Tell me this, why does the camera supposedly add ten pounds in the fashion world but lop off at least thee metres of the size of waves? Yesterday it felt we were surrounded by heaving himalayan sized walls of water but today when reviewing the photos they look like mere ripples on a duckpond! I feel ripped off!

We have now weathered the “latin low” that came surging off the Andes and out of the Rio de la Plata and our world has returned to calmness as we tick off the miles to the finish. It feels a little like walking on solid ground again after marching on the moving carpet transporters in an airport. You stagger a little and then settle in to the slower pace of life. With 48 hours where the wind didn’t drop below 30 kts and a solid 40 was constant fact of life, having to trim to accelerate the boat rather than slow it down is a novel feeling.

By skirting the worst of the southerlies of the stormy latin low we ended up in quite shallow water off the Argentine coast and this created massive waves very shortly after the gale began. Sliding down these endless inclines with 45 kts at your back and a hole in the ocean ahead for hour after hour was exhilarating, up until the point where we had to dodge a fishing fleet with their nets down. Being in the lead with a healthy buffer led me to make a pretty conservative choice on sails and while I fantasized of spearing the ocean from a cloud of spray with the Code 5 up we very quickly reduced to double reefed main and staysail. So humbly attired we were still almost blown out of the water by a 50 kt gust that provided the motivation to put in yet another reef. Even so, we hit 24 kts of boatspeed coming down a wave and it would have been stupid to push harder with an established lead
already in our pockets.

After such a manic rounding of the horn and then working hard to catch, and then survive, our latin lover, its nice to have a tranquil moment to reflect on the leg and the race to date while tootling along up the coast with the Code 0 up. I’ll breathe out my sigh of relief in 346 miles but for now its just a nice day to be on the water.

  It was pretty intense yesterday, with 30 sustained gusting more. I put myself on the helm for 9 hours straight to make the best progress possible with the small running spinnaker. Following a backing shift in the wind we were still able to make good miles east with flatter sails and as the squalls intensified we ended up broad reaching under just the staysail and double reefed main (our current set up).

 The sea state is still well established but the wind has moderated for now before building again significantly for a time. Current routing is unequivocally around the east side of the Falklands. The current frontal system will provide good southerlies, SW, up past the islands whereupon we’ll have a soft transition before getting boosted again around the western side of a fast moving Rio de Plata low. Realistic ETA to Punta is 7 days.

 I finally had a nap just before crossing the magic line of longitude and snuggled in the sleeping bag with a huge smile on my face. A pretty special place to be and what a way to do it! First in my first circumnavigation after all the challenges just to get here. Very memorable.   Now, there’s a capful o’wind out there still with my name on it.

Thanks,   – Conrad

The return of higher speeds onboard Cessna Citation means that we can get a solid charge from our trusty hydrogenerator (pictured earlier) and that means that we are living by the wilderness maxim “take nothing but photos and leave nothing but footprints”. Our passage is marked only by a short skreech from the generator and our foamy footprint fades in seconds. However, the downside to this green travel on the ocean blue is that we don’t have an excuse to run the engine to warm ourselves up!

As we only have a tiny camping stove for boiling cupfuls at a time, our bodies are the primary source of heat on board. As such, in an effort to conserve our meagre supply of BTUs (British Thermal Units, the measure of heat pumps and heaters the world over) we keep the companion way doors closed except when one has to rush out to ease the sheets in a gust. In a small closed environment our breath condenses on the inner surface of the hull and deck, leaving them constantly dripping until pools form in the crevices in the structure of the boat. At least we’re not sinking, but the rate of accumulation is staggering!

The good news is that the wind is moving ever more to the south, allowing our boat to shift from a walk to a trot with a gallop forecasted soon. After we tacked north looking for extra pressure a couple of days ago the north-south separation between us and Financial Crisis has been worryingly large. Thankfully we have been able to maintain quite a high reaching angle with the boat’s favorite sail and as they have come north on the new breeze our north-south leverage has been decreasing along with their lead. Being closer together reduces the risks that they will find a favorable shift and leave us for dead, as they almost did by burying into the high pressure zone yesterday.

Currently 717 miles to the Horn and 14 miles to take back. I’m thankful that we only have a 2% disadvantage to overcome as we must sail prudently in these cold and unforgiving conditions. The wind blows harder here for a given wind speed, so sail settings that worked in the warmer Atlantic climes need to be adjusted to avoid wipeouts. The new routing has confirmed my earlier ETA of an early Tuesday morning rounding of the Horn. However the race doesn’t stop at this mythical landmark, especially as a low pressure system also has the same forecasted arrival time!

“The high whistle of the wind through the halyards, and above all the pale blue illimitable sky, cold and serene, made me deeply afraid and conscious of my insignificance. / Far below, the ship was an impressive sight. For a time the whole of the after deck would disappear, hatches, winches, everything, as the solid water hit it, and then like an animal pulled down by the hounds, she would rise and shake them from her, would come lifting out of the sea with her scuppers pouring.”

So wrote Eric Newby in “The Last Grain Race” during his passage to the Horn when sailing from Australia to England in 1939 with a cargo of grain and square sails overhead. His epic tale of life before the foremast in the last days of sail is but one thread of the myth of the south, woven by generations of hardy mariners getting blown off their feet in the Furious Fifties.

Instead I am presented with the Fickle Fifties, totally becalmed and spinning listlessly on an oily sea totally bereft of a ripple of wind, to say nothing of spindrift and storm tossed peaks.  We currently have everything on board stacked as far forward as we can get it in order to push the bow down and help lift the draggy stern out of the water. We are very gently shooshing along upwind with Code 0 and just a gentle tinkling ripple down the side of the boat tells me we are still moving. I had expected to be stacking everything in the back of the boat lest we trip over the bows while surfing the raging seas but its not to be, this time.

Its frustrating to have worked for years to get here on a racing boat, all the time hoping to satisfy my curious thirst for the ultimate thrill ride only to come up against the evil triple zero. 0.00 knots of boat speed. It would like making a pilgrimage to Monte Carlo to play dice on the highest tables in Europe only to roll snake eyes all night long unrelenting green felt of the Craps table.

Aboard Cessna Citation, our lives continue as normal with 3 hour watches. If we are lucky enough to have a few moments of stable wind from the right direction we can put on the automatic pilot and watch the bubbles pass serenely in the inspection windows in the hull. However, the bubbles soon stop and the siren song of the pilot alarm breaks the reverie and we are called again to stupidly hang onto the tiller as the boat wallows listlessly. Normally after 3 hours on watch one is glad for the break after been pummelled and abused by the ocean, but here one needs a break lest one go mad from being impotently powerless to make headway.

In this sense our conditions are worse than the fearsome doldrums because of the overbearing calms. The doldrums are a battleground of competing weather zones and with patience and strategy (go south!) there is always a goal ahead and a cloud to chase. Here we don’t have the luxury of an approaching squall line because the air is squeaky clean and silently still, the only sound is the wrenching mainsheet and the ringing in your ears. I’m as yet unsure of whether its better to edge along the side of the ridge to the south or whether to plow on toward the east as the system moves on. In fact, its easy, because such choice is illusory and currently we have no more choice as to our own course as we do over where, and whether, the wind blows.