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Into the Screaming 50s (Cont.) WE LEAVE CALETA NORTE before two in the afternoon, turning south toward the open sea. The wind is freshening out of the northeast and we coast down the channel under a full main and rolled-out genoa. Half an hour later, we feel that unmistakable Southern Ocean swell "rolling along in all his majestic dignity," as Edmund Rice put it in his log. To our left, the mighty surf dashes itself against the headlands of Isla Hermite, throwing itself 80 and 100 feet into the air.
"The Horn, the Horn!" Novak says, gently mocking us. We have a scant week left in our charter, and he's anxious to get Pelagic back up to the Beagle Channel to start exploring the great glaciated fjords of the Cordillera Darwin. "I don't understand why everybody wants to come down here," he says, "when there's so much stuff to see up there." But there's no denying the perfection of the day, and eventually even our captain succumbs to it. The sun is out and the wind is slowly clocking around to the north-northwest. For us it means the ultimate cruiser point of sail—a broad reach—on our east-by-southeasterly run down to the Horn. An hour later it's blowing 35, but over the aft quarter, not on the nose. It's a downwind sleigh ride, with the rollers heaving up astern and shooting us forward. As each one passes and we dip into the trough, the bottom half of the great rock ahead disappears entirely, then comes swimming back up into view. In no time we've left Isla Hermite and are abreast the foaming, half-submerged rocks that lie a half-mile off the Horn—a sight that brings home the power and remoteness of the place even more than its looming cliff does. Novak points out the spot where, in the 1982 Whitbread, his boat, Alaska Eagle, very nearly became another red icon on the "Cape Horn Shipwrecks" map. "It was blowing 50-plus and we had a poled-out jib and a reefed main on starboard tack," he recalls. "The guy driving had no business being there, but it's like you have to give everybody a spin going around the Horn, right? Anyway, he lost it and we jibed, all standing with the boat pinned down on its starboard rail heading straight into the land. Another guy grabbed the wheel away from him and with the help of a wave steered out of it—but we blew the mainsail in the process." At 5:30 in the afternoon, when we're due south of the Horn's jagged ramparts, Novak whacks off the neck of a champagne bottle with a winch handle, spilling a bit over the side as a libation to Neptune. About two minutes later, a giant squall blows in out of nowhere. The wind swings wildly into the southwest, the sky overhead goes black, and we find ourselves bucking through an incredibly awkward cross sea. Ten minutes after that, we round the southeastern tip of Isla Hornos. Nearby is the corrugated-metal structure where the lighthouse keeper and his family live. Novak calls the lighthouse keeper on the VHF and, in his mangled yet serviceable Spanish, asks for the weather. There's a long reply, and Novak puts the radio down and turns to John Rice. "He says it's going to shift back to the north tonight. And he wants to know if we're landing. He's got a few postcards up there, and you can get your passport stamped." Novak pauses. "It's up to you..." Rice ponders this question for a moment, his blue eyes twinkling. I suspect that he, like me, would be happy to putter around Isla Hornos for an hour or two. If it really is the sailor's Everest, wouldn't it be nice to pocket a rock from its craggy shores? On the other hand, he already has his talismanic lump of coal, and he's seen the Horn up close and from the heaving main, as a sailor should. So now, while the wind is holding fair, he agrees that Pelagic ought to roll on north in search of a snug anchorage. It seems the seamanlike thing to do.
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