from A Passion for the Sea by Jimmy Cornell

Antarctica to Alaska: A Transpacific Marathon

There is no other landmark in maritime lore to equal the awe inspiring Cape Horn.
The southernmost of a group of islands lying off Tierra del Fuego and the South
American continent, the island was named Hoorn in 1616 by the Dutch navigator van
Schouten. In fact there is now evidence that Sir Francis Drake landed there in 1578,
but this was suppressed by the Elizabethan authorities as the discovery of a clear
passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans was deemed too important to be
shared with other nations.
Whoever landed there first might have done so in the same spot where we
landed ourselves, a small cove on the NE side of the island, close to the new
lighthouse. Even in calm weather the landing is far from easy as the swell breaks over
the rocky beach and the smooth stones are treacherously slippery. Having been forced
to abandon a similar landing three years previously, this time I was determined to land
come what may, so Ivan and I donned our survival suits, and took to our smaller
dinghy, which would be easier to handle once we reached shallow water.
The former military presence on the wind-swept island has now been replaced
by a Chilean family. As the new lighthouse is automatic, the keepers main job is to
check by VHF the identity of any passing vessel. Visitors are warmly welcomed in
their home, where there is a modest range of souvenirs for sale. The most sought after
souvenir is the Cape Horn stamp, which now adorns Aventuras logbook and the
passports of her crew. Next to the keepers house stands a small chapel, built of
driftwood and erected in memory of the countless mariners who over the centuries
had lost their lives in these stormy waters. On a nearby hill stands an impressive steel
sculpture of a wandering albatross, commissioned by the Cape Horners Association.
As the weather was unusually calm I asked the keeper if we could walk to
Cape Horn itself. With an embarrassed smile he warned us that the path might be all
right but as the entire area had been mined by the military during the conflict with
Argentina, he wouldnt advise us to do so. Cape Horn mined! It was too much to
bear, and so we returned to Aventura, happy to have landed there, but also
disappointed to have come across such human stupidity at the very end of the world.
Back in Puerto Williams we checked in with the Chilean authorities, who
regard not only the area south of the Beagle Channel as far as Cape Horn but also the
Antarctic Peninsula to be part of Chiles territorial land and waters. We then crossed
the Beagle Channel to Ushuaia, in neighbouring Argentina, a busy cruise ship base
and therefore the best place to stock up for the trip to either Antarctica or through the
Chilean canals. I had been warned that going north absolutely nothing was available
as far as Puerto Eden or Puerto Natales, a distance of some 600 miles, so we stocked
up well on fuel and fresh produce. We sailed in March from south to north, which is
not the best way as the winds were almost invariably from ahead and usually very
strong. Anyone planning to visit this beautiful part of the world should attempt to sail
from north to south. A network of fjords and channels allows almost the entire
distance to be sailed in protected waters. The south of Chile is in every respect a
sailor's paradise: beautiful scenery of glaciers, tumbling waterfalls and primeval
forests, countless sheltered anchorages, and not another boat in sight for hundreds of
miles. It is difficult to comprehend the vastness of this country with a coastline of
some 4000 miles. On a stretch of 600 miles, while we sailed through fiords and
narrows, anchored at the foot of mighty glaciers, we only met four cruising boats and
about as many local fishing boats. Indeed, from Puerto Williams to Puerto Eden, there
is not one single settlement, not a farm, not even a house. Isolation is complete.
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from A Passion for the Sea by Jimmy Cornell

There were many more settlements once we reached the large island of Chiloe,
and by the time we arrived in Valdivia, we were back in civilization. This is
undoubtedly the best port on the west coast of South America to prepare the boat,
either to continue into the South Pacific or for a cruise south through the Chilean
canals. After weeks of wilderness it was good to finally arrive in Valdivia.
From Valdivia we struck out in a north-westerly direction: destination Easter
Island. We made a good team, as Ivan liked to stay up late and get up late, whereas I
always enjoy the dawn watch, which I regard as the most beautiful time of day. We
worked out an ideal system: Ivan would take the first watch, immediately after dinner,
around 9 p.m., until 1 or 2 a.m. I would take the rest of the night and let him sleep late
as I knew that he didnt like getting up before nine, not even in London. Those night
watches, alone in the cockpit, with the boat silently rushing along, were full of magic,
especially the last hours: watching the sky turn slowly from black to dark blue, then
start taking on all the colours of the rainbow before the sun rose over the horizon.
Exquisite moments!
Between 9 and 10 I would make breakfast and on special occasions our
favourite pancakes. The rest of the day was routine: we did maintenance work, read,
listened to music, but as our tastes didnt mesh, we each had our own Walkman. One
thing you soon learn on a small boat is to respect each others space. We had plenty of
time to talk, to comment on what we were reading, on the latest news on the BBC
World Service, or Ivans future plans. The windvane and autopilot did all the work so
we hardly ever had to steer. Also, as the boat is easily handled by one person, it was
very rare that I had to wake up Ivan to help me change sails, or vice versa. One dark
night I managed to wrap our tri-radial spinnaker around the forestay. I had noticed
what looked like a small squall approaching but had neglected or forgotten to move
the autopilot from steering to compass to steering to wind, which is what I normally
do when overtaken by a squall. I tried everything possible to unwrap the large triradial on my own but without success. Eventually I gave up and called Ivan. He
offered to climb up the mast with his harness clipped to a spare halyard and then
swing out to the forestay to unwrap the spinnaker, but it sounded too risky in the dark
and I told Ivan that we should wait until daylight. Ivan insisted that it should be done
straight away.
I have three spinnakers but only one son I retorted and sent him back to bed.
I did call him when it got light and we did save the spinnaker. It was one of the very
rare moments of disagreement between us, perhaps the only time when I acted as
father as well as skipper, and had the last word. The tension didnt last long as the
next day we sighted Easter Island. Although we had made a reasonably fast passage
and had covered the 2,000 miles in exactly fifteen days, it had been my hope all along
to arrive at Easter Island on Easter Sunday. Light winds and a blown spinnaker had
scuppered my plans and in spite of our best efforts, we only managed to arrive on
Easter Monday. Gwenda had been waiting for us for three days and we had a
wonderful reunion after the long separation of nearly six months.
There are few places in the world more enigmatic than Easter Island, and
arriving there on your own boat, making landfall at this very special island after 2000
miles of empty ocean, must be one of the most powerful experiences for any sailor.
This was our second visit, having called at this Polynesian outpost of Rapa Nui on our
first circumnavigation, nearly quarter of a century earlier. Much had changed in the
intervening years, yet much had remained the same. The anchorage off the main
settlement at Hangaroa was just as precarious, the landing through the rollers just as
exhilarating, and the weather just as unpredictable. The islands triangular shape
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from A Passion for the Sea by Jimmy Cornell

offers little protection from wind or swell, so after several yachts had got into
difficulty and at least two lost when the wind changed direction unexpectedly and
drove them ashore, the Port Captain now insisted that someone must remain onboard
all the time.
Once ashore, what was immediately noticeable is how much more geared to
tourism the island had become. Fortunately this first impression was confined to
Hangaroa itself, because out of town, the island looked just the same wind-swept
place that I remembered from before. The giant statues were as awesome as when I
first saw them, and so was the air of mystery that surrounded them. The experts still
puzzle over how a stone-age people managed to carve the enormous statues out of
rock with rudimentary flint chisels and then transport them for several miles to erect
them singly or in groups along the shoreline. In recent years some of the fallen statues
have been re-erected onto their original platforms, albeit by using modern cranes, so
now the island is ringed with scores of statues looking inland with their backs to the
sea just as they had done all those hundreds of years ago.
No less fascinating, although for very different reasons, was our next
destination: Pitcairn. As on Easter Island, we were strongly advised not to leave the
boats unattended as, according to our concerned hosts, several boats had been lost in
Bounty Bay while the crew were visiting ashore. Unbelievably, two of the incidents
involved the same owner, on subsequent visits, several years apart. The joke among
the islanders was that the original Bounty was finally burned by the mutineers not in
order to destroy any evidence of their presence on the island but because they could
not cope with moving the ship every time the wind shifted, just as visiting yachts have
to nowadays. We certainly sympathized with the mutineers!
Their descendants continue to be intrepid sailors and they showed that by the
impeccable manner in which they manoeuvered their longboat through the raging surf
into the tiny harbour. Four men had come out to bring us ashore at first light, their
names sounding like a roll call of the original mutineers: Young, Warren, Brown and,
as to be expected, Christian. They were too young to remember us from our previous
visit but once ashore we met several old friends who greeted us warmly. Ivan met
some friends of his own age whom he and Doina had joined in the tiny classroom
twenty-two years previously, instantly raising the school population from seven to
nine.
Once ashore, we were all loaded onto several quad bikes and whizzed up a
rough track into Adamstown to be greeted at the church by what looked like the entire
islands population of sixty-seven. I had kept in contact throughout the intervening
years with Tom Christian, a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian, the man who
started it all. Loaded with tropical fruit we were taken back to the boats just before
nightfall and, as the anchorage looked just as precarious as when we had arrived,
rather than spend another rolly sleepless night we all decided to leave immediately.
The small island of Pitcairn stood out clearly for a long time in the gathering
dusk as one by one we set our spinnakers and headed for Mangareva, 300 miles away.
While the French nuclear test programme was still underway at nearby Mururoa atoll,
visits by foreign vessels to the Gambier Islands, of which Mangareva is the main
island, were not permitted. All that has changed now, so the Gambiers, one of French
Polynesias five groups of islands, made a perfect landfall. Being finally able to drop
the anchor in a quiet, protected, tropical lagoon after so many thousand miles was
sheer bliss. This was our second visit to Mangareva having spent one unforgettable
month there in 1977 when, during our first voyage, we had made a long detour from
Panama and had swept south to visit Easter Island and Pitcairn before making landfall
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from A Passion for the Sea by Jimmy Cornell

here. The French nuclear programme was in those days in full swing at Mururoa but I
pleaded with the local chief of the geandarmerie who telexed Tahiti that we should be
allowed to stay for health reasons, and the permission was duly granted. We stayed
there for one month, Doina and Ivan went to school, and we easily integrated into the
lives of the one hundred strong community. The two gendarmes, Iotua, a burly
Polynesian from the island of Tahaa and his French sidekick Manu, and their two
wives, as well as the Ivans teacher Lucas Paeamara, became our close friends. We
spent every day with them, took them out fishing on Aventura outside the lagoon,
lived off the fertile land and, in hindsight, came closest to what could only be
described as heaven on earth.
The island had changed a lot since our first visit. The population had
diminished and the friendly laid-back atmosphere seemed to have gone. The arrival of
the fortnightly supply ship, and its large supply of beer, was eagerly awaited and I
could no longer detect any of the strong community feeling that I had noticed during
our first visit. Lucas was now the mayor and he agreed sadly that things would never
be the same again. In every sense of the word this was paradise lost.
Never content to sail in a strait line, when a detour would do as well, on
leaving Mangareva I decided on just such a detour in order to visit the Australs, the
group of islands lying some 500 miles south of Tahiti. By the time we left Mangareva
it was already late April and thus close to winter, so we had strong westerly winds and
had to tack most of the way. Gwenda, who had been expecting tropical sailing
conditions was not impressed.
This is about as nice as sailing in the English Channel in winter. It still beats me why
you had to be so stubborn and come here!
OK, you are right and I am sorry, but as you may remember we were going to come
here in 1977 and I just could not resist the temptation to miss this opportunity again.
The history of Rapa is just as mysterious as that of its eastern namesake and
there are several hilltop fortresses on the island whose origin is still under debate. Just
outside the tropics the weather in Rapa is so damp and cold that there are no palm
trees. These grow in abundance on Raivavae, 300 miles further north. Raivavae rates
as one of the most beautiful islands we have seen anywhere and is certainly on a par
with Bora Bora as the mountainous island and its lagoon are similarly ringed by a
coral reef.
We had better winds on our way to Tahiti, where we prepared Aventura for
the second half of our Pacific Odyssey: Tahiti to Alaska. There are few places in the
world to better the cruising attractions of the leeward group of the Society Islands.
The four islands of Huahine, Raiatea, Tahaa and Bora Bora are close to each other so
that it is relatively easy to visit them all. Each has its own lagoon, except Raiatea and
Tahaa which share one, the winds in winter (May to November) are the fairly reliable
SE trade winds, shore facilities are of a high standard and the cuisine is French. What
more can one ask?
The sustained rhythm of our long trek from Antarctica to Tahiti had left its
mark on both Ivan and I so we savoured to the full a leisurely one month long
interlude in French Polynesia. Gwenda left us here and we were joined by my niece
Marianne, who was going to sail with us all the way to Hawaii. Having fulfilled our
job as committee vessel, immediately after the start we tacked back to Raiatea for a
symbolic stop at an ancient site (marae) reputed to be the largest religious site in
Polynesia. It was from this very point, whose traditional name was Hawaiki, that
those intrepid sailors set off to colonize the far-flung corners of the vast Polynesian
triangle: Hawaii, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Aotearoa (New Zealand). Our own
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from A Passion for the Sea by Jimmy Cornell

route took us towards the apex of that magic triangle as on leaving Raiatea we headed
almost due north towards distant Hawaii. We must have pleased the Polynesian gods,
and in particular Tangaroa, the god of the sea, because we had excellent winds right
from the start. In early June the winds were from ENE, so we were close-hauled and,
in hindsight, I can say that in well over 150,000 miles of offshore sailing I had never
had a more perfect week. With winds at a constant 15 knots, Aventura rarely sailed
below 7 knots, so that in one week we clocked 1100 miles, and that included stops at
Flint and Malden islands. Fishing was also excellent, so the only word to describe this
week was perfection.
Our first stop was at Flint, an uninhabited island, about 330 miles due north of
Raiatea. We had a wet and exciting landing through the breaking surf and could well
understand why the island is hardly ever visited. To get ashore we used our smaller
Avon dinghy, which we rowed up to the surf line, then jumped out and waded ashore.
We would probably have ruined the outboard engine if we had taken it with us as the
following surf capsized the dinghy when we reached shallow water. But all the effort
was justified by landing on the pristine beach obviously untouched by human feet for
a long time. The island was covered in coconut trees and an impenetrable curtain of
vegetation that came down to the waterline making it virtually impossible to advance
more than a very short distance inland.
Excellent winds gave us a fast passage to our next stop, the also uninhabited
Malden Island, which had been used by the US military during the nuclear testing
program of the 1950s. The island still bore the scars of this devastation, with rusting
military equipment abandoned all over the place. We anchored on the west side out of
the swell and rowed ashore but just as we approached the surf line and were getting
ready to jump in we saw two large black tipped sharks cruising along. As they seemed
interested in us we rowed on until we touched the bottom with the result that the surf
overturned the dinghy and threw it on top of us. Fortunately our cameras had been
packed in a sealed container so we escaped with just a few scratches. As at our
dunking on Flint Marianne found this to be extremely hilarious and kept pointing at
the black fins laughing her head off, but maybe that was just nervous relief. Ashore,
the landscape was punctuated by mounds of rusting drums and abandoned hardware
but life was obviously returning to this devastated island as nature was making a
determined effort to reclaim the land, with bushes growing out of decaying steel
drums and scores of seabirds nesting in the few trees.
The day after we crossed the equator we came to our next stop, which also had
its own nuclear past. Christmas Island was used by the British for their nuclear tests in
the 1950s and several decades later the islanders were still struggling to wipe out the
consequences of this devastation. Even if radiation appears to have ceased to be a
hazard, the amount of military hardware that still litters the island and lagoon is
almost impossible to imagine. Mountains of rusting metal and huge abandoned fuel
tanks lined the beaches and as the local population was either unable or unwilling to
use whatever natural building materials were available, such as palm and pandanus,
the main settlement, grandly called London, consisted of sad looking shacks patched
together from bits of corrugated tin. Malden and Christmas are a permanent reminder
of how twentieth century man has raped the environment, without any thought for the
consequences of his actions. The contrast to what the Polynesians had left behind on
Raiatea was not only striking, but also an unforgivable indictment of modern mans
attitude to the environment. Perhaps the same rules should be applied here as in
Antarctica where the former polluters are now obliged by law to return and clean up
the mess they had left behind.
Cornell Sailing Ltd

from A Passion for the Sea by Jimmy Cornell

Christmas Island belongs to Kiribati, formerly the Gilbert Islands, and, for
some strange reason is in the same time zone as Tarawa, the nations capital, which
lies some 2000 miles to the west across the international dateline. Undeterred by
distance, the government decided that both islands should have the same day, so the
locals proudly pointed out that, as a consequence of this clever sleight of hand, they
had beaten all opposition and Christmas had managed to be the very first island in the
world to greet the dawn of the new millennium.
Our general impression of Christmas Island wasnt helped by the totally
unbending attitude of the immigration official, who, on hearing that Ivan had lost his
passport, ordered him immediately back on board where he had to remain throughout
our stay. Ivan had discovered the loss in Raiatea just as I was going to the local
gendarmerie to clear out. As we were leaving the territory the French official did not
seem too concerned, but we knew that we might have serious problems when we
arrived in Hawaii.
The atmosphere of Christmas left us with a bitter taste and we were quite
concerned that the next Line Island, Fanning, would be no different. How pleasantly
surprised we were to be! As we reached the protection of the large atoll, we came
across a dozen one-man outrigger canoes out in the ocean trolling for fish under sail.
The perfectly formed atoll encloses a large lagoon with a narrow opening to the
ocean. The pass can be easily located on the west side of the lagoon, but one can only
enter at slack as at all other times a fierce current sweeps through the narrow passage.
The locals call it the river, as indeed the water rushes out at over 6 knots. We timed
our arrival to coincide with the moon meridian passage and must have done
something right because we did arrive at slack water. We made our way in and
anchored off the nearest village. Although we had already cleared in at Christmas, we
were supposed to complete formalities again with both police and customs. We found
the policeman asleep at home and as it was a Saturday I kindly suggested that we
didnt mind waiting until Monday, failing to mention Ivans lost passport.
As the island is rarely visited by cruising boats, and even the supply ship from
Tarawa only calls four times a year, the islanders were extremely welcoming. It was a
pleasure to walk through the neat villages and be greeted warmly by everyone.
Suddenly we were back in the South Pacific as I knew it quarter of a century ago. The
island was neat and tidy, and every house was made of local materials. The island also
belongs to Kiribati and its correct name is Tabuaeran, and not Teraina, as appears on
various charts and in many publications. Teraina is the correct name of Washington,
also one of the Line Islands, lying further north.
One day we borrowed the only three bikes on the island and cycled along the
west side of the atoll, which is made up of several smaller islands linked by bridges or
causeways. Every house was built from traditional materials of palm and pandanus
and surrounded by a cleanly swept courtyard where hens were pecking in the dust.
Pigs were kept in separate enclosures on the shore of the lagoon, well away from the
villages. The islanders appeared to be remarkably self-sufficient, this being more than
obvious in the one and only store that had only a few basic supplies, flour, rice,
corned beef, the perennial Pacific staple of cabin bread, a hard baked rusk type biscuit
and surprisingly tinned fish. The sea, lagoon and well-tended land supported several
villages, and everyone looked well nourished and healthy.
As we cycled quietly along, we heard some beautiful singing that reverberated
all around us. We looked around but could see nothing. As we got closer to the source
of the singing, it appeared to come from above and indeed it was as on top of a tall
coconut palm we saw a man wielding his machete while singing at the top of his
Cornell Sailing Ltd

from A Passion for the Sea by Jimmy Cornell

voice. We leant the bikes against the trunk and waited for him to climb down. In
surprisingly good English he explained that he was collecting toddy and offered us
some to taste. The unfermented variety is sickly sweet, but once fermented the syrup
produces a potent drink. He pointed to a number of bottles suspended from the fronds
of the surrounding palms, every one of them collecting the thick sap drop by drop.
We cycled as far as we could go and only turned around when the track came
to an end. On the way back we stopped in several villages to talk to people, but one
memory that sticks in the mind more than any other was that of a group of children,
sitting in the middle of the dusty track busy playing cards. We stopped, looked
again and could barely believe our eyes, and just in case no one believed me, I quickly
took some photos. This little incident epitomized perhaps better than anything else the
carefree and relaxed existence those people were living. The land and sea provided
enough food for everyone, and, from what we could see, there was little animosity
among people, perhaps with the one notable exception of the community being
divided between Catholic and Protestant villages.
All too soon it was time to go. When the time came to leave we had to clear
out and inform the policeman that Ivan had no passport. By then we had made a
number of friends, Ivan had repaired the priests CB radio and I had given a young
fisherman enough material to make himself a sail for his canoe, so the policeman
simply pretended not to notice. While our friends waved us off there were a few tears
on both sides as the river got hold of us and spewed us into the ocean
At least we knew that we wouldnt need passports at our next stop: Palmyra.
We had heard on the cruising grapevine that a French sailor and former chef, Roger
Dextrait, had settled on this island, which in those days was privately owned by a
family from Hawaii. The owners employed Roger, who arrived here on his 40 foot
yacht in 1992, to keep an eye on things and make sure that visiting sailors did not
overstay their welcome. The entire atoll had been declared a nature reserve and Roger
was doing his best to correct some of the abuses of the past.
Roger led a truly Robinson Crusoe life on this large atoll, where nature was
gradually returning things to normal after its devastation by the military during the
second world war. Diving in the lagoon was among the best in the entire Pacific, with
a profusion of tropical fish, giant manta rays, turtles and perhaps too many sharks.
Having speared fish quite close to the latter, I dont really believe that they are as
dangerous as people think - or I wouldnt be here to write these lines! On land, the
birds reigned supreme and there were tens of thousands of them everywhere,
especially on the former airfield where one could hardly walk without risking
stepping on a bird, its eggs or its young.
The future of Palmyra Atoll as a nature reserve is now guaranteed as recently
it has been purchased and is now owned jointly by The Nature Conservancy (TNC)
and the US Fish and Wildlife Department. All visits by cruising boat must be
prearranged by email Palmyra@inix.com. TNC also have an office in Honolulu at 923
Nuuana Avenue. There are permanent caretakers based on Palmyra and only one
week stops are allowed.
We left Palmyra with a heavy heart, not only because of Rogers unmatched
hospitality, his heart of palm salad defies description, but also because we knew that
the passage to Hawaii was likely to be hard on the wind. The accepted tactic is to
make as much easting as possible before entering the area of prevailing NE trade
winds. Unfortunately that summer, the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) was
virtually on top of Palmyra and strong NE winds were blowing all the way from there
to Hawaii. After leaving Palmyra, we tried to keep south of the ITCZ and make some
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easting in lower latitudes. Then, to our great fortune, around 20 June Adrian, the first
hurricane of the season that was forming off the coast of Baja California, came to our
help. From blowing from almost dead ahead, the winds started having some easting in
them, enough to allow us to sail close hauled on course. By this time we had already
managed to make some 200 miles of easting, but we still had 1,000 miles to sail hard
on the wind. We managed to stay on the starboard tack all the way to Oahu and
arrived in Honolulu less than nine days after leaving Palmyra. As we closed with the
shore at dawn scores of surfers were bobbing up and down ahead of us trying to catch
the right wave. This was Hawaii as I had always imagined it. We had managed to get
a space at the Waikiki Yacht Club and for one indulgent week enjoyed the unlimited
attractions of Honolulu, where everything was available and life was obviously there
to be enjoyed.
The entry formalities could not have been simpler. Thanks to our Inmarsat C
we had been able to fax the British consulate in Los Angeles, who had informed the
relevant US officials, so when we arrived in Honolulu the immigration official could
not have been nicer. He fined Ivan $170 and gave him a temporary landing permit.
Ivan eventually got a new passport flown out to Alaska.
My old friend, Alan Sitt, who had sailed with us from Peru to Easter Island in
1977, was now living on the west coast of Oahu, having built himself a large house
right on the beach with reputedly the best surfing conditions in the world. His title as
surfing champion had been taken over by his elder son and Alan was working as a
pilot towing up gliders from a nearby airstrip. We arrived in great style, in a Jaguar
XK8 convertible, a treat to myself as this was my favourite car, but appreciated even
more by Marianne, who insisted on jumping in and out without opening the door as
she had seen done in Hollywood films. Alan took us up in turn in his plane to see
Oahu from above and also treated each of us to a glider lesson.
Marianne left us here and, in preparation for the long trek to Alaska, we
moved the island of Hanalei from where in early July we set off on the 2,500 mile
passage to Sitka in Alaska. A huge North Pacific high was generating strong NE
winds, so we sailed as close to the wind as possible on a course that pointed dead
north along the meridian of Hanalei (159W), and thus kept to the west of the high
pressure area. While we were sailing fast to the north, the high pressure area started
moving west, so by the time we had reached 29N we were right inside the high, and,
not surprisingly, the wind fell to almost nothing and soon we were totally becalmed.
We had no choice but to motor through this calm patch and by the time we had
reached 33N we started picking up SW winds. For a while they were light but good
enough for our large spinnaker. By 38N the winds had gone miraculously into the SE
and remained there as far as 46N before veering to SW. Most of the time we had
only 10 knots of true wind, so we kept changing from our tri-radial to the asymmetric
spinnaker and back again, making consistently good progress. As we moved into
colder waters, the fog came down and we had to rely on radar as visibility dropped to
a boats length. We encountered several fishing boats, mostly Japanese, and had to
avoid them as they took no notice of us. For several days the fog was so thick that we
could see absolutely nothing, so we set the radar alarm with a guard at 6 milesand
carried on sailing blindly into the milky void. A very eerie feeling! By 53N the wind
started going to WNW, and although the fog was still with us and occasionally rain,
with 15 to 18 knots of wind we were sailing fast. We arrived in Sitka 17 days after
leaving Hanalei, managing this time to get there one day before Gwenda joined us
from London.

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from A Passion for the Sea by Jimmy Cornell

Sitka is undoubtedly the best place to make landfall in SE Alaska as it has

excellent facilities. The next five weeks were spent cruising SE Alaska and British
Columbia. The scenery is in many ways a mirror image of the Chilean fjordland with
the notable exception of the heavy traffic of cruise ships, fishing and pleasure boats.
The highlights, watching salmon jump an almost vertical waterfall, an unexpected
encounter with a grizzly bear and its cub in a shallow bay where we had dried out
overnight, the picture postcard beauty of Glacier Bay where we were surrounded by a
large pod of killer whales and, in British Columbia, the wild grandeur of Princess
Louise Inlet.
Having achieved my objective of sailing in one season from Antarctica to
Alaska, covering 15,000 miles in only four months, I had to admit that if I carried on
with the original plan and continued to California, I would find it impossible to
manage the complex programme of the Millennium Odyssey by email. As I felt that
my first responsibility lay with that event I decided to return to Europe. In Vancouver,
BC, I took the easy option and loaded Aventura on to a Dutch transporter ship for the
long trip to the Mediterranean. These special ships, which now ply regularly between
Europe, the Caribbean, the west and east coasts of the US, as well as the South
Pacific, are similar to a floating dry dock. Behind the bridge there is a vast dockbay,
which takes up almost the entire length of the ship. This is filled with water by
sinking the ship to the required depth so that the motorboats and sailing vessels can
drive in through the open stern like into a marina. Once the docking operation is
completed, the huge chambers are emptied of water and the yachts settle down in
previously prepared cradles. On arrival, the operation is carried out in reverse, the
ship sinks, the dockbay is filled with water, you untie your lines and float out. An
amazingly simple and efficient operation! Six weeks later we unloaded her in Toulon
close to our home in Provence.
This is an extract from A Passion for the Sea, by Jimmy Cornell
Cornell Sailing Ltd.

Cornell Sailing Ltd