Portimao Global Ocean Race - Cape Horn a drama or a dream

by Oliver Dewar on 17 Mar 2009
When the fleet of four boats in the Portimão Global Ocean Race round Cape Horn over the next few days, it will mark the first rounding by a race of 40ft yachts and the first race rounding by a Chilean team. A truly momentous achievement for the seven yachstmen.

Debate continues over the original discovery of the world’s southernmost cape: did Francisco de Hoces - the Spanish commander of the caravel San Lesmes – first site the rocky outcrop in 1526 after being swept south while trying to navigate the eastern entrance of the Straits of Magellan? If so, he predates the 1578 rounding of Sir Francis Drake by a little over half a century. However, since the Amsterdam merchant, Willem Shouten, formally named the place in 1616, Cape Horn has been a craved destination and right of passage for offshore sailors: a prime objective in sailing aspirations, part maritime bogeyman, part Holy Grail.

The Horn marks the northern limit of Drake Passage, a fearsome stretch of water between South America and the Antarctic continent where the Southern Ocean is squeezed through a narrow and relatively shallow gap: a concentration of wind and waves that can produce monstrous seas. The cape’s legendary status and fearsome reputation has filled the pages of many books, but the 'Long Drag Shanty' conveys a true sense of dread that the area can inspire:

Round Cape Horn where the stiff wind blows,
Round Cape Horn where there’s sleet and snow.
I wish to God I’d never been born
To drag my carcass around Cape Horn

Cape Horn has wrecked countless ships and claimed the lives of many sailors attempting to round this barren, rocky, outcrop; the southernmost, drowned peak of the Andes Mountains chain. One survivor of a Horn gale was Charles Darwin during the voyage of exploration that formed his theories on evolution. This experience totally demoralised the brilliant naturalist: 'The necessary discomforts of the ship heavily pitching and the miseries of constant wet and cold, I have scarcely for an hour been quite free from seasickness. How long the bad weather may last, I know not; but my spirits, temper, and stomach, I am well assured, will not hold out much longer.'

Darwin’s ship, the Beagle, came within minutes of foundering during the gale due to the captain’s insistence that all the ports for deck drains should remain closed. Fortunately, the ship’s carpenter chose to remain on standby with a handspike and saved the Beagle. Darwin’s dairy entry of Sunday 13th January 1833 records this event, just 20 miles west of the cape:

'Our horizon was limited to a small compass by the spray carried by the wind; the sea looked ominous; there was so much foam, that it resembled a dreary plain covered by patches of drifted snow. At noon the storm was at its height; and we began to suffer; a great sea struck us and came onboard; the same sea filled our decks so deep, that if another had followed it is not difficult to guess the result. It is not easy to imagine what a state of confusion the decks were in from the great body of water. At last the ports were knocked open and she again rose buoyant to the sea.'

Although Darwin was clearly in a poor condition during the storm, he was still able make observations: 'Whilst we were heavily labouring, it was curious to see how the albatross with its widely expanded wings, glided right up the wind'. These solitary creatures symbolise the Southern Ocean. Their ability to harness the fierce winds raging at the bottom of the world coupled with a habit of following yachts and ships through remote sea areas has formed a mysterious bond between sailors and albatross: a connection that is highly evident at Cape Horn. There are only five manmade structures on treeless Horn Island.

At the southern tip of the island sits an unmanned lighthouse marking Cape Horn and a second light is located above Point Espocon on the eastern end of the island. Behind the second light is a single-storey dwelling housing the Chilean lighthouse keeper and his family. Alongside the accommodation hut is a tiny chapel: a simple building constructed in timber, housing six pews and a plain, unfussy altar. Upon closing this building’s double doors on the gale outside, the quiet within the chapel is entirely unnatural. This almost supernatural aspect increases with the final structure; a massive albatross statue dominating the plain above the island’s southern cliffs. This diamond shaped, iron artwork features a cut-out silhouette of an albatross in flight: aligned north-south, the prevailing westerly wind moans through the statue’s void producing a primal and highly disturbing sound. Carved on the concrete base of the statue is a sombre and melancholy poem in Spanish. It is very difficult to turn one’s back on the giant albatross:

I am the Albatross Waiting for You
At the End of the World
I am the Forgotten Soul of Dead Sailors
Those who Sailed Through Cape Horn
From All Oceans in the World.
But they have Not Died
In The Furious Waves,
In My Wings they Fly today
To The Eternity
In The Last Crevice
Of Antarctic Winds

Sara Vial. December 1992

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