Cape Horn

Windiest place in world… 30% time in winter gale force …called the ”furious fifties”

It’s 800 kms between SAmerica and Antarctic….Drake Passage.

Magellan passage (Puna Arenas is … calmer but much narrower than the open waters of Drake passage.

On March 5/19 we watched a very primitive video taken in 1929 by the man who later narrated it. It was called “The Peking Battles Cape Horn”. If you get the opportunity to watch it, I recommend that you do. It is truly amazing and really quite humorous.

To travel from the Atlantic side to the Pacific around the Cape is considered the wrong way because you would be fighting the prevailing winds…. very difficult considering you would have to tack into it…, no motors on board.

The Peking was a 17 stories high sailing ship from Hamburg. It was sent to pick up nitrates from Chile.

90% of the ice fields are in Antartica, 7% Greenland and 2% in the rest of world.

While travelling through more of the Chilean fiords, the Amalia Glacier, at first we couldn’t see because of clouds. But then it finally came into view. Amalia Glacier is about 3 kilometres wide. They lowered one of the boats into the sea to collect a “bergie” and hoisted it up for display in “Horizons”.

Sometime later we sailed by the Asia Glacier. Magnificent!