Portimão Global Ocean Race update 26th March 2009

Trouble ahead!

With 1,000 miles remaining to the Leg 3 finish in the tropical, Brazilian island of Ilhabela, the Portimão Global Ocean Race fleet are set for a finish line scramble early next week. Over the past 24 hours, the German team of Boris Herrmann and Felix Oehme on Beluga Racer have made a break away, consistently averaging the highest speeds in the double-handed fleet yesterday afternoon (25/03) as the boats beat north-east on port tack. This morning at 0620 GMT (26/03), Herrmann and Oehme have extended their lead over Desafio Cabo de Hornos by 27 miles since dawn on Wednesday and now lead the fleet by 71 miles, averaging eight knots.

Holding third place in the double-handed fleet, furthest west and 300 miles off the coast of Argentina, Jeremy Salvesen and David Thomson on Team Mowgli were the first to feel the breeze turn northerly, but have kept hard on the wind, averaging one knot slower than Beluga Racer and Desafio Cabo de Hornos sailing in slightly freer and stronger breeze further east. The net result for the British team is a loss of 16 miles to the Chileans and the British team now trail Desafio Cabo de Hornos by just 59 miles. Meanwhile, solo sailor Michel Kleinjans on Roaring Forty is pacing the double-handed fleet, matching speeds with Beluga Racer and Desafio Cabo de Hornos and is currently 200 miles astern of the race leader and 77 miles behind Team Mowgli.

After 6,500 miles and 33 days of racing, the closing stages of Leg 3 are going to be a tactical minefield for the four boats and the slightest lapse of strategic judgement or poor weather analysis could overturn the leaderboard. Felipe Cubillos, skipper of Desafio Cabo de Hornos explains: “We have 990 miles left to reach Ilhabela, but with the meteorology ahead, this is going to be a very complex six days.” As the area of high pressure east of the fleet expands across the South Atlantic, dragging the breeze further round to the east, the chances of the fleet having to tack back towards the coast of Uruguay and Southern Brazil increases.

If the wind stays more northerly, or moves to the west, sailing hard on the wind on port towards Ilhabela can be achieved. “The approach to the Brazilian coast is going to be winding,” predicts Cubillos. “We know that the final attack closing in on Ilhabela is going to be very, very complicated and pretty much anything can happen.” For Cubillos and his co-skipper, José Muñoz, there is only one clear plan: “Now, we have to work hard on recovering our lead,” he explains. “And never, never surrender!”

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Portimão Global Ocean Race update 19th March 2009

VIVA CHILE! Desafio Cabo de Hornos are first to Cape Horn

At 0050 GMT this morning, (19/03), Felipe Cubillos and José Muñoz sailed into the history books on Desafio Cabo de Hornos when the Chilean duo rounded Cape Horn earlier today. Instantaneously, their offshore sailing CV has quadrupled in size. The first yacht in the Portimão Global Ocean Race to pass the cape; the first Chilean team to round Cape Horn in a race; the first modern, 40ft yacht to race around the bottom of the globe and the first Class 40 to take on the Southern Ocean and reach 56°S.

The overture to rounding of the world’s southernmost cape has been dramatic for Cubillos and Muñoz. At 1700 GMT yesterday (18/03), Desafio Cabo de Hornos passed three miles south of the Islas Ildelfonso: nine jagged, uninhabited and unlit stacks of rock at the western entrance to Drake Passage. Immediately, Cubillos fired off an email to the rest of the fleet: “Please take care of these rocks,” he warned. “They are north of our current position, but my impression is that they are a little bit south of the position marked on the chart and they’re unlit.” Three hours later, a Chilean Navy P-111 spotter plane buzzed Desafio Cabo de Hornos, quickly followed by a congratulatory call from the office of the Chilean President and greetings from Boris Herrmann and Felix Oehme 85 miles astern in second place on Beluga Racer.

With the light beginning to fade at 56°S, Felipe Cubillos sent a final message before rounding the cape: “I have an important message to deliver,” he wrote. “Everyone can fulfil their dreams if they apply passion and determination. If you can overcome pessimism, self-doubt and triumph over the fear of failure, it is worth it as the prize at the end is immense. For me – and possibly many of you – it is our reason for living. Each of us has a personal Cape Horn: it’s a matter of locating this goal and then heading straight for it. In a few hours we will be at the cape and we can hoist our country’s flag and shout VIVA CHILE!” In the latest 0620 GMT position poll, Desafio Cabo de Hornos has hardened up since passing the cape and Cubillos and Muñoz are making just over nine knots, 60 miles south of the Le Maire Strait, the 16 mile wide channel of strong tides and confusing currents between Tierra del Fuego and Isla de Los Estados.

On Beluga Racer, 37 miles west of the cape at 0620 GMT today and 76 miles behind Desafio Cabo de Hornos, Boris Herrmann and Felix Oehme have mixed emotions as they approach this crucial waypoint at the bottom of the world: “I am a bit sad to round the cape because that destroys the dream of challenging the Southern Ocean,” commented Herrmann late last night. “By passing the cape we have reached the summit, we have fulfilled that dream.” Averaging eight knots with a current ETA of 1030 GMT at the cape, the duo are just hours from German sailing celebrity. “I don’t want to leave the Southern Ocean behind us,” he continues. “It is cold, it is rough, but it is that intense sailing that makes me feel alive more than normal.” However, the duo will have company at the cape with Bouwe Bekking and his ten crew on the Volvo Ocean Race backmarker, Telefonica Blue, likely to pass Cape Horn around three hours after Beluga Racer.

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Cape Horn - drama or dream?

When the fleet of four boats in the Portimão Global Ocean Race round Cape Horn over the next few days, it will mark the first rounding by a race of 40ft yachts and the first race rounding by a Chilean team. A truly momentous achievement for the seven yachstmen.

Debate continues over the original discovery of the world’s southernmost cape: did Francisco de Hoces - the Spanish commander of the caravel San Lesmes – first site the rocky outcrop in 1526 after being swept south while trying to navigate the eastern entrance of the Straits of Magellan? If so, he predates the 1578 rounding of Sir Francis Drake by a little over half a century. However, since the Amsterdam merchant, Willem Shouten, formally named the place in 1616, Cape Horn has been a craved destination and right of passage for offshore sailors: a prime objective in sailing aspirations, part maritime bogeyman, part Holy Grail.

The Horn marks the northern limit of Drake Passage, a fearsome stretch of water between South America and the Antarctic continent where the Southern Ocean is squeezed through a narrow and relatively shallow gap: a concentration of wind and waves that can produce monstrous seas. The cape’s legendary status and fearsome reputation has filled the pages of many books, but the “Long Drag Shanty” conveys a true sense of dread that the area can inspire:

Round Cape Horn where the stiff wind blows,
Round Cape Horn where there’s sleet and snow.
I wish to God I’d never been born
To drag my carcass around Cape Horn

Cape Horn has wrecked countless ships and claimed the lives of many sailors attempting to round this barren, rocky, outcrop; the southernmost, drowned peak of the Andes Mountains chain. One survivor of a Horn gale was Charles Darwin during the voyage of exploration that formed his theories on evolution. This experience totally demoralised the brilliant naturalist: “The necessary discomforts of the ship heavily pitching and the miseries of constant wet and cold, I have scarcely for an hour been quite free from seasickness. How long the bad weather may last, I know not; but my spirits, temper, and stomach, I am well assured, will not hold out much longer.”

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