Yachting Monthly

One night

The night looks wrapped in milky cotton. The full moon shines through from time to time when the fogbanks turn wispy under the stratus. The entire sea glows with greenish, phosphorescent sheets. It is hardly rumbling, because the fog muffles all sounds. Perhaps also because the Horn is so close now, and the secondary wave trains are no longer those of the open sea.

On one side lies Tierra del Fuego, a safe distance away, but already close enough for no major swell to come from there. Graham Land with its ice fields is on the other, 500 miles SSE: very near on the globe’s scale, very far on mine. And ahead is Cabo de Hornos with its associated islands nearby, blocking any swell from the east.

That must be why the sea rumbles so little despite

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