Earlier this week, Iain Macneil and his crew rounded Cape Horn on his converted 77-foot rescue boat Astra, on week eight of what they hope is a record-breaking trip around every cape in the Southern Ocean.
Macneil, the CEO of Witherbys, a maritime publishing company in Scotland and former Merchant Navy seaman, bought the boat more than a year ago and renovated it for the voyage. It had served in the Swedish Rescue Service from 1995 to 2016.
His goal: To set a record for a full-displacement powerboat less than 24 meters (78’ 7”) circumnavigating the world via every cape in the Southern Ocean – the Cape of Good Hope off South Africa, Cape Leeuwin in Western Australia, South East Cape in Tasmania, South Cape in New Zealand, and Cape Horn off South America.
Macneil (above) says he thought about such a voyage for a long time during his career on large cargo ships and tankers. He spent ten months, and cruised 9,000 nm on Astra, before he started the circumnavigation on the Canary Islands on Dec. 1. “I can honestly say I believe I have the most capable 24-meter motor vessel in the world,” he said.
The boat has a steel hull, aluminum superstructure, a 1,350-hp Mitsubishi main engine, a Volvo auxiliary as backup, and a range of 5,000 nm at 8.5 knots.
Macneil expects the trip to take five months, spread over 25,000 nm. To qualify as a proper circumnavigation, the boat must cross the Equator twice and cover all 360 degrees of longitude. To round Cape Horn, he wrote on his blog, mv-astra.com/blog, you must start at 50 degrees south latitude on one coast of South America and then cross 50 degrees south latitude on the opposite coast.
They accomplished this last Sunday; the rounding itself took 11 days. Macneil said the crew on this westbound route felt like they were on an 18th century Nantucket whaler. “Our own rounding featured being stormbound in Ushuaia for three nights, fuel problems, crew not able to rest and then, just south of the Pacific entrance to the Straits of Magellan, we had to run before a storm with winds gusting 45-55 knots and a gust of 60 knots accompanying seas of 20 feet.” Read more:
