The entry in the log for the 18^th of December 1997 reads "CAPE HORN!", in red and underlined…. At 14:26 UTC Floating Point and I found ourselves at 56º 03.2’ South and 067º 12.5’ West, sixty-four days out of San Francisco. Grey skies, steep seas driven by 30 to 40 knot winds from the west and sleet set the scene whilst Albatrosses and cape pigeons watched me share a small bottle of Champaign with Poseidon.

The fun and games had started the previous night, about 120 miles west of the Horn. I had put up the stay’sl at 03:00, local time. Even at this hour it was getting light at these latitudes. Just as I had completed the task I heard the unmistakable groaning squeak of the self-steering sheets being drawn over a frozen sheave in a block. The Floating Point circumnavigation theme of frozen blocks was being preserved. After some dithering and procrastination whilst listening to the rising wind, I decided hunt down the tools. Good thing too…

The Monitor self-steering had driven the boat over 27,000 miles uneventfully during three voyages but during this voyage was getting quite a work out. Hanging over the transom in a most undignified position I managed to change the offending block and found to my horror that the bolt securing the vane to one of the two lower supports had backed out and was missing. This was a more serious problem and one that would have been a simple repair in more congenial conditions. It could be so easy; hop into a dinghy and insert bolt… Here, near the bottom of the world, the situation was quite different.

Looking rather like the Michelin tire man in some five layers of clothing under my foul weather gear I managed to wriggle between the pulpit, self steering gear and other impediments to progress, to reach the lower support. Next discovery was that with the vane under load the frame had gone out of alignment with the support and no amount of pushing and shoving would re-align the bolt-hole. Muttering something about nothing being easy I implemented the only solution to the problem: Wriggle in reverse back into cockpit, obtain spare sheet, wrap latter around vane, lead sheet to primary, grind down on winch to re-align vane, re-insert self through pulpit, insert bolt and tighten. Ahhh… Satisfaction and it only took five hours!

A large wave had decided to investigate the insides of my foul weather gear during the operation and I was rather wet and cold. However, this state did not last long as I had to change to the storm stay’sl since by this time the wind was up to about 40 knots. The dance on the foredeck was enough to warm me up.

Late afternoon whilst enjoying a hot cup of tea, I caught a glimpse of the mountains of South America.

A chaotic night followed with squalls roaring through Drake Passage along with huge, rough seas with steep faces. Got knocked down and had a flood of Southern Ocean come through the companionway hatch. The damage was limited to a broken wind vane that was replaced with a spare in short order. Spent some time rounding up a few of the missiles that had been launched by the knock down, then got knocked down again.

But the reward in the morning, Cape Stiff! We crept up slowly and I had the good fortune to get a splendid view of the legendary cape. Some rolls of film and video immortalised the moment and then I set my sights on the next goal, South Cape, nearly 11,000 miles of sailing to the East. And following that, the long trek North-East from New Zealand to Victoria, British Columbia.