Surrendered to the Drake Passage

Puerto Toro, Chile

We arrived in Puerto Toro on February 5th at 1:15 am, after having surrendered to the Drake with whom we fought for over 48 hours with winds against us and always above 35 knots with gusts of 55 kn.

Unfortunately we were too slow in the first 24h, covering the route that from Puerto Williams took us to Cape Horn and instead of the 160 miles I had imagined we covered only 80.

The wind left us on the first night and we covered only 12 miles in 8 hours.

So we lost "the train" to the south and after 24 hours instead of riding the tail of the low that would take us almost to our destination, we found ourselves with the arrival of the high pressure.

We have exoerienced winds of this intensity upwind in other occasions, but the waves of the Drake are really monstrous. So I desided to give up, turning the bows north, heading again towards the Cape Horn area.

Upon our arrival in the middle of the night in Puerto Toro, Francisco, the officer in charge of P.to Toro, welcomed us. Moored at small but safe pier, we dried the equipment tested by the 48 hours spent in the Drake, rested and especially prepared a rich and tasty eggplant parmigiana that we accompanied with good Chilean wine, to propitiate the arrival of a good weather window and so resume our journey south.

And so it was, this morning the GRIB downloaded there from a window of about 60 hours starting from 00:00 on February 7th, with winds between 25 and 30 knots from the north west that should allow us to cover at least 480 of the 560 miles that separate us from Melchior Island, scheduled landing in Antarctica.

From experience we know that reality then presents a situation with winds of force greater than at least 5 knots but in this case, considering our gait at the garden, it does not worry us.

We will sail around 12:00 from Puerto Toro, to cover the approximately 50 miles that separate us from Cape Horn, where our imaginary START awaits us at 24:00