The weather fooled us this morning. It was fairly bright and clear and not too windy. Then we crossed some invisible magic line and we got the real Cape Horn experience: 9°C, 56 knot wind, 17 foot waves, rain and fog. The wind was howling in the lines and overhead wires and blowing the tops off the waves so that it looked and sounded like a ground blizzard. And this is high summer, their version of August. Just think how it must be in winter. Those old time sailor men must have been something.
About 10% of the passengers suited up in layers and rain gear to watch from the outside decks. The rest watched it on TV, the wimps. Some were even in the indoor swimming pool, but the sloshing caused by the big waves made that quite a wild ride too.
Our room has this nice balcony on the starboard side. The Chilean pilot running the ship went by with Cape Horn on the port side. In order to watch, we had to go out in the cold and wet too. When we came back inside to warm up, the line at the hot chocolate machine was a mile long.
Libby and I tried to get pictures to show the wind, but wind is, unfortunately, invisible. We just have some funny looking poses. One fellow got blown off his feet and took a hard fall. Fortunately, he was not hurt. We saw some cormorants and a couple of albatross and two small orcas.
The ship ran an entire circle around Horn Island and now we are headed north for the Beagle Channel to pick up Argentine pilots at Puerto Williams and then on west to Ushuaia for our next port stop..
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