Editor’s Note: Lin Pardey and her late husband, Larry, are legends in the sailing community both for their epic voyages in their two purpose-built cutters, Taleisin and Seraffyn, as well as the numerous books they’ve written that have inspired countless sailors to follow their cruising dreams. In 2020, Larry died after enduring several years of Parkinson’s Disease. Now 80, Lin has never stopped sailing nor writing, and her latest book, Passages: Cape Horn and Beyond, reflects on all that has changed, and all that hasn’t, in her life as a sailor and a woman. In this second preview excerpt in SAIL, Lin recounts the challenges they faced after rounding Cape Horn in their 29-foot Taleisin, sailing east to west against the prevailing winds.
Read Book Review-Passages: Cape Horn and Beyond Part 1 Here
“We did it. We are out of the Screaming Fifties!” I yelled. “Come on down. Open the champagne. Steak’s going into the grill.”
It had taken us almost six days and 520 miles of sailing from the moment we actually had Cape Horn aft of the beam to reach this point. Days full of shifting winds, shifting moods. Even though we’d had light to moderate winds from the south or southeast each of those days, even though I wanted to head due north to get out of the freezing cold as soon as possible, Larry had determinedly kept us heading west-northwest out into the Pacific Ocean.
Each time I suggested easing sheets and turning due north, each time I complained about the damp and the low temperatures that had given me a serious case of chilblains, Larry reminded me, “We agreed we wouldn’t turn north until we have at least 150 miles of weathering.”
He was right, I had agreed completely with this plan more than a year before when we’d first decided to take this route back to the Pacific Ocean. We’d studied the charts showing the rock-bound, hostile shores of Patagonia. Then we’d studied the South Pacific pilot charts, which indicated a 70% chance of strong westerlies in this area and a 22% chance they would reach storm force. Having a very safe offing definitely made sense.
Three days previously we’d gained that offing and finally turned directly north. The wind remained fickle but fair, the seas undulated with a long, low westerly swell but didn’t hinder our progress. Each day grew noticeably warmer.
Today we’d been moving along sedately, wing-and-wing, nylon drifter held in place to starboard by the spinnaker pole, jib to port with its sheet led to the end of the vanged-out boom, mainsail down and nestled in the lazy jacks. Chilblains on the mend, I’d spent a few hours on deck wearing only three layers of clothes. After three days of overcast weather, there had been some breaks in the clouds. Larry had finally been able to get two sextant sights to confirm our position.
I glanced over his shoulder. The closest islands of Patagonia and the rock-strewn entrance to the Gulf of Trinidad lay more than 150 miles east. Even better, we had just 10 miles to go before we officially had “doubled the Horn” and reached the southern limit of the Roaring Forties. I had an extra reason to be excited as the pilot charts showed the percentage of days with gale force winds dropped dramatically, to less than a 12% chance, once we sailed clear of the Screaming Fifties.
I must have climbed out into the frigid air of the cockpit half a dozen times to check the taffrail log during the next three hours to calculate how far we’d traveled. As each mile ticked off, I felt ever more ready to celebrate. I dug out a bottle of French champagne from under the locked floorboards, one I’d secretly stashed there, and reached into the deepest depths of the bilge where I’d stored a frozen sirloin roast.
At sea, Larry usually enjoys two glasses of wine with his dinner then climbs right into the pilot berth for the first off watch of the night. That way he falls instantly to sleep and three hours later has slept off any possible effects of the wine. Normally I don’t drink at sea and thus take the first watch. But tonight I couldn’t resist. Now that we were well on our way towards ever better weather patterns, my fears seemed a thing of the past. I totally relaxed and guzzled far more than my share of that champagne.
Larry just laughed as I became sillier and sillier, and when the ship’s bell chimed six times he said, “OK, it’s after 7—time for one of us to turn in and tonight you need to climb into that bunk more than I do. Besides, wind is freshening so I want to take some sail off.”
I agreed, and once I had wriggled my way into the sleeping bag and arrayed three pillows between me and the hull, I watched as Larry put his feet into his tall seaboots. His foul weather pants were ready to go, bunched around the tops of the seaboots in what he called his “fireman’s position.” Before he’d even pulled them up and added his heavy foul weather jacket, I was asleep.
I didn’t hear him lower the drifter or stow the spinnaker pole. I didn’t hear him take down the working jib then put two reefs in the mainsail. Three hours later I woke to the sound of water surging past the hull.
“Wind’s up a bit,” Larry stated as I climbed out of the bunk. “But she is moving wonderfully.”
Yes, she is, I whispered to myself after I pulled on two more layers of warm gear and my foulies to climb out into the cockpit. But I could sense the swells were building, the scudding clouds were moving fast above us. An hour later, we’d been headed, and I tacked. Close hauled, Taleisin began to buck and throw spray. I waited only a few minutes before deciding to douse the staysail and sheet in the mainsail to heave-to.
“Might have hove-to a bit early,” I said as I climbed below into the relative warmth of the cabin.
“Never too early,” Larry answered. “You did well. But I think I’ll go up and drop the mainsail, put up the trysail just in case the wind increases. Then let’s get a good night’s sleep and see what daylight brings.” I marked our position on the chart, warmed up water, and when he came below poured him a mug of hot instant soup.
“Not a bad place to get some heavier winds,” I commented. According to the position I’d marked on the chart, we had sailed clear of the area where the South Pacific Drift or Cape Horn Current splits to form the Peruvian Current—one branch bending southward toward Drake Passage, the other turning northward, leaving the area where we lay free of currents. Hopefully that meant if this wind increased even more, we wouldn’t be threatened by steep overfalls that can happen when wind opposes current. We were also well clear of the continental shelf, another plus, I reminded myself. Technically, the seas should be less confused here if this wind grew stronger.
Larry just nodded and climbed back into the pilot berth. Within minutes he was snoring. I dragged my sleeping bag out of the other pilot berth and used it like a cover. Then I lay on the settee feeling the boat lifting to the growing seas, listening to the hum of the rig as the wind increased until I knew it was well above gale force. Taleisin lay well, rising to each oncoming sea, only occasionally being thumped by a bit of heavy foam that splattered across the decks. Compared to her motion when we had been charging forward, she lay comfortably.
But comfort is a relative term. As the wind gusted above 50 knots, she lay at an almost constant heel so I could stay on the settee without a lee cloth. And if I held on very firmly when I got up every half hour or so to check things, I could move around safely. But I did have to unwrap myself half a dozen extra times to stuff sponges between pots in the galley or jam a towel into the bookshelf to keep things from shifting as the boat rose to the top of each swell, heeled an extra 8 or 10 degrees, then seemed to straighten and swoop down the backside.
Just before dawn, Larry insisted I change places and climb into the warm sleeping bag in the leeward pilot berth. I woke almost five hours later. The wind still howled, Taleisin still lay hove-to. Larry was no longer in the cabin. I climbed out of the bunk and carefully opened the retaining lock on the companionway hatch. “Larry, are you OK?” I screamed, hoping to be heard above the blasting wind.
“OK? Hell yes I’m OK! This is amazing. Get on your gear and get out here you little mole,” he yelled. Larry had settled himself on the windward deck, back against the cabinsides, feet against the bulwark. “Bring out the cameras—wrap them in plastic bags. I want to get some photos of these waves. They are amazing.”
I gathered up our Hi8 video camera and wrapped it inside two plastic bags, then grabbed the waterproof still camera, pulled on all my gear and carefully climbed clear of the companionway. Larry handed me the spare safety line he’d rigged from a strong point on the cabintop, and I secured it around my waist, then crawled out onto the deck to sit next to him.
I must admit, in the light of day, the waves that marched towards us were truly awe inspiring. Taleisin lay about 50 degrees off the wind, heeled by the roaring wind in her bright orange trysail. The wind seemed to increase as she rose up the face of each of the towering seas, until at the top I could feel the full power of the storm but only for a few seconds as we slid down the back of the sea. Up and down she seemed to rise. At the peak of each rise I could look for hundreds of yards around and see spume being blown off the breaking crests that marched towards us. At the bottom of each trough all I could see was the next towering wave before Taleisin began to rise again.
Just as we slid to the bottom of one particularly deep-feeling trough, a momentary bit of low morning sun broke through the heavy clouds. The top of the crest to windward turned translucent, turquoise deepening slowly to indigo as Taleisin began her steady ascent. It is a sight I can visualize to this day.
But the one thing that really impressed itself in my mind was that these towering greybeards didn’t have breaking crests stretching the whole length of the wave like you see on a shore break. Instead, 100-foot lengths of cresting water topped parts of each wave while between these crests, there was no white water, just blown spume creating an almost lace-curtain effect down the face of the sea. And, as Larry pointed out, the slick Taleisin was making as she was shoved to leeward by the shrieking wind could be seen trailing to windward hundreds of feet, and there the water was almost smooth. I watched in amazement as the crest of a wave broke just a dozen feet ahead of our bow, but when it hit Taleisin’s slick, it turned to foam and only a bit of spray came flying towards where I quickly sheltered the video camera under my jacket.
Yes, she was laying wonderfully under the trysail. Yes, it was amazing and yes, within minutes I didn’t want to be watching one second more. I wanted to climb back into the relative calm of my cocoon of a cabin where I could try to ignore all this sound and fury.
Larry, on the other hand, seemed thrilled by the whole scene. He sat on deck watching for most of the day, only coming below to warm up or grab a handful of the trail mix or the peanut butter and jam sandwiches I cobbled together. The change in his mood from that of the previous few days was stunning.
I’d been a bit surprised by the hours-long bouts of depression that had begun plaguing him in the days after we’d rounded the Horn. Though one of the real strengths of our relationship has always been our ability to communicate, for the first time ever I couldn’t seem to get him to open up. I attributed it to tiredness and tried to get him to spend extra time in the bunk. I knew he’d had sufficient sleep. He definitely wasn’t ill, as he was fully attentive to the boat’s needs, stood his watches carefully, changed sails without hesitation.
But he wasn’t the content man I usually saw. Watching him now, I finally found a clue to work with.
By noon, we were able to set the mainsail with two reefs in it and the full staysail and could have been more comfortable heading due north. But when Larry was able to get the second sight, he needed to confirm our position. I agreed wholeheartedly with his suggestion we head directly offshore, as we’d been driven 35 miles closer to the lee shore of Patagonia during the hours we’d lain hove-to. We both wanted to regain our 150-mile safety margin.
We settled Taleisin onto a close reach and, without any preamble, Larry said, “You know, Lin, I’ve dreamed of sailing against the wind around Cape Horn since I was a kid. Until this blow, until I got a chance to see true greybeards, it all seemed anticlimactic. And sitting out there seeing how the boat we built handled it all, watching the slick Taleisin made sap the energy out of those crests, that is what I needed.”
Just at dusk we once again had our safe offing. Larry went on deck and changed course almost 20 degrees. Then he eased the sheets and Taleisin was off on a very fast beam reach, the taffrail log spinning furiously, spray flying across the foredeck, the motion settled enough so I felt comfortable making up Larry’s favorite corned beef hash topped with eggs. As the clock chimed for 1900 hours, he climbed into the pilot. “Come here a minute,” he asked. He took my hand and held it against his cheek. “Thanks to you, I can now say I have done everything I ever wanted to do in life and more.” And with that he seemed to fall instantly asleep.
This time, Larry slept soundly through his full three-hour off watch. I hummed happily as I came below just before 2200 hours to wake him. I’d been out on deck, fully kitted in foul weather gear but only three layers of warm clothes and had seen patches of clear sky, a smattering of stars. The boat was moving swiftly and the taffrail showed we were making 7 knots.
My elation was to be short lived.
I clambered into the still-warm bunk. Larry kitted up and climbed into the cockpit then yelled, “Looks like a true granddaddy squall headed our way. I’m dropping the sails.” I was barely out of the bunk when the wind shifted suddenly from the southwest to the north and, within minutes, increased to gale force.
Once again Taleisin lay hove-to on the offshore tack, storm trysail holding her steady. “You already had your Cape Horn storm, did you need another?” I jokingly asked.
But Larry wasn’t in a joking mood. “Wind’s a lot more squally than the last time. I’m going to get the para-anchor out just in case. Have it ready here on the cabin sole,” he said.
“Just in case what?” I asked.
“In case the seas change at all. In case the boat starts reaching out of her slick or doesn’t hold her head up. Or, we start taking any green water on board. That happens, I’m going to set it. I’ll need your help so try to get some sleep.”
I tried, and then I actually did doze off. The clock showed three hours had passed when suddenly I was awakened by the whole boat vibrating. Then the rigging began to screech. I had never heard sounds like this before, sounds made by what we later learned were winds sustained above 75 knots with gusts to 90 knots. “I’ve got to get that cover off the windvane, it’s going to shake the self-steering gear to bits,” Larry yelled as he climbed the companionway ladder.
I got out our big torch to light the cockpit as he determinedly secured his safety line then crawled aft to where I could see the whole windvane shaking and vibrating in the howling wind. Spray mixed with heavy rain blew horizontally across the cockpit, at times almost obscuring Larry though he was only 6 feet away from me. I clung tightly to the handles alongside the companionway ladder, my foul weather jacketed head and upper body sticking through the narrowest possible opening of the hatch while I tried to direct the beam of the light to illuminate the vane.
Larry reached the boom gallows frame at the aft end of the cockpit. Once he had pulled himself up into a standing position, he secured yet another line around himself. Then he carefully released his grip on the frame and used both hands as he reached up to release the three ties that secured the Dacron vane cover. I held my breath as he stepped onto the taffrail then raised himself onto the tips of his toes to reach the highest tie. The minute the cover was stripped off the vane frame, the screeching metallic sounds stopped. But as Taleisin reached the crest of each huge sea, the gusting wind still made the boat vibrate.
Larry crawled back to where I waited and yelled above the fury of the wind and pounding rain. “Grab this cover. She’s got too much sail on. I’m going to tie a reef in the trysail. Give me that flashlight and get back below. Nothing you can do out here.”
“The parachute, do we need the parachute?” I yelled.
“Don’t see what good it will do. She seems to be laying okay. Not taking any heavy water on board. Close the hatch, no need to get the whole inside of the boat wet.”
It was almost an hour before Larry came below again. I been lying there, listening to the sound of the storm, the rattle of the trysail as it was pulled down. The grinding of the winch as it was raised again. The shrieking of the rigging never diminished, but once Larry had reduced the size of the trysail, Taleisin no longer vibrated, no longer heeled nearly as far at the tops of the waves. My apprehension ebbed until it became a sort of dull acceptance.
“Can’t believe how clumsy I was,” Larry said when he came below and grabbed the mug of hot chocolate I’d made. “Broke the damn windvane frame when I was taking off that cover.” He pulled a broken length of wood from the jacket of his foul weather jacket.
“Clumsy? No, you weren’t, you were a downright hero,” I replied. “I can’t believe you could even move around out there in this wind, let alone climb up and untie knots.”
Although obviously tired, Larry was wired, almost euphoric and completely uninterested in trying to sleep as he sat in the port watch seat right next to the companionway and braced himself against the surge and heave of the boat. It took me almost an hour to convince him to climb into the more comfortable leeward pilot berth. I climbed into the windward berth and secured the lee cloth to ensure I couldn’t be tossed out.
“Even if you don’t sleep, be a good idea to get some rest in case things get worse,” was my final argument.
I couldn’t sleep. Thinking back, I don’t remember feeling scared, just resigned and eventually bored as my body moved back and forth against the motion of the boat. The howl of the wind became almost natural, and the time ticked away.
The very first glimmers of morning began to light the cabin. Nothing seemed to have changed outside. The wind still howled, the boat still heeled almost 30 degrees at the top of each crest, time after time sheets of heavy spray swished across the deck to thud against the cabin side. I’d almost become used to the sound, the motion, then suddenly, the boat seemed to levitate, almost as if she was suspended in mid-air. Then she fell and appeared to keep falling. She landed with a crashing jolt I was sure must have fractured her planking. I could hear the sound of a heavy wave washing right across the decks. A shower of saltwater hit my face, water forced beneath the thick gasketing of the firmly bolted down skylight hatch. Larry and I almost collided as we leapt from our berths.
“Grab the bilge pump handle!” Larry yelled as he knelt on the cabin sole and began twisting the lock that held down the floorboards over the sump of the bilge. I tried to reach past him for the handle when he looked up and, in a voice filled with amazement, stated, “Not a drop of water. She’s tight. Are you OK?”
“Are we OK?” I whispered, tears streaming down my face. I tried to hide them as Larry knelt on the floor securing the locks. But he finished quickly and turned to see me bracing myself on the settee. He soon had his arm around me. “Relax, she’s riding just fine now,” he said. “Look at the compass. Her heading is just like it has been for the last several hours.”
I leaned against him and watched the telltale compass as it swayed and tilted in its holder on the table stanchion. Taleisin continued to fall away from the wind about 8 or 10 degrees, then come back up to lay close hauled. The wind continued to howl, the seas to swish and rumble. Our motion was just as it had been before the great thump. The intermittent dollops of spray swished across the decks as before to expend their energy against the side of the cabin then flow down the deck.
Over the next hours the storm began to ease, the wind to back. Larry went out on deck every hour and had a long look around. Each time he urged me to come out to feel the force of the wind, to see the amazing height of the waves, the way the boat was riding, the albatross soaring. But I had no desire to do anything more than lay in the bunk and ignore the outside world.
Nineteen hours after we’d hove-to, the wind dropped to gale force and backed to the west. The towering waves were still marching toward us, but now the caps weren’t overhanging, just crumbling masses of foam. I finally went out to join Larry as he unreefed the trysail and set the ridiculously small storm staysail we’d bought for this voyage. The bright orange 40-square-foot sail with the 90 feet of trysail got Taleisin reaching along at 5 knots.
The motion was much steadier now. By dinner time I was able to fry up some eggs, bacon, and tomatoes. For the first time since the latest storm began, I looked into the shelf behind the chart table for a real glass (we’d been using coffee mugs during the blow). Five of the six glasses stored there had been sheered in half, the stems snapped cleanly from the bowls by their holders.
Over the next days we found other signs of the forces that had been exerted on the boat. Most of the dust jackets on books stored in the shelves of the forward cabin were stuck to the underside of the deck, though the books themselves had dropped right back into place. And the following spring when we dried out Taleisin against the seawall in Puerto Montt we saw the only structural damage she’d suffered. Taleisin’s rudder has 7/16-inch diameter pre-stretched Dacron preventers (rudder stops) on each side, to keep the rudder from slamming over against the stern and shearing off the pintles. The force of the skid or the fall had stretched these just enough to allow the rudder to slam an extra degree or two, enough to fracture a small portion of Taleisin’s solid teak stern post (the large timber which supports the transom and rudder.) Repairs to fix the 7-inch crack along the edge of the stern post took only part of a day but definitely proved the worth of these two simple pieces of low-stretch line.
We continued to work north through windy, squally weather for four days more, gradually and cautiously increasing the sail Taleisin carried as the force of the squalls lessened and temperature grew ever warmer. My log entries recorded the mandatory cryptic notes about course, windspeed and direction, distance covered, plus a bit about the sail changes we made. But mostly they are long notes about our moods, our discussions as we covered the last 500 miles towards the entrance to the Gulf of Corcovado.
I had only added heavy underlines under one of these notes when I wrote in the log. The underlined note? “I’ve done it,” Larry had said as he was climbing into his bunk the night before we made the landfall that, to us, would mark the end of our Cape Horn adventure. “Now we just have to sail this boat safely to Canada so my friends and family can see it. Then we can go home to New Zealand, and I’ll feel like a complete winner.”
To this day I clearly remember lying awake for a long time when it was my turn in the bunk. I had a niggling sense of apprehension. Was Larry trying to tell me he was tired of voyaging and ready to settle back into a life on shore? I didn’t ask him and prayed that wasn’t the case, because this voyage had whetted my appetite for other, more adventuresome future cruising destinations. Weathering the challenges we’d faced as we doubled the Horn had laid to rest the very last apprehensions I felt about my own seakeeping abilities.
November/December 2024
