February 26, 2015 Rounding the Horn (sort of)

So geography wasn’t ever my strong suit.  I thought that Cape Horn was the southern tip of South America.  In fact, there are a bunch of islands off the tip and Cape Horn (Isla Hornos) is the southern most of these.  The plan was for us to go west between some of the islands through the Straits of Magellan, then go counter clockwise around the Cape and come back east again to get to the Beagle Channel and then to Ushuaia.  We would have literally gone “around the Horn”.  However, apparently when we got there in late afternoon the sea conditions were such that the captain decided it wasn’t safe to do all that.  So we went up next to the Horn on the relatively protected north side and hung around for a little bit, then turned around to avoid the rough weather on the west and south side of the Horn.  So when I say I’ve been “around the horn”, I mean I‘ve hung around it.  The approach was pretty rough all day and it got a little hairy when we turned the broad side of the ship to the strong wind.   We then headed for Ushuaia, Argentina which is tomorrow‘s port..