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Cape Horn

By Roy F. Halvorsen

Let me tell you about my personal adventure around Cape Horn. It was only a short sail comparable from City Island in the Bronx to Montauk Point and back but not the same.

I met Eric Barde the captain of Philos my charter in Port Almanza Argentina in the Beagle Channel about 9:00AM after an hour and a half taxi ride from Ushuaia over a rutted gravel roadway. The port consisted of a short pier put together with salvaged parts from who knows where. His boat a 48 foot steel schooner rig, looked shipshape floating at the dock in the morning mist.

His wife Grdule and son Paul were just getting up and we enjoyed breakfast together before clearing the customs to leave for Chile. The crossing of the Beagle Channel at this point to Port Williams is about a half hour under motor. For the most part the Beagle Channel is very much like sailing in our home waters of Long Island Sound. It is not as wide but a pleasant body of water with a few very large steep Estansa on the coast line. The close in mountains are only one to three thousand feet and are free of trees in the upper reaches due to the cold.

We arrived in Port Williams, the most southern town in the world, to clear into Chilean customs. The town has eighteen hundred and fifty souls with about two thirds military personal. The Port Williams Yacht Club is an old rusting coastal steamship from the turn of the last century firmly resting in the mud. All the boats ( about five ) raft up in a very protective cove. The town has several stores with marginal inventory. When you find something you need you buy as much as possible for they may not have the items for another month. The tavern which was our first stop could have been from the wild west of the states in 1880. The only difference was that the beer was ice cold and came in cans.

We filed our sailing plan with the Navy and departed about three in the afternoon. Winds were very light so we used the iron jib to reach our first overnight stop at Port Toro. An excellent harbor for the two fishing boats that ply the waters. As we came into port the dock was full of people to see who was coming. The total population of the village is sixty souls. We tied up to the dock and enjoyed a dinner of Santorio the large local crab with heavenly tasting white meat. Eric traded a bottle of wine for ten of these delicious creatures. We went to bed early for the next day sail into Nassau Bay.

The early morning was again dead calm so we turned on the iron jib and motored out passed the mouth of the little port. At the very edge of the point all the trees were bent away from the southwest due to the constant wind. I was to find this on all the islands. However, the trees are really big bushes south of Port Toro for the geography becomes sub arctic in climate.

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