Passing Cape Horn
Another day of variable and changeable winds.
Once it is time to leave Antarctica behind and with it our days of landings and cruises, many feel that the trip is over. Many think that it will be just a bit of a ride at sea trying to avoid seasickness and being back on seawatches. But this is the Drake Passage, a difficult stretch of ocean. It can be difficult for its famed swells and strong winds, or it can be strenuous for its changing moods, asking once and again for calling hands on deck, now to brace, now to set or douse sails. So far, we haven’t been hit by its well known stormy winds, but more by its variable and capricious nature. And it is not just the Drake, but today’s also pass by close to Cape Horn.
It is midnight, and again, just like yesterday, we can hear the roar of the engines that just been turned on.
The fantastic sailing ends together with the day.
Soon the decks are filled with loose rope coils as hands pull on the lines to strike all the square sails. From then on the Europa motors into the wind on her northerly course. And by the morning hours it is not just the square sails that are lowered but all the Staysails too.
With the wind direction change while it eases down, the seas abate as well.
Yesterday, a busy day on deck and up the rig with many hours of sail handling. Today, a journey of similar characteristics.
As such, it doesn’t take long until we are once more enjoying a great sailing experience that lasts for about 6 hours during the day. Just until before dinner, when the wind veers to a Northwesterly and decreases to less than 9kn.
Strike first the Courses, then Top Gallants, Top Sails. All squares are down. Time to brace a bot squarer too. The engines are on and we motorseail under the lower Staysails and headrig towards the northeast, towards the mythical Cape Horn.
For the moment the wind is still calm, though gradually picking up. Land at sight! Out of the haze over the horizon at our Portside peer the rocky hills of Diego Ramirez Island.
Not far ahead of us the steep cliff of The Horn starts to be visible. And of course not all is easy and calm here. Wind is not steady neither in direction nor strength. Staysails and jibs back now, then they flap, then they back again, then they catch a bit of the winds that almost blow on our nose. Hands are called on deck to douse and furl them, as the ship closes up the the Cape, which soon we leave about 3 nautical miles at our portside.
From then on its famed reputation kicks in. Northwesterly starts blowing hard and before the end of the day the wind meter reads gusts over the 40kn, while the ship faces and pushes through them. But anyway, this evening the good sight of the mythical Cape was worth it.
Located on “Isla Hornos” at 55°58′48″S 067°17′21″W, Cape Horn is a landmark that represents the gateway into the northern edge of the Drake Passage.
It was thirty eight years after Francis Drake was blown towards the passage that bears his name, when the Dutch Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire aboard the Eendracht recorded and actually sailed on open waters around an island to the south of Tierra del Fuego. They named it Cape Hoorn, after the recently lost ship Hoorn and in homage to the sailors lost in the fire that claimed the vessel. It is also the name of their hometown, the Dutch city of Hoorn.
“In the evening 25 January 1616 the wind was South West, and that night we went South with great waves or billowes out of the southwest, and very blew water, whereby wee judged, and held for certain that ... it was the great South Sea, whereat we were exceeding glad to think that wee had discovered a way, which until that time, was unknown to men, as afterward wee found it to be true.”
“... on 29 January 1616 we saw land again lying north west and north northwest from us, which was the land that lay South from the straights of Magellan which reached Southward, all high hilly land covered over with snow, ending with a sharp point which wee called Cape Horne [Kaap Hoorn] ...”
Willem Cornelisz Schouten
Not much later, from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, Cape Horn was part of the clipper routes which carried much of the world's trade. Never an easy and straightforward navigation, but a challenging one through the meeting point of three Oceans: Atlantic, Pacific and Southern Ocean and the weather systems associated with the circulation along the Drake Passage. Still nowadays ”rounding the Horn” is widely regarded as one of the major challenges in the sailing world.
As such, during the evening as we close up to it, everybody shows up on deck, cameras on hand, to have a good look to such a milestone in the maritime and exploratory history, even though the strong winds blow and the ship plows through them.
Leaving the Horn behind, it is time to make way around the Wollaston Archipelago northeastwards to the Atlantic entrance of the Beagle Channel, just over 80 nautical miles away.