Tuesday February 18th, 2025 Queen Victoria, Cape Horn, Chile
Cape Horn is actually located on a tiny Island called Isla Hornos and this morning at around 6AM Queen Victoria rounded the horn. Having come south from the Beagle Channel during the night, the ship actually made a full circumnavigation of Isla Hornos and then headed back north towards the Beagle Channel again. The fog and clouds were very heavy, and visibility was very poor. The seas were only slight, and it was smooth sailing all morning as we rounded the island. I wondered what the old sailing ship mariners would think of a ship intentionally heading for the horn and sailing around just for fun, given its reputation for treacherous seas?
I was now well confused about our course as we have retraced our route back west along the channel heading for Ushuaia again, I can only assume that the captain now intends to progress on all the way through the channel to the Pacific.
Indeed as the night progressed, we continued on a westerly direction, passing Ushuaia again and further done the Beagle Channel. At dinner we sat and watched the mountains pass and started to pick out glaciers on the higher elevations. Later in the evening we relocated to the Commodore club, its wide windows affording a great view of the narrow channel and as the sun went down, we entered the area known as Glacier Alley a section of the channel that showcases 5 tidewater glaciers, named after European countries. We managed to see a couple of the glaciers, but the light was too low for pictures, I ‘ve included a few photos I picked up online to give you the idea of the spectacular scenery.
Around 3:30AM we were awoken by the violent movement of the cabin and tremendous noise coming from the balcony. We turned on the TV to check our position and the sea conditions on the real-time map and discovered we exited the Beagle Channel and entered the Pacific Ocean; the winds were gusting to almost 95 knots!
Comments