Notice:
The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.
There are actually three different channels at the end of the world, coincidentally I got a few YouTubes this week on the subject. • The Straights of Magellan is/are a channel between the Tierra del Fuego and the Argentina/Chile mainland with strong tidal currents and sea ice in Southern Hemisphere winter and spring. Fog is a major problem there, and the channel is narrow in a few spots. Especially now with the rainfall shortage in the Panama Canal Zone, some shipping has opted for this passage. • The Beagle Channel, named for Charles Darwin’s boat, is a passage between the rocky island of the region, and the channel is shallower and narrower that the Magellan straights. Current opposite winds over the shallow bottom can create overfalls and standing waves here. • But the real butt kicker is Drake Passage, named for Sir Francis Drake, who was Queen Elizabeth I’s privateer. If you can imagine the entire Southern Ocean being driven by the unobstructed winds circling the globe in the roaring forties, with their huge amount of “fetch” across 25,000 miles of open ocean. Now take those waves and currents and focus them into a 500 mile wide channel between the southern tip of South America and the northern tip of the Antarctic peninsula, and you’ve got the ingredients for the “washing machine”
Now remember that most circumnavigating single-hand sailors must pass through the Southern Ocean and Cape Horn, so it’s no wonder that many boats capsize in these conditions. Some, unfortunately, are dismasted or disabled worse.
Just imagine, on the Bounty voyage, Bligh tried sailing west around Cape Horn for a full month, beating against the wind and waves, before he gave up and sailed east, all the way around the world, to get to the South Pacific.
Imagine, too, Sir Ernest Shackleton, after being shipwrecked in the arctic, sailed a 22 foot boat through severe weather for 600 miles past Cape Horn to rescue himself and his crew.
If you haven't read about those adventures, they're available in most public libraries. The Bounty trilogy is in three volumes, the first telling about the mutiny voyage, the second about the voyage of Bligh of 3600 nm in the small, worm eaten ship's launch after the mutiny (considered one of the greatest small boat voyages in history), and the third about the capture of many mutineers and their trial. The Shackleton expedition was photographed almost from start to finish by the expedfition's photographer.
Steve Milby J/24 "Captiva Wind" previously C&C 35, Cal 25, C25 TR/FK, C22 Past Commodore
Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ. The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.