Good weather and a great sailing day in the Drake Passage

By this year, he tries to sail through the Strait of Magellan with the Marigold, Elizabeth, and his flagship, the Golden Hind. They are blown far south in a tempest. They lose the Marigold, Elizabeth turns around and abandons the fleet. Only Drake’s Golden Hind keeps on going and reports the end of the southern lands and the beginning of the open waters further south.

The 6th day of September we entered the South Sea at the cape or head ashore. The 7th day we were driven by a great storm from the entering into the South Sea, 200 leagues and odd in longitude and one degree to the southward of the Strait.

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From the bay which we called the Bay of Severing Friends, we were driven back to the southward of the Straits in 57 degrees and a tierce.

Francis Pretty. Crewman on Drake’s circumnavigation of the world. Account of the historic voyage published in 1910.

But… was he the first one to see the end of the American Continent and the passage to the south that nowadays bears his name? Or was it the Spanish navigator Francisco de Hoces in 1525, 50 years before Sir Francis Drake?

Some accounts tell us about this Spanish sailor, who in 1525 sailed the vessel San Lesmes, part of the Loaísa Expedition to the Spice Islands. In January 1526, the San Lesmes was blown by a gale southward from the eastern mouth of the Strait of Magellan to 56° S latitude, where the crew “thought they saw a Land’s End.” How to interpret this report? Blown off into the Atlantic? Blown off to have a glimpse of the open waters that stretched south of Cape Horn?

The end of the Americas was discovered, but it still took until the year 1616 to have the first account of a voyage through the passage. It was the Eendracht, under the Dutch navigators Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire in 1616, naming Cape Horn in the process.

Francisco de Hoces, Drake, as many others, blown off by the strong winds, wild seas, storms, and currents that characterise these southern latitudes. For us today, the mood of the Drake Passage wasn’t that bad at all. On the contrary, the good and sunny weather for most of the day and the wind, quite steady from the west by north, blowing a good 20 to 25 kn, gave us a fantastic day of sailing.

By the early hours of the morning, just about past 3 AM, hands are called on deck to start setting more canvas. Later, when breakfast is served, we are under all the squares to the topgallants, lower and middle staysails, headrig, and spanker. Royals have been unfurled, but soon the decision is taken to pack them away again.

By then, the Cape Horn Current, flowing around the cape from the Pacific to the Atlantic and curling northwards along the Argentine coast, is freeing us up. We start experiencing the surface oceanographic effects of the area between this circulation and the eastwards-flowing circumpolar current.

Braced beam reach, a fast point of sail, Europa keeps sailing on a southwards course between 6.5 and 8 kn of speed. She heels to port, and now and then the largest swells she comes across splash over her decks; nevertheless, her main deck doesn’t dip often and remains pretty dry.

Nevertheless, it is forecast for the wind to pick up in the next hours. With it, the swell surely will grow too. Probably it all will bring more demanding sailing for tomorrow.