Earlier this week, Iain Macneil and his four-man crew rounded the Cape of Good Hope off South Africa on his converted 77-foot rescue boat Astra, completing their voyage around all five capes on the Southern Ocean.
Just after sunrise on April 26, 146 days after Astra left Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, the crew celebrated rounding the Cape of Good Hope with a bottle of champagne (see picture above, with Macneil in foreground).
“The views of Cape of Good Hope and the rising sun over Africa were truly stunning and a truly fitting backdrop for this final cape,” he wrote on his blog mv-astra.com. Astra rounded the cape at 11.5 knots and then “started a great circle course of 307 degrees bound for Saint Helena. We are on our way home!” Astra is scheduled to return to Lanzarote on May 15.
Astra’s scorecard for rounding all five capes, circumnavigating westbound from Lanzarote:
Cape Horn, off South America, Jan. 19.
South Cape, New Zealand, March 20.
South East Cape, Tasmania, March 26.
Cape Leeuwin, Western Australia, March 1.
Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, March 26.
Macneil, a former Merchant Navy seaman and CEO of Witherbys, a maritime publishing company in Scotland, wrote that Astra powered through “some very awkward seas,” heading into the Cape of Good Hope. “The wind waves are opposing the prevailing swell, which is making it somewhat like a mechanical bucking bronco on a very low setting.”
There was good reason to be concerned about the Cape of Good Hope, which is also known as “the graveyard of ships” or “the cape of storms.” But as it turned out, the weather cooperated. After a celebratory breakfast of pancakes and bacon, the crew ended up with “a fabulous morning for rounding the final cape,” Macneil wrote.
Macneil bought Astra about two years ago and renovated it for the voyage. It had served in the Swedish Rescue Service from 1995 to 2016. It has a steel hull, aluminum superstructure, a 1,350-hp Mitsubishi main engine and a Volvo as a backup. It also has a range of 5,000 nm at 8.5 knots. Read more:
