This night our passage north across the Drake nears its end! We had big waves and for this sea not too much wind - max. 8Bft, but on the nose from NW, so it was mostly motorsailing, which was some relief for the few seasick.

At 18:30 we saw it finally thru rainy clouds: Cape Horn! Passing Cape Horn safely is one of the finest experiences in the life of most sailors. Passing Cape Horn thankfully in the companionship of a nice and competent crew returning fromAntarctica with a bunch of new experiences and memories is all most travellers can dream of.

Passing Cape Horn on board of this wonderful tall ship Bark Europa simply makes us happy. And happy we look forward to the last three days of our journey through Tierra de Fuego...

Rupert
 

Drake, o Drake, thy reputation confirmed once more. A Passage with an identity crisis for sure. So many faces, no wonder very often the weather gets depressed. Yesterday our estimated time of arrival would have been February 10 if the engines would have failed and we would have been totally dependent on the wind.

During the initial 24 hours with very little wind we actually witnessed the Lake Drake phenomenon. It provided time to get accustomed to the oceans movements again. Within half a day we saw the wind shift to headwind. The one-engine assistance was upgraded to both engines.

We lowered sails, set them again, Europa changed her course several times to keep wind in the sails. The wind increased to 30 plus knots. Waves built up and kept on trying to come aboard. Europa lifted heavily at times. People coming on watch grinning at each other, having dressed after several unsuccessful tries. The lifting also provided hilarious scenes at breakfast of people under various angles and food sliding off plates to the definitely lower side. You probably wouldn´t want to live your life under a 30 degrees angle, but it´s great fun trying.

We salute thee Drake with a respectful ´wow´!

Joop