Hello everybody
We have returned from the Horn safely. It was a magnificent trip together with another dutch yacht Nightfly (van der Stad 34).
In short, we had a good sail all of the days. NW-lies going south. W-lies rounding the cape. And SW-lies going north again.
The first day we went to Puerto Toro and the second to caleta Maxwell. The next morning we sailed the last 12 miles to the Cape.
We passed the Cape with not too much wind but while we were making foto's of each other, tacking up and down along the Cape, the wind rapidly increased to 30 knots with gusts of 39. And since we were under full sail for the foto's we ended up being rather overpowered. We broached a few times so quickly put a reef in and rolled the genoa. But still we managed to do 12 knots at a certain moment. That is too fast for a Breehorn 44.
We were happy to seek shelter behind the Cape because a second reef would be necessary. We anchored in Bahia Leones and visited the lighthouse and the coastguard people, keeping an anchor-watch in turns because the bay has a rocky bottom and is 22 m deep and there were of course some gusts over the mountain. I hung a flag of our Dutch Offshore Sailing Club in the lighthouse. After that we sailed to caleta Martial where we stayed the night in good weather.
We sailed all the days, without a rest day, because the winds were constantly in our favour so we didn't want to stop and let the good winds pass.
From Martial we sailed to Puerto Lennox in a beautiful beam wind and yesterday we had another good sail in rain and gusts (40 knots) to caleta Tres Mares where we are now. The strong winds were a good excuse to enter this beautiful anchorage because normally it is not allowed to stay here. Tomorrow we hope to go the last ten miles to Williams and stock up for the trip to Puerto Natales (500 miles in stages)
We hope to sent the foto's from Williams to our webmaster. There are some beautiful pictures. Also from Nightfly, disappearing till half the mast behind the huge waves.
We have Max-sea navigation now with my new 2008 C-map charts. It is magnificent. Our friend from Nightfly made an overlay with all the Patagonia Guidebook anchorages of Chili and we have weather-overlay now as well.
Till later,
Peter and Paula