Cape Horn Article

CAPE HORN by SKIP NOVAK

The anchor chain snatched hard against a strong gust of wind dumping down off the mountain at 0400 and I woke from an otherwise fitful sleep to hear the pitter patter of a light rain beginning. Water droplets on the hatch filtered what there was of the early morning light. I rolled over and resigned myself to another aborted attempt at climbing Mt. Francais, one of the highest mountains in the Darwin Range. It was late November 1993 and we were anchored in Caleta Olla in the Beagle Channel on our way down to begin another charter season with Pelagic in Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic. After four seasons in the area I had come to know Cape Horn and its environs intimately, but an old dream of standing on the highest land around and at once demystifying the geography , because of work schedules and the regions typical stormy weather, had always up to now alluded me. In those early morning hours I thought back not how it all began, many years ago - how this area - dismissed by most people as a Terra Incognito, yet considered a 'Godhead' for sailors of all kinds, had become for me a lifelong obsession.

I first rounded the Cape in 1977 on board the British Cutter Kings Legend in the second Whitbread Round the World Race. I was the navigator at the tender age of 25 - in the days when navigation had nothing to do with computer literacy and all to do with the ability to shoot a quick round of stars through a hole in the clouds while bucking through a full blown gale. That first circumnavigation, or for that matter the first Whitbread you do (for those of us who made it a way of life) is always the best and the memories are easily recalled.

We had been dead reckoning for five days without a fix on the last afternoon before we were due to round the Cape. The anticipation and anxiety were real. We didn't know precisely where we were and in the strong westerly flow and following seas it can easily be imagined we would be way off course. This reality, somewhat ignored before on the safety of the open sea began to have its affect as we "smelled the land" and the once carefree, round faces of my shipmates began to visibly lengthen under their black sou'westers. Providence showed its hand at the right moment; the sun broke through and I bagged it and was therefore able to make a line of position, then cross it with another two hours later. We were ten miles north of our supposed track and a healthy forty miles ahead of schedule!

That evening in the fading southern ocean light we made landfall on the snow clad summits of high mountains in ;the hinterland of Tierra del Fuego. Moments later another squall ripped through and they disappeared. At once the seed of future travel had been planted. We rounded Cape Horn at night running hard in forty knots of wind with a poled out jib and saw nothing more than a weak light flashing when five miles off.

At dawn we were suprised to find "33 Export" on our stern surfing up to ;us quickly. As they pulled abeam (close enough to exchange fusillades of beer cans with the French) we broke out the storm chute with reckless bravado and surged ahead half underwater. We rounded the eastern tip of Staten Island that afternoon and I remember it was like deflating a balloon, the pressure, anxiety and all that goes with a Southern Ocean run had gone out of it. We were "safely" back in the Atlantic, a metaphorical millpond. Cape Horn and Tierra del Fuego slipped astern - the mystery was left in tact.

Mystery goes part and parcel with Cape Horn. The coast of Tierra del Fuego (defined by all land south of the Straits of (Magellan) appeared on Ptolomy's map and many others subsequently, but all were certainly apocryphal prior to Magellan's documented discovery in 1520 of the passage that bears his name. By 1540 a rumor in Spain had circulated that the Straits in fact did not exist because out of 21 ships dispatched there only one had returned to Europe. Later in the 16th century when the conquest of Peru and Chile and attendant privateering were in full swing, Drake, de Gamboa, Camargo, Ladrilleros, Hawkins, Cavendish and John Davis (recognized as the first scientific navigator) ran the gauntlet of the Straits of Magellan preoccupied not with exploration further south byt with riches around the corner to the north. It was left as late as 1616 when the Dutch men Jacques Le Maire and Willem Schouten in the Unity plied successfully further south (there were many prior failures) and discovered the Straits of Le Maire, Staten Island, Isla Barnaveldt and of course, Cape Horn, which they named after their ship the "Hoorn" which had burned in Port Desire on the Patagonian coast. Soon after in 1624 another Dutch expedition, the "Nassau Fleet," under there command of Jacques L'Hermite found the passage he named Nassau Bay which by-passed the Cape Horn archipelago to the north. On this voyage they were the first to encounter the nomadic Yaghan Indians who lived as far south as Wollaston Island and traveled nearly naked in bark canoes.

By mid morning the thick weather began to lift over the Beagle channel and what had been a wet blanket of cloud rolled back and uncovered puffy white cumulus flying along with a fresh southwesterly. A small front had passed and by noon Frank and I had decided to give Mt Francais a go. We had only two days to spare in the attempt so our rucsacs were light with only sleeping bags and bivy sacs, a cooker, minimum food and the most basic of climbing gear. We waved goodby to Hamish and Jan on Pelagic who would be standing by our mobile base camp. Her stern was securely tied to the trees behind a gravel beach with a bow anchor out in a turquoise pool of glacier flowered water where crested ducks, kelp geese and the famous flightless "steamer" ducks were tending their chicks hatched only days before.

A half miles walk on carpets of spongy sphagnum bog, typical to all of the region, brought us to a steep forested ridge. Grappling for holds By mid morning the thick weather began to lift over the Beagle Channel and what had been a wet blanket of cloud rolled back and uncovered puffy white cumulus flying along with fresh southwesterly. A small front had passed and by noon Frank and I had decided to give Mt. Francais a go. We had only two days to spare in the attempt so our rucsacs were light with only sleeping bags and bivy sacs, a cooker, minimum food and the most basic of climbing gear. We waved good-by to Hamish and Jan on Pelagic who would be standing by our mobile base camp. Her stern was securely tied to the trees behind a gravel beach with a bow anchor out in a turquoise pool of glacier on branches of the indigenous nothofagus (beech) and drimys winteri (winter bark) we levered ourselves up through the glorious, but scratchy undergrowth of barberry and faschine, all in full flower. An hour and a half later we broke out into the open, on the exposed top where more sphagnum and some grasses held down a fragile ground cover where fewer and fewer trees, known as "bandera arboles" (flag trees) were now stunted and bent horizontal by an incessant westerly wind. Higher still, these same beeches, majestic and upright in the valleys, are forced down into a crouch and can only creep inches from the ground. Below, Pelagic had been reduced to a toy boat in an extraordinary green bathtub.

At 2,000 feet we were clear of the tree line and began to scramble on mosses and than rock decorated with lichens in ;shades of orange, green and brown. The south face of Mt. Francais, an imposing wall of ice flutings, hanging glaciers and vertical rock slabs towered above us. We kept to a subsidiary ridge that we hoped would link up with the main southeast ridge, first climbed (and possibly never since) by Eric Shipton in 1963.

While balancing precariously on a ledge we heard a swoosh behind our backs in space and just caught the wingtip of an Andean Condor, a master of these high places, disappearing around the buttress. Later, this scout was joined by six others who circled us close overhead for the entire afternoon. From our perch we gazed out over the Beagle channel far below. Fjords branched off north and south, and beyond to the southeast still hidden behind Isla Navarino would be the Wollaston Archipelago with Cape Horn at its southern apex.

The 18th and 19th centuries brought attempts at colonization form Spain, exploitation for seals and whales by all interested countries, missions to save the souls of the aboriginal "canoe Indians," and most important of all expeditions for science. James Cook with the botonist Banks and Solander made collections from the region during two expeditions in 1769 and again in 1774/75. In 1787 William Bligh in ;the Bounty tried for twenty nine days to round Cape Horn and was forced to circumnavigate via the Cape of Good Hope to reach Polynesia.

It was left to a British expedition to accomplish the first significant hydrography of the area. In 1829 William Parker King in the Adventure and Robert Fitzroy in the Beagle brought their two ships into the archipelago for five months and discovered what is now the Beagle Channel, which in addition to the Straits of Magellan and Nassau Bay offer the only alternatives for the mariner wishing to forego the Cape when passing from one ocean to another. His surveys of small coves and bays are still current on British Admiralty charts!

In 1982 Fitzroy returned in the Beagle for more surveying, this time with a young Charles Darwin whose somewhat unkind observations on the aboriginals helped formulate his theories of natural selection. Fitzroy, who believed in devine providence rather than Darwin's environmental determinism had collected his won specimens for investigation on the first voyage. ..The four Indians he brought back to England for an education and spiritual indoctrination were supposed to be the vanguard of another mission. The idea back fired; one quickly died and then when his protege Jemmy Button fled into the bush after he was returned to Tierra del Fuego on this second voyage. Fitzroys hopes of Jemmy setting an example to his savage brethren were shattered. The already famous Jemmy was later implicated and stood trial for the massacre of the Wulaia missionaries on Navarino Island some twenty years later.

In 1839 the American Wilkes based in Orange Bay just west of Cape Horn did further exploration in southern Tierra del Fuego and in 1842 Captain James Ross accompanied by the scientist Joseph Hooker wintered on Hermite Island. A succession of lesser known, but equally significant explorations of discovery continued into the 20th century. Sadly, the Fuegan Indians, fragile in numbers from the outset quickly succumbed to European diseases and were reduced to below sustainable levels by the end of the 19th century.

Although Tierra del Fuego never had an intrinsic commercial worth it quickly became the crossroads of commerce; Clipper ships doubled the Horn regularly in the middle of the 19th century supplying the California Goldrush. As political conflicts deepened in a post industrial revolutionary Europe, nitrate clippers, then windjammers loading in Chile and Peru made the passage back around the Horn with the ingredients for world wars. When steam began to erode the windjammers predominance on the high seas, the relatively sheltered waters of the Straits of Magellan was the preferred route and Cape Horn would see less traffic. In 1914 when they opened the Panama Canal even the Straits took a dive, and the port of Punta Arenas just west of the First Narrows and already famous for its seaman's brothels slipped into decline. It wasn't until very recently when the advent of super tankers and cargo ships too big for the canal began to ply the oceans that the route around the Horn was used once again.

We had to bivouac for the night in ;the open. The altimeter read 4,500feet. The only possibility seemed to be in one of the cavernous windscoops that had formed on the edge of the glacier hard by the rocky spur. We dropped down into one, excavated a level platform on the ice and began closing in since early evening and a light snow began to flurry. By eight o'clock we were in a white out which didn't give us time to contemplate the conditions over a leisurely meal. Instead we wolfed down our freeze dried meal, drank a liter of hot fruit drink each and crawled into our bivy sacs not exactly over confident with our situation. If it came on to blow things could get desperate as the ice was too hard to easily dig a snow cave. When I woke at two o'clock in ;the morning covered in three inches of spin drift, the wind was blowing, but not ferociously. In any event I was preparing myself for an unpleasant descent later that morning.

The reputation Cape Horn weather with 100 knot winds, mountainous seas and snow storms in ;high summer may seem like exaggerations, but they have foundation in a record of shipwrecks that is substantial. The features on the chart of ;the area are named for good reason and the warning is clear; Isla Desolacion, Isla ilDe Fonso, Isla Hope, Arreclife Peligroso. Falso Cabo de Hornos and Isla Deceit.

The area is dominated by an airstream that is unmodified by any land to the west and the easterly moving depressions that spawn in the Southern Ocean any where south of 50 degrees will have gathered full steam by the time they strike the Southern Andes. The Drake Passage drowns and seperates those mountains from their natural counterparts 500 miles further south which surface like a dragons spine to form the Antarctic Peninsula. In summer, these lows usually track through the Drake south of Cape Horn subjugating the region with a strong westerly flow having a northerly bias at the onset of low pressure. The southwesterly cold fronts that follow can be savage and sailing through heavy snow squalls while in the archipelago is commonplace.

On good days, between weather systems you can be in a T shirt on dick in the sunshine, but the slightest wind will be chilling. Paradoxically it is the winter that is the easiest time to move around by boat accepting the short days (similar to northern Scotland). In those months between May and August, the lows tend to track north of Tierra del Fuego giving the region south more easterlies, and because the speed of the depressions are subtracted from the gradient wind, they will be therefore that much less. In fact, mirror calm conditions can persist for weeks in winter, even while the area is in the middle of a trough. And because of the frequencies of depressions near the Horn, the average pressure there is only 996mmb. Anomalies like these teach the navigator to treat the barometer with suspicion at the best of times. There is also a diurnal component to the wind in the channels; calm in ;the night and morning and blowing a 40 knot westerly down channel by midday is typical. Then there are those famous katabatic winds or "williwaws," which can wreak havoc in short order. If you feel sudden rises in temperature - beware. This is an air parcel coming down from the mountains and is in compression. In its most violent manifestation ( a williwaw) it can dump over high land spilling out onto the water at well over 120 knots whipping up the water into a white frenzy. Sails must be lowered at the first sign if underway and it is a good habit to hoist your dinghy on deck at night while at anchor and lash it down - we know, as our, a 4.0 meter inflatable with a 25 hp outboard, usually taking six strong people to get up a beach, was flipped into the air like a childs toy and landed face down in the cockpit!

Only an hour later, at 3 o'clock the clouds had miraculously lifted and I could see an array of stars already in a field of light blue to the South heralding what could be perfect, cold climbing conditions. By the time we thawed out, had a morning brew and packed up, it was getting on five and in the mountains it was a late start. We donned crampons and armed with iceaxes popped out of the windscoop and slowly began to plod up ;the easy slope of the glacier toward the summit ridge an hour awa. The sunrise was a spectacular display as the summit pyramid was already ablaze and the penumbra of the spur we were sidling along was quickly dropping down slope to greet us with its welcome warmth. These are the great moments when you fall into that special rhythm and there is no sound but the crunch of hard snow beneath your frozen toes while the anticipation of what lies ahead is boiling inside you.

To the south more of the geography was opening up. We were as high as any of the peaks on Host Island on the other side of the Beagle. Seno Ponsonby struck into the heart of the island just south of the famous Murry Narrows and away to the east the mountains of Peninsula Mitre beyond the port of Ushuaia on the Argentine section, tapered off towards Isla del Los Estados (Staten Island). It was ludicrous to ;think that a territorial war had almost been fought between Chile and Argentina over the control of these waters as recent as 1978.

Although the Argentine/Chile border in Tierra del Fuego was defined on the land section of Isla Grande during the 19th century, the exact claims of the islands in the archipelago around Cape Horn remained "all at sea" until recent times when it was obvious there would , one day be commercial gains from these island territories. Chile has by far the most of the territory south of the Straits of Magellan including Cape Horn, but while it is vast, the land is mountainous and poor. Argentina, by contrast has the best land to the east - drier climate, better drained soil and flatter land which lends itself to the grazing of cattle and sheep. The added bonus that came later was a gas field and some oil (Argentina's only one), while Chile has some well heads on the Straits.

Navigationally speaking it is chile that has the upper hand, controlling all traffic on the Straits of Magellan, Beagle Channel and inshore waters off Cape Horn. Ships must take a pilot during those passages and yachts must file an elaborate cruising plan. Many parts of the southern archipelago in around the Beagle Channel has been restricted to foreign craft of all kinds administered by a very strong Chilean Navy based at Punta Arenas on the Straits of Magellan and in Puerto Williams in the Beagle Channel. When asked why it so tightly controlled, any Navy spokesman will tell you its because that they do not trust the Argentines, who have actively and successfully populated the region north of the Beagle with the city of Ushuaia now having over 40,000 of the most unlikely frontiers people that can be imagined.

In 1978 a border dispute between the two countries (one on dozens that have been settled up and down the Andes) regarding claim to four islands near the eastern approaches to the Beagle Channel was so hotly debated that shots were fired on each others light houses. A full scale conflict was just averted and the Pope was called in to arbitrate. Chile came out ahead and today there is no hostility, but certainly a lack of trust on both sides.

We gained the east ridge leading to the summit in short order cramponing over a hard surface. Once again, the weather was looking dodgy. Overcast and snow flurries gave us cause for concern because if a was breaking we were along way from any shelter. Deciding to wait for two hours while walking in circles to keep warm paid off as the wind eased, the clouds again broke into cumulus and our summit, once again visible looked like it would"go". We roped up for glacier travel, but what would be an otherwise easy ascent was complicated by a series of crevasses that we would obviously have to cross. For three hours we gained height winding our way through giant blue ice blocks and precariously balanced seracs perched on edges of bottomless chasms. Steepening at the tip just below the summit pyramid was an astounding collection of ice mushrooms formed by moisture laden winds, and we began to belay each other one rope length at a time as a slip here could have its consequences. The higher we climbed, the more puffed and thirsty we became. At the belay stances we now fantasized not about ice mushrooms, but imagined them to be giant scoops of vanilla ice-cream stacked on each other higglety pigglety - a childs dream - inspite of my 41 years I felt as enthusiastic as any seven year old to go and rub my face in it. We were close to reaching the summit and well above the cloud layer at 7,000 feet. We thought we could just catch glimpses of the Wollaston archipelago well away to the southeast.

Horn Island, only five miles long across a northwest/southwest axis and 1400feet high is part of the Hermite Group and is typical in form and vegetation with all the islands in these archipelagos. Most species of avifauna found in Tierra del Fuego are also found here and the Condor, master of the mountain, can be seen on the same day as the Great Wandering Albatross, the ;undisputed King of the open sea. Most of the plants in the Beagle channel are also represented, but all in their creeping forms. Trees grow only in deep ravines and open ground is dominated by spaghnum and tussock grass, which on the southeastern tip of Horn Island is home to the Magellenic Penguin that burrows below the ground cover to nest and tend its two chicks that hatch in November.

The classic aspect of Cape Horn, the one that is photographed and celebrated is the cliff face on ;the southern headland. Well below its summit the old lighthouse that I saw burning feebly back in 1977 still stands but shines no more below the clouds. Exposed rocks a mile offshore break heavily even on a calm day here as the rollers coming in from the Southern Ocean pile up on shelf water 75 miles away to the southwest . In 1982 on Alaska Eagle in ;the Whitbread we almost ran into the cliff during a foolish photo session with an inexperienced helmsman in the "cardboard cut-out" which happened to be at the steering wheel. He promptly gibed her all-standing and we were making headway on ou side into the shore before an enormous wave fortuitously flung the hull in the other direction, back out to sea. Score was a blown mainsail, broken spinnaker pole and one shattered ego.

To our horror we found the summit ice scoops, having the consistency of same, even that of a drippy sorbet, and they seemed to be overhanging in all directions - impossible to get a hold in with the ice axe as it all just came away in shards of rotten ice. After a tense closer inspection we found a weakness and with some inelegant climbing we grappled our way up and within 30 feet we were on the summit - the altimeter read 7,300 feet and we were as high as any of the other mountains in the range. We spent a half hour saying little content on snatching spellbinding views as windows in the cloud rolling along beneath opened and closed. To the north and west the Darwin plateau was bisected by glacial rivers of ice and pierced by ragged peaks and ridges. To the east was the sole of Isla Grande stretched out along the Beagle Channel dipping its toe into the Straits of Le Maire. And to the south were channels, fjords and islands - the archipelago in its entirety. I couldn't see Horn Island as the Wollaston group was shrouded in its own mist, unwilling to give up all of its secrets. This was all for the better as had stripped some dreams bare that day and it would have been somewhat hollow to have descended completely satisfied. I an quest to fulfill and unravel your curiosities there is always an element of loss. It had been a great day.

The mysteries of Cape Horn and its outlying regions have for centuries given the world something to wonder about which has intrinsic value to a certain quality of life. Without this hidden and rugged part of the world we would not have Colerdiges "Rhyme" nor Poe's "Narrative." and Paul Theroux and Bruce Chatwin would not have felt the need to analyze the psyche of those who gravitate towards what Chatwin called "the final capes of exile."

Today, Cape Horn has become a media spectacle and a tourist attraction. Indeed you can land on the Island, compliments of the Chilean Navy, sign the visitors book (thousands per year) and receive you Cape Horn certificate. Years ago it used to be rare for yachts to round the Horn, sailors from Motissier to Blyth, to Knox Johnson and Taberly changed all that and the publicity generated planted the seed of ocean racing and girdling the globe under sail has become almost commonplace. During the last 20 months the Globe Challenge, The Whitbread, the British Steel Fleet, the BOC Fleet and the sole survivor of the Jules Verne Trophy, Commodore Explorer all passed by on their way around the world. Kayaks, Hobie Cats and wind surfers have done it too.

During our charters to the Cape Horn area I like to draw a distinction for the visitors I take down there. I bring them to "see" the Horn, not to round it. My advice to them is that if they want to "round" the Horn, they had better start from somewhere like New Zealand.

Or better not try to demystify it all. As Hilaire Belloc said, "When the unknown becomes known, it loses that mysterious power of attraction; the unknown always possesses."