Day 24 – Around the Horn

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The entire ships’ company was up again by 0800 (no matter, as sunrise is now before 0430) as we approached Hornos Island, the whole purpose of our being on this cruise. Once one sees “The Horn,” why this name was given to this cape is obvious. We have had a chance to cross the equator at sea to become Shellbacks, and now we have sailed around the Horn. We are close to 9,000 miles south of our departure port of San Francisco, and what a stark and bleak place. The landscape is a mixture of flat, scrubby islands, mixed in with mountain ranges that look like twins to the Tetons in Jackson Hole. It is hard to imagine the European explorers of old coming this far from their homeland in ships the size of our lifeboats (tenders) with only sail power to guide them. It took them days to sail what we did this morning in three hours. We slowly cruised around the entire of Hornos Island, and were actually inside of one mile at the southern end of the island, looking up at the steep southern side of The Horn. At 0830 on the mid-watch, we achieved our goal for being here, in a windy and partially sunny day of 41 degrees, at 56 degrees latitude. We crossed through the Pacific, Southern and Atlantic Oceans all within 15 minutes. There is one lonely Chilean Navy lighthouse station on the southeastern side of the island. You must have to do something pretty bad in order to get orders to serve here, or you really like being by yourself! We have turned northeast to 65 true and are steaming at 22 knots through gale force winds, moderate seas and rain falling in the south Atlantic Ocean, heading for the Falkland islands and Stanley, where we are due tomorrow morning. Bad news is that due to the draft of our ship (about 30’), we will be tendering into the actual port some distance of 2.5 miles, which will REALLY suck if the seas are as rough as they are right now. We both are actually getting pretty good sea legs at this point in the trip.



Finally, Carol was a little under the weather last night with the makings of a cold, so we deferred to dinner with our friends, who later showed up at our door with a little aluminum foil “chicken soup for the soul” package at our door. Carol opened it and it was packed with a bunch of chocolate desserts (Carol’s favorite) from the restaurant, and it quickly disappeared.

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