clouds and swirling snow. We would be protected from the west for a few miles before gaining open ocean so we unfurled just a bit of headsail and killed the motor, trying to get a feel for the conditions to come. Shangri-la responded in form, accelerating and heeling over in 25 knot winds, but with much more violent gusts that seemed to hit with no warning. We battened down, making our final preparations for the sail, snapping pictures, clapping backs, timid yet thrilled. A half hour later, in open ocean and 30 knots of wind Cape Horn began to come alive. The seas weren’t huge- 25 feet, but in a 36′ yacht, with many breaking in long white plummets of foam, wind-whipping tops completely off others in dense spray, it was very impressive. With Luke at the helm and Dirk trying to figure out how to capture this chaos on film I secured myself onto the aft stanchion and just felt it all come alive. In the troughs of the waves, trails of wind ripped on the surface, a phenomenon only present in gales - over 30 knots, or 40 miles per hour. When the occasion allowed, on the crest of some of the larger rollers I could plainly see the Horn, a magnificent mantel of sheer steep black rock, much larger than I had imagined. From a distance you could see great waves of ocean slamming into her base, sending plumes of water easily over 80 feet, as they had for millennia.

Approaching the Horn.

Shangri-la was in her groove, her crew getting more and more tuned into her surroundings. It was simply glorious. Gusts to 45 knots would try to yank our bow into the wind, forcing us beam on to the seas and making for dangerous broaching conditions. At one point a breaking wave caught our stern and completely flooded the cockpit, slamming into the boat with a heavy thud and throwing us violently to port, the winds reaching 55 knots. Dirk was then at the helm and yelled, “shit I’m scared- this is some serious shit.” And he was right, this was some serious shit but my God it was an awesome sight. I was almost delirious with peace and wonder. The Horn was anything but an anticlimax. In fact it was awesome. Besieged since the beginning of time and yet proud and benevolent. A brief snowstorm would hide her and temporarily rob us of our landmark, only to suddenly appear again in full sunshine. The seas would shift colors as quickly as the clouds were racing by overhead- from black and menacing to huge cascades of white. Dirk commented at one stage that if you took someone totally unaccustomed to the sea and her ways and transported them somehow directly into this situation that they would die from anxiety and fear. And he’s probably dead right. Wind literally screaming through the rigging, a tiny aspect of sail unfurled enough to push us well beyond Shangri-la’s theoretical maximum speed, waves that would roar at us and march on, oblivious of anything so small in their way.

Dirk and big seas.

At some point it occurred to one of us that we were “Horners". We had crossed that infamous line between Pacific and Atlantic at the bottom of the world and successfully run the gauntlet. We hugged each other and laughed, each of us contemplating on what it meant to ourselves, while outwardly enjoying each other’s praise. I’m sure I saw in Luke and Dirk’s eyes the same thing they saw in mine: pride. And a bit of humility. We were all here for different reasons and though we could be proud in our endeavor the sea had been kind, and mesmerizingly beautiful. She had treated us to a magnificent display.

After rounding the Horn.

I got the lighthouse watchman on the VHF and told him that while we had hoped to stop the deteriorating weather and waning daylight hours had collaborated to keep us moving. He wished us well and we promised we’d drink his bottle of wine in good will this night, which we’d brought in hopes of landing. In whiteout conditions we finessed Shangri-la back upwind, in the lee of the Horn and then Isla Herchel through Paso Bravo and into Caleta Martial, a well-protected anchorage just as the last light of day was swallowed by darkness. It had easily been the best sail of my life. After dinner and a glass of the light keeper’s red I went topside to do a last check on our anchor and with snow falling I stopped for just a moment to realize that the sense of calm that had somehow pervaded my being this day was not due to experience, or worse- ignorance, but because for this day I was so acutely aware of the wind and waves and Shangri-la’s hull between them I was completely unaware of almost everything else.

Gavin McClurg, Cape Horn