Challenge of the Sea

Mt. Everest has been climbed, even on live television, and the North and South poles have been criss-crossed by a variety of transport, but adventures remain for those seeking a challenge. One of the most daunting is on the wilderness of the sea: the passage from New York to San Francisco via Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America.

The round-the-horn record for a sailing vessel is 89 days and 8 hours, set in 1854 by the 229-foot clipper ship Flying Cloud under the command of Josiah Creesy. Back in Gold Rush days the clippers raced to get to the West Coast first with their precious cargoes of passengers and freight. It was not unusual for a wide-eyed passenger to see 25 or 30 other clippers at the same time thrashing around in the stormy waves of the cape. The route runs against both the wind and the current.

Four attempts in the past five years to beat Creesy’s record ended in broken masts and sunken sailboats. The most recent effort was earlier this year by 44-year-old Guy Bernardin of Rhode Island. Sponsored by a French bank, Bernardin was able to sail his 60-foot sloop around the tip of the horn eight days ahead of Creesy’s record. But before he could completely round the cape islands and reach the calmer Pacific waters, his boat crashed into the trough of a giant wave. The broken mast ripped a hole in the hull, the boat sank six hours later and Bernardin had to be rescued by the Chilean army. The experience was “like falling off a precipice,” Bernardin is quoted in an article in the current issue of Cruising World magazine.

The bank will finance another boat, and Bernardin will try again this summer. That is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, but Bernardin says that the cape weather is so consistently bad that one season is not much worse than another. In recognition of the severity of this last great challenge, the Manhattan Yacht Club is offering a trophy for besting the Flying Cloud’s record. Then, no doubt, sailors will seek out another last great challenge.