F

24th

or Captain Mark Schrader and his crew aboard the 64-foot steel cutter, Ocean Watch, last January was a day they’ll never forget.

Having departed from Seattle nearly seven months before, on the last day of May in 2009, they’d successfully negotiated the Northwest Passage, had sailed down the east coasts of North and South America, and had paid a call at the remote Falkland Islands. Nearing the latitude of 56º S, they were closing in on perhaps the most significant single waypoint on their entire voyage “Around the Americas.” They were poised to round Cape Horn. Co-sponsored by Seattle’s Pacific

Science Center (PSC) and the ocean- conservation organization Sailors for the Sea (SfS), with additional funding from private backers and corporate donors including the Tiffany Foundation and Unilever, the Around the Americas expedition was conceived as a voyage of discovery to highlight oceanic and environmental issues in North and South America. The premise was simple: the American continents represent a singular island surrounded

by a shared ocean, with challenges, communities, issues and solutions all linked together as a common whole. In addition to skipper Schrader,

Ocean Watch’s full-time crew included first mate Dave Logan, photographer

David

Thoreson, and me, a career sailing writer. Oceanographer Michael Reynolds was aboard for much of the voyage, and so too were teachers Zeta Strickland and Roxanne Nanninga from PSC. Other crewmen, including SfS founder David Rockefeller, Jr., also joined the team for shorter legs of the journey. In fact, Rockefeller was aboard

for the segment that included Isla Hornos—Cape Horn—at the southern extremis of South America. Forty-eight hours before Ocean Watch made her final approach, the lighthouse keeper there recorded a gust of 105-knots, and for two nights the crew sought shelter behind nearby islands in steady winds that neared hurricane force.

But on the morning of the 24th

, a rare,

20-knot easterly filled in and the crew even managed to hoist their big North spinnaker, emblazoned with a logo of North and South America, as they passed the epic headland. Once around the Horn, it was time to set a course northward, back to where the trip had

commenced. Ocean Watch

was bound for Seattle, to close the circle on the historic odyssey around the continents. Once around Cape Horn,

Ocean Watch began making

her way homeward via the

vast network of Chilean channels and canals, including the Beagle Channel and the Magellan Strait. The crew took in sights that were both impressive and unforgettable, but in many instances, also deeply troubling. As in the Arctic, the ice in the Chilean

canals is changing. Of the 48 glaciers in the Southern Patagonia Ice Fields, all but two are rapidly shrinking. The run- off from those decreasing glaciers—the rivers and waterfalls that left everyone

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48° NORTH, JUNE 2010 PAGE 33

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