Location: approx 1650 sailing miles from Cape Horn
Day's Run: (24 hours) 171 miles
Monday November 27th, 2000
0930 hours. I’ve just had a complete change of clothes due to being soaked through by a rogue wave as we unreefed a few minutes ago. My fault entirely as I was on deck with only my thermals on and no Musto gear. But Trevor has taken the brunt of the ribbing as he was at the helm in the pilot house at the time, all nice and warm and dry, and dropped a big wave over everyone. At 4 degrees C it has quite a chilling effect, but Ollie has started the laundry Ôspecially to wash and dry damp items. Shoes go in the generator room to dry in their own time.
Last night was a little slow - we motored until midnight with heavy downpours of rain under ominous clouds and little wind. By 0030 a nice breeze sprang up from the south-west, so Trevor and I, who had the watch, eased sheets on the starboard gybe and headed south-east once more, with the bow pointing straight at Cape Horn. The southern sky stayed very bright all night, the further south we go, the closer the sun gets to the horizon at midnight. The air on deck was very cold, but inside our pilot-house cocoon, relatively warm. After 3 hours staring at the radar screen, drinking cups of milo and occasionally popping out into the cockpit to check the horizon and keep an eye on the clouds, we went back to our welcome bunks.
The cabins are so silent that sleep comes easily most times - be the weather up-top a full gale or quiet ruffles on the surface. A note in the log for 0530 reads: “magic sunrise – everything painted in pastel” Our weather maps show similar conditions for the next couple of days, but it is important to look behind at what is coming, as the weather in this most remote part of the world can deteriorate very rapidly.
Janot and Roger have been working up in the forepeak this morning getting the hot water cylinder connected to the water-maker. Our reverse osmosis water-making machine produces approximately 110 litres of pure, fresh, drinking water from sea water every hour, when the sea temperature is around 20 deg C. With the sea temperature now at 4 deg C, the output has been less than half. Because Seamaster is a polar yacht designed to operate in extremely cold temperatures, she also has an attachment to the water maker that heats the incoming water. But this cylinder was found to be leaking and the element (brand new) had burnt out. So, they replaced the heating element with a spare, fixed the pin-hole leak, and our production is now close to 100 litres an hour again.
Sir Peter Blake
"Having vision is not enough. Change comes through realising the vision and turning it into a reality. It is easy to espouse worthy goals, values and policies; the hard part is implementation."
Learn about Sir Peter Blake and his journeys around the globe
