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Posts Tagged ‘weather’

Crew Log 187 – Mal Tiempo

Feb 6th, 2010
by Herb McCormick.
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February 6, 2010 – At Sea, 47º 39’S, 074º 53’W
By Herb McCormick

In Spanish, the word “tiempo” has two meanings: weather, and time. The world “mal,” however, has but one: bad. Today’s weather report issued by the Chilean meteorological authorities for the Golfo de Penas, a body of water renowned for its relentlessly foul disposition, repeats the same phrase again and again and again.

Mal tiempo.

Mal tiempo.

Mal tiempo.

As I sit here in the pitching, reeling main cabin of Ocean Watch – presently being tossed around like a bathtub toy in the miserable Golfo de Penas – trying desperately (and futilely) to keep my fingers on the keyboard and my butt in the seat, I can assure you, they’re not referencing the time.

This afternoon, the crew of Ocean Watch has bitten the bullet and ventured forth into the Golfo de Penas in a somewhat desperate attempt to put the 60-mile open water crossing behind them and re-enter the relative protection of the Chilean canals. The weathermen have it right, it is certainly a day of “bad weather,” but the long-term forecast is far more ominous. A series of northerly gales are predicted to wrack the gulf all week, so even though today is ridiculously crummy, it’s supposed to get worse.

So, boating anyone?

Across the way, skipper Mark Schrader’s stomach seems to be handling all this much better than mine. So, with no further adieu, here’s the latest edition of his personal log:

“The day started early, 0500 early, when those first up turned on some lights, made coffee and powered up computers and instruments to have a look at the days weather forecast.  We stayed put yesterday afternoon to wait out the gale raking the Golfo de Penas, the one-hundred twenty mile stretch of open ocean separating us from the next group of channels leading to Puerto Montt. 

“Golfo de Penas is famous in this area for its bad weather and big seas.  A quick report of the current weather from the Chilean Armada stations at lighthouses on both sides of the gulf contained the words “mal tiempo,”(bad weather) with wind gusts at gale-force and seas in the ten to twelve foot range.  Our weather forecast indicated the wind would decrease as the day progressed, the Chilean stations agreed—so we weighed anchor and made a course for the crossing.  That plan didn’t last long.

“After twenty miles we emerged from the last vestige of shelter and poked our collective noses into the gulf.  The wind and seas very shortly did a good job of pushing those same noses right back into our faces, in other words, we were using lots of fuel and making very little forward progress.  Sailors should always have a plan “B,”and probably a couple of options after that just in case they are needed.  Logan quickly found an acceptable anchorage not far from our location and we headed for it, sort of.

“All of the charts, cruising guides and official publications warn mariners in this part of the world that the accuracy of the charts should not be assumed, and further, GPS positions should not be trusted to be correct in the channels.  Many times on this voyage we’ve noticed our electronic charts tracking our position over land, through mountains and over rocks.  As we made our way toward the chosen anchorage fog rolled in, rain started falling and the wind increased.  Visibility was reduced to a few boat lengths and, yes, our GPS position relative to the electronic and paper charts didn’t make much sense.  The Raymarine radar became our primary navigation aid, and without much more drama helped us find our way to the chosen anchorage.  It turned out to be a very nice place for lunch and a nap.

“A later check with the lighthouses suggested the decrease in wind was happening; the barometer was rising with the wind direction changing to a favorable west-southwest direction.  We suited up, hauled anchor once again, and headed out—which is where we are now.  Ten knots of wind was reported from the lighthouse just a mile or so from where I’m sitting, or trying to sit.  Our instruments say it’s 27 knots, seas are six or seven feet, and the wind direction is very close to on the nose—I’d call it on the cheek, certainly not on the predicted ear or back of the head.  It looks like it will be a very long afternoon, evening and night.  Unless something different happens we’ll be across the gulf around midnight, with another ten hours or so to go until we’re able to ‘dive’ back into the shelter of some islands.  I’m thinking crackers and cheese for dinner, maybe some tea for dessert.

“From the Roaring Forties, I’m happy to report all are well aboard Ocean Watch.”

So, yes: Mal tiempo. It’s doubly expressive! For there’s no doubt about it, the crummy weather is certainly not making for happy times.

-Herb McCormick and Mark Schrader with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

Crew Log 183 – A Going Concern

Feb 2nd, 2010
by Herb McCormick.
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February 2, 2010 – At Sea, 52º 10’S, 073º 39’W
By Herb McCormick

Yesterday, after a long, long day gazing from our anchorage outside at the endlessly turbulent waters and whitecaps pulsing down the Strait of Magellan, something odd happened. The rain ended, the gales subsided, the sky began to clear – at least in sporadic patches – and skipper Mark Schrader basically said, “Enough.” So, at the stroke of 9 p.m. local time, the anchor rattled into the bow roller and the crew of Ocean Watch pointed the 64-foot cutter back into the Strait, once again a going concern.

There’s a saying down here about the seabirds: When they aren’t flying, it’s time for boats and sailors to lay low, too. But as we made our way back to sea, we were accompanied by flocks of birds hovering overhead in frenetic flight. We took it as a solid, positive omen.

Before long, we had another. A big bulk carrier was navigating eastward up the Strait, and the smoke billowing out of its tall stack was almost vertical, as in, no wind. Twice we’d tried to put the Strait of Magellan behind us and make the turn northward towards our next scheduled port-of-call at Puerto Montt, and twice we’d been repulsed, only to limp into another anchorage and lick our figurative wounds. But in the immortal words of Mick Jagger, “Time waits for no man.” And it was certainly time to make tracks.

What started out so promising, however, soon turned the other way. Soon enough, a powerful westerly breeze came pumping down the Strait, and we spent a long, difficult night engaged in a brutal struggle to negotiate a miserable stretch of water called the Paso del Mar. The old Yankee, Joshua Slocum, took a month to put the pass behind him on his famous circumnavigation over a hundred years ago, spending weeks at a time cowering from the weather in an anchorage on its southern shores. More recently, Italian sailors Mariolina Rolfo and Girogio Ardrizzi, authors of the indispensable Patagonia & Tierra del Fuego Nautical Guide, spent nine full days attempting to find a favorable window to weather the Paso del Mar. We didn’t wish to suffer a similar fate.

But for a while there, it looked like we might.

At one point, slamming into heavy wind and seas and making less than two knots over the ground, we almost bailed out for an anchorage on Isla Emiliano Figueroa, but luckily, the onslaught diminished and we were rewarded for our perseverance. The big obstacle was a rocky island called Isla Tamar, and it took all night and a good chunk of the morning to get past it. When we finally rounded the corner of Tamar and set a course due north, the skipper took a long, hard look at its formidable face, now receding in our wake, and said, “That’s our second rounding of Cape Horn.”

From there we passed through another wide body of water called Paso Tamar and finally cut back inside the protection of the channels, reaching northward up Canal Smyth and leaving Isla Manuel Rodriquez to port. (By the way, it’s about time someone other than the bloody Brits got to name a few distant places, wordy though they may be.) We were finally, well and truly, out of the Strait of Magellan.

Once into the Smyth, the wind went forward and we dropped the headsail and sheeted home the triple-reefed main, and Ocean Watch was again in powerboat mode. Before this leg is done, such developments may prove to be troubling, as fuel – or the lack thereof – may become an issue: Between Puerto Williams and Puero Montt, gas stations are few and far between. Again, for perhaps the thousandth time, we were reminded of the skill and prowess of the explorers who first sailed these waters, in engineless ships that wouldn’t, couldn’t, sail upwind.

At the stroke of noon, as if on a timetable, the intermittent squalls stopped cold and the sun broke through in glorious style for the first time in eons. We squinted at each other like rescued coalminers. Luckily, twenty minutes later the sky was thick and gray – chock full of ripe, low-hanging clouds on the vines of the heavens – and order was restored to the Chilean universe. It had been a close call.

The canals and channels narrowed as we sailed north, zigging and zagging, hither and yon, in extremely close quarters, making piloting a more pressing, immediate concern. Two guys named David – David Rockefeller, Jr. and Dave Logan – swapped roles as navigators at each watch change, and their respective days were full. At one point, we spied the great rusty hulk of a shipwreck shoaled up in the shallows.

“Let that be a lesson,” said Logan. “Don’t try and cut that corner.”

By late afternoon, Ocean Watch was approaching the stretch of water that borders the Chilean national park called Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, a glacier-filled southern oasis for climbers, paddlers, hikers and sightseers. As if in honor of the occasion, we rolled close abeam to a truly majestic waterfall, cascading from the steeps in four distinct, separate sections.

“If that were in the Adirondacks, people would be lining up just to see that,” said David R.

Twenty-four hours earlier, we’d been stranded in a drippy anchorage. Now, it was good to be going, blessed with loftier concerns.

-Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson and Dr. Ned Cabot

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

Crew Log 179 – Snow Job

Jan 29th, 2010
by Herb McCormick.
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January 29, 2010 – Isla Clarence, Chile
By Herb McCormick

In the eight months since leaving Seattle late last May, the crew of Ocean Watch has experienced searing heat, frigid cold, mellow calms, biting winds, mist and fog, torrential rain and absolutely perfect, gorgeous weather. In other words, right up to this very morning, we’d witnessed practically every sort of meteorological and atmospheric condition known to mankind with the notable exception of one: snow.

And now we’ve seen that.

Yes, the ongoing voyage of Ocean Watch – now en route to Puerto Montt, Chile, via the labyrinth of waterways and channels that make up the world-famous Chilean canals – continued today after one of the strangest, most surreal beginnings imaginable: The fluffy white stuff was falling from the sky. But it didn’t snow for long. No, before we could zip our collars up around our necks, it was sleeting, hard and sideways.

They call this summer in the Southern Hemisphere?

Up on the bow, hauling the anchor, David Thoreson and I slipped and slid on the treacherous foredeck as it became buried under a thin layer of icy pellets of hail. Our Spanish translator, Horacio Rosell, whose halting English often captures the moment better than ours, summed it up concisely.

“It’s snowing rocks,” he said.

But David Thoreson also had a cogent observation: “Our summer just became winter.”

Anchored the previous evening in a cove on Isla Stewart laced by williwaws, it had been a rattling night…mostly due to the sound of our anchor chain rattling across the rocks in which it was secured. Still, the hook remained secure for the duration, but by 0700 skipper Mark Schrader had had enough, so he roused the crew and was ready to go. The snow, ice and wind were a rude awakening, but they did serve a useful purpose. We were up and out of there in no time flat.

Once we’d put Isla Stewart behind us, we motored west up Canal Ballenero and past Isla Catalina flanked by tall peaks covered in fresh snow. The scenery was magnificent. Astern, we could see a big squall advancing; ahead, the sky was highlighted with patches of blue. It all proved to be a screening of coming attractions, a day of schizophrenic weather that never could make up its mind.

A significant southwest gale is forecast for tomorrow, so we were mindful of making tracks to the north today, as our route took us outside the protection of the channels for several rough and tumble miles. Once back inside, we found not only shelter from the stiff winds, but a pod of humpback whales that lolled past our bow. One pair of synchronized swimmers, in particular, caught the eye of David Rockefeller, Jr. “I’ve never seen them so much in tandem,” he said.

The whales were accompanied by seabirds galore and even a posse of leaping seals. “There was obviously a lot of feeding going on, but I don’t think they were eating each other,” said Ned Cabot.

Following the whale show, we sailed up another long corridor of islands – Basket, Georgiana, London, Astrea and Aguirre – before hooking a hard right around the Brecknock peninsula at Point Aguirre, a massive face that resembled the Rock of Gibraltar.

Up to that point, we’d seen intermittent squalls with brief periods of sunlight. “Time to shed some layers,” said David T. But before long, the wind kicked in hard from the west and we were again scrambling for jackets and foul-weather gear. It was that sort of day.

Once around the peninsula and into open water, the breeze started to really hum and we enjoyed the best sailing since rounding Cape Horn, running before gusts up to 30-knots and flying downwind at anywhere from 9-12 knots. The peaks of Brecknock were also dusted in what looked like confectioner sugar, providing yet more arresting visuals.

The piloting was tricky, with lots of rocky hazards, as we slipped inside Isla Seebrook, to starboard, and laid a course for the evening’s anchorage, a small inlet called Caleta Cluedo just inside the southwest shore of Isla Clarence. We dropped anchor in the early evening twilight, right in time for another brief, icy squall, followed by more sunshine. If anything, it left us ready for whatever might transpire overnight. We missed a white Christmas this season aboard Ocean Watch, but safe and secure in our taut little haven, we could channel Bing Crosby with confidence: Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct your messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

Crew Log 175 – Cabo de Hornos

Jan 24th, 2010
by Herb McCormick.
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January 24, 2010 – At Sea, 55º 15’S, 067º 04’W
By Herb McCormick

Of all the sailors on all the boats who have ever rounded the legendary southern waypoint of Cape Horn – or, as it reads on the local charts, Cabo de Hornos – few if any have ever done so from east to west while flying a billowing white spinnaker emblazoned with a glorious blue representation of the continents of North and South America. And more significantly, without doubt, none have ever done so, in either direction, just months after negotiating the Northwest Passage.

Today, however, on the well-traveled, nicked, bruised and beautiful 64-foot cutter, Ocean Watch, that’s precisely what we did.

Yes, on this cool, misty morning before an ideal, following southeasterly breeze of 15-20 knots, skipper Mark Schrader gave the nod, Ocean Watch’s big kite was hoisted and sheeted home, and her current complement of eight highly energized and motivated crewmen sailed smartly around Cape Horn. The numbers were all in synch: It was precisely 0800 local time, right at 56º S, marking the 18,300th mile sailed since leaving Seattle last May. Just for good measure, today’s crew log is the 150th I’ve written in that eventful span.

This might be the happiest one of them all.

We’d had a busy and somewhat frantic journey since departing from the Chilean port of Puerto Williams, on the southern flank of the Beagle Channel, a couple of days before. A fresh southwesterly of 25-35 knots was forecast, but before we’d covered the 90-miles to the group of islands that include Isla Hornos, we were thrashed with perhaps the stiffest breezes we’ve encountered since setting out from Seattle. Our wind instruments picked a lousy time to pack it in, so we could only estimate wind speeds (although we shared an anchorage with the Swan 80, Gloriana, that night, and they registered a puff of 55-knots), but we’d all be very surprised if we didn’t encounter gusts over 60-knots. In fact, at Cape Horn that afternoon, the lighthouse keeper reported a top wind speed of 105-knots.

So, yeah, it was pretty breezy.

Our original plan was to cruise-in-company around the Horn with Gloriana yesterday, and in fact, they went ahead and made the passage. (Gloriana’s seasoned owner, Doonie Edwards, is a good friend of Sailors for the Sea founder David Rockefeller, Jr., who is presently crewing aboard Ocean Watch.) But for a couple of reasons – we’ll get to them in a moment – skipper Schrader decided to wait another day. As a northeast wind was scheduled to move in overnight, yesterday we did switch anchorages, from the east side of Herschel Island (speaking of symmetry, the toughest part of our Northwest Passage transit also started on a Herschel Island, in the Yukon Territory) to a more protected inlet on eastern Wollaston Island.

Quick aside: after their Horn rounding, Gloriana returned to the same anchorage at Wollaston and Doonie and his crew invited us to dinner, where skipper John Kenyon had us all in stitches with his quite hilarious imitation of the antics on Ocean Watch the previous night, when we were all running around like nautical Keystone Cops with headlamps trying to sort out our mooring lines. John thanked us for making his anchor watch so fast and enjoyable. No worries, my friend, that’s what we do! On a more relevant note, he reported that Gloriana’s rounding, in diminishing winds, was conducted in miserable, rolling seas. Still, we left dinner with an unsettling feeling that we might’ve missed a very good opportunity.

And frankly, we were still wondering what lay ahead when we raised our own anchor and set out from Wollaston at the stroke of 0500 today.

Just for the record, for the sailors who might be interested in routing and navigation, from Wollaston we made our way into Bahia Scourfield; through the Canal Bravo bisecting Isla Wollaston and Isla Freycinet; into Bahia Arquistade east of Isla Herschel; and finally through one last, narrow pass called Paso Al Mar Del Sur, just to the west of Isla Deceit. And then, there were no more islands. Except one: Isla Hornos.

Cape Horn.

For those familiar with the geography, or who’ve sailed this way before, you’ll notice an unusual aspect to our itinerary: we were angling in from the east. An easterly rounding of Cape Horn is rare indeed. The prevailing winds in the Southern Ocean are westerly, and probably 90 percent of the small boats that complete such a voyage do so from west-to-east. Two of the three sailors on Ocean Watch who’d previously rounded the Horn (the skipper and me) did so on a westerly route (David Thoreson’s Horn transit had been east-to-west). Of course, once you’re at the Horn, the weather dictates your movements, not your desires. But from the first stages of planning the voyage Around the Americas, Mark had hoped to tackle Cape Horn from east-to-west: thematically, it played in harmony with the overall, clockwise circuit of the continents, plus, he’d never done it before.

Successfully negotiating the Horn is never a given, and we all would’ve been very satisfied if the weather gods had served up nothing but heavy westerly winds and we all made it around scurrying from west to east. But as we closed in on Isla Hornos, we realized that the forecast was correct and our gamble to wait an extra day had paid off.

We had our easterly.

It was dank, gray and chilly, and the top end of the island – the famous edifice of the Horn – was shrouded in a foreboding cloak of cloud, fog and mist. In other words, it was absolutely perfect.

“Well,” said David T, “it looks like a Cape Horn day.”

Mate, did it ever.

We sailed around the backside of Hornos under triple-reefed main and staysail, the boat balanced and fast. When Mark mentioned that we should get the spinnaker ready, mate Dave Logan and I exchanged, “He’s got to be kidding,” looks. But the moment passed. Suddenly we were around the bend; we could see the lighthouse and the big monument on the high hill; holy smokes, there was Cape Horn.

Cape Horn.

It’s hard to describe the sensation of actually gazing at the Horn from seaward from the deck of a small boat. We’ve all seen the photos, we’ve all gotten the general idea, but nothing short of staring at the bloody thing does it justice. As a sailor, as a seaman, you instinctively realize you’re slipping through waters both hallowed and lethal. You turn your noggin one-way and see the iconic headland, turn it the other and see nothing but endless ocean. It’s been said that Cape Horn looks like the end of the earth, and you think, well, that’s kind of trite.

But goodness gracious, it looks like the absolute, final, non-negotiable end of the earth.

Albatrosses by the dozen soared overhead. We cracked a couple of beers, poured a tot in the sea in homage to King Neptune, and another on the deck of Ocean Watch, the stout and sturdy vessel that’s watched over us so tenderly and so long. Man, what a boat. DRock disappeared below and re-emerged in shorts and a sport shirt. We all blinked and laughed. His fellow mates from Sailors for the Sea, David Treadway and Ned Cabot, each took turns steering the boat. It’s not every day you sail around Cape Horn.

We each, silently and to each other, in turns, invoked the names of family, friends and fellow sailors who we’d call or email later on, and more poignantly, and importantly, those who’ve sailed to the great beyond, who would’ve been just as amazed by what we were witnessing, by what was transpiring, as we were. It was the sort of place and the sort of day for that. We counted our immense blessings and hugged our brothers: None of us would’ve made it here, to this wild spot so few in the grand scheme of things are privileged to see, without each other. I’d be less than truthful if I failed to mention that the spray of the sea wasn’t the only salty thing most of us were blinking out of our eyes.

“It’s a little misty,” said Logan, and later, “I always thought of this as just a rock. I had no great desire to get here. But I have to say, this is something.”

It sure was.

In a moment of inspiration, Logan went below and switched on the watermaker, without letting it fully flush out beforehand. “It’ll be a little briny,” he said. “We’ll all have a little Cape Horn water coursing through our veins.”

That may be true, but as sailors, the thing that will always resonate, that we’ll always remember, is flying that spinnaker off Cape Horn. Once Mark proved he wasn’t joshing, and the huge sail was full and drawing, Ocean Watch – and for that matter, us – were each truly in our element. We all retrieved our cameras, tried to capture the image of the map of South America on the logo with the tip of South America there before us. A squall appeared on the horizon and we doused it quickly, laughing and grinning at the outlandishness of the whole thing, like teenagers out past curfew. Surely we’d gotten away with something, but what a souvenir.

On top of everything else, once we were truly south of Cape Horn, having already sailed to the westernmost, northernmost, and easternmost points of our circumnavigation of the Americas, we were now at the southernmost terminus of our journey, the final member of the quartet. In honor of the moment, Mark went below and, as he has at each previous location, tossed a beautiful glass float, crafted by the renowned artist Dale Chihuly – who’s supported the expedition from its inception – into the ocean, one last tribute to the sea.

Five months earlier, as Mark noted in his log, we’d turned into Navy Board Inlet at the northern reaches of Baffin Island and headed south. Ever since, the compass needle had pointed in a southerly direction, down the Labrador Sea, along the eastern seaboard, across the equator, past the endless coastline of Brazil and South America: South, south, south, south, south.

Now, as Chihuly’s float bobbed astern, and with Cape Horn receding in our wake, Logan swung the wheel to starboard and the compass spun in obedient assent.

We were headed north.

- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct personal messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

Crew Log 174 – The Horn: On Hold

Jan 23rd, 2010
by Herb McCormick.
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January 23, 2010 – Isla Woolaston, Chile
By Herb McCormick

Herb's Headshot

If you happen to be a fan of hard-driving, air-guitar playing, kicking rock & roll, you should definitely check out The Hold Steady tune, “Stuck Between Stations.” We on Ocean Watch had a little time on our hands today, so I’ve been giving my iPod and The Hold Steady a good workout. It seemed appropriate, for here, just a few miles from Cape Horn, as we held steady while big westerly breezes kept our bid to round the epic promontory temporarily on hold, we were certainly stuck between stations.

Last night, with winds gusting to over fifty knots, was an eventful one. Depending on your outlook, the highlight, or lowlight – well, either way, the most memorable moment in an evening full of them – was when one of our mooring lines parted just around midnight (we were tied up to a Navy mooring in Isla Herschel) and the whole shebang – mooring lines, anchor chain, etc. – became hopelessly entangled. I had a death grip on skipper Mark Schrader’s legs as he dangled over the bow to re-reeve a thick line through the eye of the mooring ball when, most unfortunately, his inflatable life jacket picked a spectacularly poor time to self-inflate. This was problematic, as there was now no way for the captain to slip back under the lifelines and onto the safety of the foredeck.

“Get a knife! Puncture it!” screamed Mark. It was the first time anyone has ever asked me to stab him. David Thoreson was at the bow helping lead the new line. Thor and I glanced at one another, thinking the same thing: Time to dash below for a cup of coffee, mate? Um, probably a bad idea. Together, we yanked up the lifelines and pulled the skipper under them and back aboard: It was like boating the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man. An hour later, we had the mess sorted out. The rest of the evening passed without drama.

This morning, however, it was still, as sailors say, blowing stink. We shared the overnight anchorage with our Chilean friends aboard the Swan 80, Gloriana, who are on a tight schedule to return to Puerto Montt. At midday, with the breeze having settled into the mid-30-knot range, they hauled their anchors and made for the Horn.

However, with a more favorable forecast for Sunday – east winds switching to southwest between 10-20 knots – we decided to wait another day for even better conditions.

A northeast breeze is scheduled for this evening, so late this afternoon we left Isla Herschel and motored a few miles for an anchorage on the east side of Isla Woolaston, which offers better protection in an easterly breeze. Our updated plan – always subject to change – is to rise very early on Sunday, round Cape Horn, and continue straight on to Puerto Williams, in keeping with the itinerary we presented to the Chilean Armada before our departure. The window has changed, but still looks good. Gales are continued to be forecast for early next week.

As the new plans were being formulated this afternoon, our Argentine crewmember and Spanish translator, Horacio Rosell, decided to take a nap. His exact words are worth repeating: “You guys are so busy, that it will make my recline, double my joy.”

Wherever you are today, we on Ocean Watch sincerely hope you, too, are doubling your joy.

More soon…

- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

*To add a comment to this story click on the comment link below the post title. Please direct personal messages for the crew to crew@aroundtheamericas.org instead of submitting them here. Thanks for following the Around the Americas Expedition.

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