Anchorage in the Northern Lau, Fiji

This isn't a log so much as a report on some planned insanity. For those of you who follow the wanderings of Saoirse and her crew I'll give a quick update as it's been awhile since our last log. We last left you in the South Pacific, sailing from the Solomons to Darwin, Australia. That trip, through 4 seas (Solomon, Coral, Arafura, and Timor) and out of the Pacific Ocean (into the Indian) for the first time went without a hitch. Jody got to bypass the sail with a 3 week paragliding and kitesurfing trip on the east coast of OZ which left two clients and very close friends, Peter Chappell and Luke Henderson and I to sail about 2500 miles. Our arrival in Darwin coincided with not much more than heat last October so it didn't take much motivation to get Saoirse "summarized" for a few months while we moved south to Perth to plan our future route.

Our "route" has been changed no less than many, many dozens of times as the tsunamis in SE Asia threw a wrench in our original plans. We've bounced from returning to Seattle via the Philippines and Japan; to continuing on through Indonesia, Thailand the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea and into the Mediterranean; to sailing back across the top of Australia to ply the Great Barrier Reef for a season; to sailing around the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) to the Caribbean, but only this week have finally finalized our plans, with not a little help from the Australian Government.

Government idiocy aside (apparently they don't operate much differently than ours does at home, so we can all feel confident in that regard), we have decided…drum roll please: Saoirse and her crew, consisting solely of myself and Jody will sail immediately for Bali, Indonesia, a downwind sled ride of 1,000 miles, where I will immediately depart by much faster methods (by air) for Buenos Aires, Argentina. Just this week I got a call from Luke Henderson and Francis Savage, who many of you will remember from Captain's Logs over the past two seasons. Last year in Fiji Francis was able to talk Luke into buying a boat and sailing around Cape Horn. As I've taught both Luke and Francis how to sail I've obviously been following their progress with great interest (and not a little trepidation as this is a bold endeavor). They left in Luke's recently acquired 36' steel yacht from Cape Town, South Africa a few months ago. It took 57 days to cross the Atlantic and they are now preparing for the trip south around the Horn. And they have been so kind as to ask me to join. This is because they are smart enough to know that I am dumb enough to accept.

In river terms, sailing around the Horn is the Grand Canyon of sailing conquests, but with an exponentially higher degree of pain, danger and suffering for the attempt. At 55 degrees south latitude the Cape lies in the most inhospitable sailing conditions on earth. Southern Ocean lows march around Antarctica with regularity and go unhindered by land the circumference of the earth- except at the Horn, building swell's which regularly rise above 60 feet. Here they are squeezed between the strangely named Tierra Del Fuego (land of fire) and the Antarctic Peninsula called "Graham Land". It is strangely named because this is not a warm place (Magellan named it for the fires of the Amerindians which dotted the land at night). And we are not going at a warm time of year. We will attempt our rounding of the Horn much as the Explorers of old sailing from Europe to the Spice Islands, long before the Panama Canal was built- from East to West, but unlike these hearty souls who wisely sailed in summer we will do it in the dead of the Southern Hemisphere winter. These days if people are so inclined to round the Horn they do it logically- from West to East, which use the predominant Westerlies in the "Roaring Forties" and "Furious Fifties" to make for fast passages (40's and 50's being degrees of latitude)- in the dead of summer, when the low pressure systems off the Antarctic are not such a menace. A snapshot of the conditions we can expect: massive, behemoth seas, screaming headwinds (below the "furious 50's are the "Screaming 60's) and 6 hours of daylight, which means cold. Very very very cold.

Of course that is what we can expect but none of us want to die so we'll pick our weather windows carefully. With any luck we'll say hello to Cape Horn and the land of fire with dreams fulfilled and hearts warm with adventure instead of frozen in the sea. I guess if I taught these yahoos how to sail I've got to be willing to take part in their escapades right?

Yes I do.

Should be interesting. And cold. And dark.

I'll return to Saoirse and Jody, who will have a much better tan than I in late August. She'll have paraglided and kitesurfed every day so I'm pretty sure who will be more envious. We'll then sail for Thailand for a few months, then the Andaman Islands, Maldives and across the Indian Ocean, through the Red Sea and into the Med. If any of you have an inkling for warmer adventures, join us.

Darwin, Australia June 2005