Vigo (Pontevedra)
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The hardest for Alex Pella and Romain Pilliard in their attempt to set a westbound sailing round the world record. Skirting Cape Horn from Cape Isla de los Estados (Atlantic Ocean) to Stewart Island (Pacific Ocean) sailing about 280 miles is proving to be much more complicated than these two sailors expected on board the “Use It Again”.
The weather conditions are adverse, with strong headwinds, rough seas and strong currents; To which has been added the continuous small breakdowns on board the trimaran, a continuous drip as reported by the sailors.
The passage through Cape Horn occurred at 12:55 p.m. this Thursday, February 3, after thirty days since they set sail from Lorient on January 4, 2022.
For the Spanish sailor Alex Pella, it is another milestone in his professional ocean career: “Hello everyone. Despite quite a few difficulties, because it was very difficult to get to the rock, the other day we finally rounded Cape Horn. An emblematic point! Really a piece of rock with a lot of soul, with a lot of history and in a spectacular place. Cheers, Ax.” Which already adds four crosses to this southern South American geographical point, while for Pilliard it is the first time.
Pella has not missed the opportunity to greet the lighthouse keeper of Hornos, at a time when they were sailing with three reefs on the mainsail and a storm jib at the bow girding against a wind of thirty knots of intensity. He had a short conversation via radio, just as he did four years ago when he crossed east aboard the Ultim “Idec Sport” with a crew led by Francis Joyon in which they broke the Jules Verne record after 40 days.
Cook’s Bay is located at the western end of the Beagle Channel, a place that was discovered by the British sailor when he landed on December 17, 1774 with the HMS Resolution during his second voyage. The entrance to this arm of the sea to the south is located between the island of Londonderry to the west and the islands of Hoste, Whittlebury and Hamond to the east. Place with about 12 miles long, a mouth of about 8 miles, with deep and clean waters. Where the Beagle, Barros Merino and Thomson channels also lead.
For Pella and Pilliard it is a complicated situation, on the one hand, they are waiting for the weather conditions to be favorable to head north due to the trade winds of the Pacific Ocean in the southern hemisphere, and having to do small tacks in the interior of the bay with the “Use It Again”.
Maneuvering a multihull 23 meters long and 16 meters wide between two is not an easy task when the crew has been sailing for 30 days, the cold is intense and the ropes are almost frozen. They have to garrison the trimaran to tack to the bow, cast and catch the mast runners, change the mainsail band, cast the against sheet of the headsail and catch the corresponding sheet, etc. a sequence of chained maneuvers to complete a tack in which the “Use It Again” slowly starts up again; They also don’t want me to sail fast because in an hour and a half they will have to repeat the choreography again, and so on as many times as necessary until they can leave this shelter to the north.
The center of high pressure that would allow them to navigate in favorable conditions is located 1,400 miles to the northwest of the “Use It Again”, for which they will have to go up the coast of Chile to the north over a distance of 800 miles until they run into southwesterly winds that would allow them to enter the trade winds to sail westward toward the 0-mile-wide Torres Strait between the northern coast of Australia and southern New Guinea.
Pella’s effort aboard the “Use It Again” is commendable, he himself was trying to launch a Spanish project sailing around the world on the Magellan route to commemorate the 500th anniversary, but he never got the support neither economic nor political. Once again the money allocated from the Ministry of Culture and Sports has gone to no one knows where, or entity; for example, the Friends of the Great Spanish Navigators and Explorers (AGNYEE) expedition that places its Pros sailboat on November 10, 2021 west of the Galapagos Islands, the sponsorship of the Spain SailGp Team, the Grand Large Yachting World Odyssey 500 ( others who go on vacation) or the 6mR world championship to be held this year in Sanxenxo, etc., more of the same Spanish style: a little beer, walking around the jetty in shorts, recounting the battles of a regatta that did not last more than an hour or lie on the beach.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism